If you've ever wanted to make a graphic, banner, or Facebook cover image but don't have a fancy schmantzy program to do it with, you're gonna like Canva.com.
The service is new and in Beta now, but you can still reserve your username. Then a few days later, you'll get an invitation to join the closed Beta. You should do it. Canva makes making images quick and easy. The other great thing is it's free unless you use one of their premium images. The thing is you can upload your own pictures and not pay a thing.
I've used Canva a few times on this site and I have been happy with the results. To see them go here, or here.
The only glitch I've encountered is an occasional problem with Canva's ability to save your image. It has an auto-save feature, but sometimes is doesn't quite get it right. The good news is when I closed Canva and reopened it, my image was there and was ready to be downloaded.
Canva.com has the Rock Solid Info seal of Approval. Try it. I think you'll like it.
Watch this screencast where I make the featured image for this post in under 4 minutes.
Here is a transcript of the video for you.
Here’s a great little free tool that I just found. It’s still in beta, but it works really well. It’s called Canva. What it does is let you make graphics easily. For the most part, it's free if you use your own pictures.
Let me show you how easy it is to make something here.
First you have to login. There we are. You can use regular document sizes, like a PowerPoint, Facebook cover… all that stuff, or you can use a custom dimension.
For my blog I use 650 wide by 365. Now let’s design that.
Here’s some designs I've already done.
Here we go. Alright. So let's just pick this one. Canva has already sized it for us. So I’m just going to move this around a little bit. I can put it anywhere I want. That’s one of the beauties this thing.
Let’s just say “welcome”. You could make that bigger, smaller, change the color to any you want make it red, let’s say.
Now let’s go down here and make that font just a little bit smaller. There we go. Move it over just a little bit. We’ll make this a little smaller as well. And… change the date.
And that's as easy as it is. Now I have to do… … make sure Canva saved it. It’s been automatically saved.
Click ‘Link and publish'. Now if you want to send a link to somebody in an e-mail, this is what you use.
If you want to print it, PDF is perfect for that.
Or if you want to download it and publish it, click here.
And see there we had a premium picture. so we're not gonna do that.
So anyway, there you go Canva works. It’s mainly free and the images look terrific.
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