Can you use Canva? #help #canva #guide #graphics

Recently I met with some author friends and one of the told me she had trouble with graphics.
There's nothing easier than Canva.
I did a How to guide for her, and my husband - who has never used Canva - tested it.
Sorry this is a little long, but it's easy to follow.

How to use Canva

Log in – I do it using Facebook

I usually pick from the templates. I can always trim later.

For this example, I’m doing a twitter post.

Click on the twitter post symbol across the top.

The blank area will become your post.

There are premade templates down the left side, but you need to delete the content and replace with your own. (It can give shape to a template though)

One the far left are the action commands.

The first thing I need is a background colour.

Click background and it brings up a choice of colour and/ or patterns.

The top few patterns and the plain colours are free.

If you want a different shade of—for example – red click the red square followed by the plus sign.

This brings up a colour wheel

Click anywhere on the colour wheel to fill your image with that colour.

Or pick a background pattern and click on it. That fills the template with the selected pattern.

To add an image

Click on Elements.

You can find free photographs here.

Click on one to add it to your template.

Free images are also available from Pixabay and Wickimedia Commons. (Sometimes attribution has to be given on Wickimedia)

If your image is from another site, ensure it’s saved on your machine as photograph.

Click UPLOADS and select your image.

Once it’s uploaded, click on it to add it to your template.

The image will appear on your template but will need resizing.

Click on a corner and reduce diagonally to keep the scale in proportion.

Click on a corner and reduce diagonally to keep the scale in pro

If you change your mind about which image, click on it and press delete. This takes you back to a blank canvas.

To place the image on your template, click on it and drag it into position.

Clicking in the white space around your template hides the lines that overspill it.

Also in Elements there is a selection of lines, charts grids and drawings. I Selected and added an image of a planet from the Grids / Illustrations tab

Add Text

Click the Text button on the left-hand menu and it brings up a selection of Heading, Subheading and Normal. These have different sized and spacing.

I selected HEADING

Select the colour text you need from the colour square at the top of the screen.

The standard centre, text style, Bold Italic and spacing tabs are there too

I selected green

And I hated it.

To amend Select all the text in the box (Control A) and click on the coloured square in text selection menu across the top. Again, this brings up a colour wheel. Select the colour you need.

TIP

To get your writing centred use the hemisphere on either side of the box around the text. In this case, I pulled one to the left edge and the other to the edge of the image.

Drag the text into position then click outside the box to lose the surround lines.

Here I’ve added standard text to show the difference.

Satisfied with your masterpiece?

Then it’s time to download it.

To Download your image Canvas

At the top of the screen, there are buttons to share a an email (Simply click and add an email address  There is a pull down to change the Can edit to Can view.

This is what the email recipient sees

NB Clicking on take a closer look takes the recipient to Canva and they can view it on screen.

To get a usable copy, select download

This is what you get.

Note

The download is at the bottom right of the screen

This is what you get if you post directly to Facebook – and you can select who sees it in the icon pulldown below your name. I made this to just me as I don’t want to share it publicly

I could also click on the download to open it. – The screen shot is a little confusing, but the right hand image is the download.

There is a pulldown that lets you pick the file sort. Normally, I pick Jpeg.

Right click the image and you get a list of options

I either pick save as or open with.

Open with gives me a choice of programs to open the image. – including paint

Usually, I would use save as and store the image for further use.

In this case I saved to my desktop – this is my image pulled though on insert as a picture.

Wishing you good graphics.