- [Instructor] When it comes to social media,
images are oftentimes more powerful than words.
Of course, you can just upload an image and post it.
But if you're looking for a free and easy way
to get creative with your images and videos,
Canva is the tool for you.
It's much easier to use
than traditional photo editing platforms like Photoshop,
and the possibilities are nearly endless.
You can use Canva to create YouTube thumbnails,
Instagram promotions,
portfolio highlights,
almost any type of digital media graphic.
Let's take a look inside and see how it works.
Okay, so here I am inside of Canva.
And as you can see,
we have a lot of different options right from the get-go.
So we can kind of click on one of these options.
We could just click to create a presentation,
a poster, a flyer, an infographic,
an Instagram post, a logo.
You could also scroll down to get some ideas.
But to really just get started,
the easiest way is to just go up
and click on the create a design button.
Then you can choose the type of design
that you'd like to create.
And because we're creating a design from scratch,
it's opened up a blank canvas for us.
So to get started,
we can take a look on the left in the template section,
and we can choose from one of the templates if we'd like.
Notice that some of these templates are videos,
and other ones are just static pictures.
When we click on a template,
you'll notice when you start mousing over it
that the template has different elements.
Each of these elements is editable.
Now at the same time,
we could also create an image from scratch.
So let's take a look at how we can do that.
So I've opened up a new blank canvas,
and we're kind of back to where we started.
The first time we chose one of the templates
to take a look at.
But now we can just go to this upload section.
And we can upload a photo.
So you could upload it from one of your social accounts,
or you can just upload it from your device.
Once your image is finished uploading,
you can navigate to it on the left side of the screen
and then drag it to your canvas.
Once it's on the canvas,
you can resize the image however you'd like.
Now to start getting creative with Canva,
we can go to the left side of our screen,
we can access some of these other elements.
So you'll notice that in the elements area,
we have a whole bunch of free different graphics
that we can use.
And you'll see that now I've taken a photo,
and I've added a little bit of animation to it.
We can take some shapes and add it to the top.
Then we could go over,
and we could add a text element within that shape.
Notice that most of these elements
are also editable themselves.
So we added this little box element earlier.
And up here at the top,
we can see that the color is currently
kind of a brown color.
We could click on that
and change it to whatever color we'd like.
Now we've basically just added an animated photo here
and customized it a little bit,
but you can get really creative.
You can actually upload videos,
and you can add music.
Notice that on the left side of our screen,
we also have an area for audio.
So there's some free audio files,
there's some free video files here in Canva.
But you can also upload your own.
Now once you think you've finished with your graphic,
you can go up here to the top right,
and you can click on the download button.
Now depending on what you've added to your graphic,
you'll have some different options for the file type.
So because this one is animated,
we can download it as an MP4 video.
We can also download it as a GIF
which isn't going to have any sound,
but we still should get that animation with the leaf there.
We could also just download it as,
say, like a JPEG or a PNG file.
Notice you have a few options,
and then you can click download.
Now at the same time,
if instead of clicking on the download button,
we had clicked on the three dots,
we can post it right from here
to, say, Instagram, Twitter or maybe our Facebook page.
So there's really a ton of different options.
I've just touched the tip of the iceberg with Canva.
But it goes as far as you can take it
and as far as your creativeness will go.
So if you're looking to enhance the images
that you're uploading to your social accounts,
and you're looking for a free tool
that doesn't take, you know,
a whole four years of school to learn how to use,
like a Photoshop or an InDesign,
then Canva is an absolutely great option.
A lot of people are using it nowadays.
All of those cool YouTube thumbnails that you see,
a lot of them are created in Canva.
So,
like I said, if you're looking to enhance
the images on your social profiles,
look no further than Canva.