Canva Pro review: intuitive online design platform for those frustrated by the free version
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Plenty of people will be happy enough to use the offerings available in the free forever version of Canva. But, if you’re using the graphics editor a lot and getting frustrated by the limitations of the free version, then it may make sense to upgrade to Canva Pro, which offers a plethora of additional features and made it to our list of the best graphic design software.
The Pro version will cost you $120 or £100 per year, for one person, and you can try a 30-day free trial before you commit.
Canva: specs/pricing
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Price:
$120/£100 per year
Company:
Canva
OS:
Windows and Mac, Android and iOS
Processor:
1 GHz processor/64-bit Intel or Apple M1
Free space:
1GB
Setup and getting started
(Image credit: Rachael Sharpe/Canva)
As soon as you upgrade to Canva Pro, it’s ready to use – it’s as simple as selecting a free trial, or choosing how to pay, inputting your basic details and you’re set.
There’s an exceptionally helpful dedicated ‘Get started with Canva!’ section, which is definitely worth a look. ‘Learn the basics’ takes you through using templates, adding text, using drag and drop, adding colour and video and making charts. ‘Crafting Presentations’ runs through using templates and recordings, creating animation and adding transitions. ‘Brush up on Social Media’ walks you through creating scroll stopping posts and how to download and lastly ‘Set up your Brand’ shows how to set-up and design your brand kit, set up personalised templates and brand controls.
Features
(Image credit: Rachael Sharpe/Canva)
The Pro version gets you unlimited premium templates, which is useful if you need a starting point to get designing. Those who want to create their own assets from scratch can do so with the drag-and-drop editor. As well as being more plentiful, the templates available with Canva Pro are generally nicer when compared to that of the free version.
(Image credit: Rachael Sharpe/Canva)
With the Pro version, you also get the ability to create your own Brand Kit. There are also some handy resizing options that are particularly good for social media, the ability to remove backgrounds with one click and AI tools. You can also plan and schedule social content from directly within Canva, which can save a lot of time and hassle.
User experience
(Image credit: Rachael Sharpe)
Canva Pro couldn’t really be any more intuitive to use. When you start a design project, everything you need is exactly where you’d expected to be, with additional features placed and labelled, so you get to know them. For example, when you add a photo to a project you get lots of options to edit including adding filters, removing backgrounds and using the magic eraser to get rid of distractions.
The homepage is the heart of the user experience – it shows all of your recent designs and it’s where you’ll begin new projects from, too. AI tools get their own section too, so you won’t forget to try them out!
AI tools
(Image credit: Rachael Sharpe/Canva)
Canva Pro offers lots of design tools powered by AI. The newest of these is Dream Lab, which uses AI to create an image for you based on any description you write. This is a fun feature to make bespoke images with, although these do tend to be a little on the cutesy side, which will obviously appeal to some people more than others. Similarly, the ‘Magic Write’ tool is lightning fast with the results being a little gushy and cliched but okay as a starting point.
The ‘Magic Eraser’ and ‘Magic Grab’ (where you can move different image elements about without ruining backgrounds) tools both work brilliantly and give professional looking yet speedy photo edits. ‘Magic Edit’ is also very impressive – just type in the changes you’d like made to a photo and Canva Pro will do its best – results vary from project to project in testing, but impressive stuff nonetheless.
(Image credit: Rachael Sharpe/Canva)
Creatives that work with video, will enjoy ‘Highlights’ – where AI takes standout moments from longer videos and gives you share-ready highlights with no work yourself. Other AI tools of note for video are ‘Beat Sync’ which matches video clips to music beat for well-timed content and ‘Enhance Voice’, which gets rid of distractions and background noise – excellent for more professional sounding audio in an instant!
Who is it for?
Canva Pro is perfect for entrepreneurs, small business owners, freelancers, bloggers and influencers – basically individuals who need to create professional looking design work with an emphasis on ease of use and speed of creation. It’ll be especially useful to those starting a new project or business, as with the Brand Kit, you can create everything from your website through to business cards, invoices and social media posts and it’ll all have a coherent look.
Scorecard
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Set up & getting started
Couldn’t be easier to start creating and we love the the handy guides
5/5
User experience:
Intuitive with everything where you’d expect and prompts to try new tools.
5/5
AI tools
An excellent selection and useful for a whole host of different creative projects.
4/5
Buy it if:
You love the free version of Canva but feel frustrated by its limitations and often want to use the pro features.
You have an idea for a side hustle and need to hustle up a brand kit and get yourself a website and social media presence that matches.
You’re a small business owner or solopreneur who has several different projects on the go and once and needs to create design work specific to each new project – Canva templates and brand kits make this easy.
Don’t buy it if:
You’re already a design professional – you’ll be able to do everything Canva Pro does in your more sophisticated software.
You’re just starting out in design – use Canva free at first, get the free trial of Canva Pro, then upgrade later.
