Canva AI: Getting Started With Its Text-To-Image Feature

-AI-GENERATED IMAGES-

CANVA AI

Canva is a beast of a tool with over 100 million users.

It prides itself on providing more for free than most paid design tools out there do.

The fact that it’s entered the AI arena is no surprise.

Relatively recently, it released a bunch of impressive generative AI features.

Today, we’ll be focused on just one of them:

The text-to-image feature.

Essentially, you type in what you want to see.

Canva then uses AI to create the image for you.

Here are the main benefits:

• You get to play around with AI-generated images without needing to learn a new platform (eg. Midjourney or Stable Diffusion).

• A lot of people are already familiar with Canva and its interface.

• It’s available on the Free plan!

Let’s get started with a quick guide.

💨 Quickstart Guide

1. Sign in to Canva

If you haven’t already got an account, sign up for a free one here.

Then, click “Create a new design” in the top right corner.

2. Access the text-to-image app

Click on “Apps” on the left sidebar.

Type “text to image” in the Apps search bar to find this feature.

Select it.

3. Describe what you want to see

Once you’ve accessed the text-to-image app, you’ll get to this chat screen where you can describe the image you want to see.

You can either type in what style you want the image in or select a style (bottom red arrow in the screenshot).

4. Review the responses

Based on your description, Canva will generate four images for you.

To use one in your design, just click it.

You can then edit it as you would with any other image on Canva.

Here’s what I got when I asked for an image of a “puppy with headphones on” in a retro anime style:

Pretty cool.

PRO TIP

Check out https://lexica.art/

It’s a library of images created on Stable Diffusion with the prompts used to generate them.

Canva’s AI art uses Stable Diffusion as its underlying engine, so this library of images and prompts is very useful.

Browse around/search for images on Lexica until you find one in a style you like.

Click it, copy the prompt, and amend it to reflect what you want to see.

Then, paste your amended prompt into Canva.

Limitations 👎️ 

• As with any other AI text-to-image tool, it does often take a few tries to get what you want to see.

• I found that the more detail I asked for in the prompt, the worse the response was. Eg. when I asked for a “puppy in headphones running around a garden with a swing set”, it picked out 1 or 2 of those details and ignored the rest. Learning point: keep your prompts simple and don’t ask for too much.

Alternatives

There are so many text-to-image tools out there right now.

Midjourney and Stable Diffusion are the big hitters, but they do have a learning curve to them.

Tools like Stockimg.ai are easy to use but more expensive.

Blue Willow is free and making waves, but I haven’t tested it out yet (it’s on the list).

The beauty of using Canva’s AI tool is that you can use it for free and it integrates seamlessly into the Canva workspace.

-CHATGPT PROMPT OF THE DAY-

REACH OUT FOR A COLLABORATION

Reaching out to other creators for collaborations is always worth doing.

It’s a great way to build your network and get exposed to a wider audience.

But cold outreach is never fun.

Here’s a ChatGPT prompt to generate an email/message you can use to reach out to creators and propose a collaboration.

You are an expert communications manager and I am a content creator. Please write a concise email or message I can use to propose a collaboration to another content creator. It should be friendly and effectively communicate the mutual benefits of the proposed collaboration.

Take the following into account:

My Name: [eg. John Smith]

My Content Platform and Niche: [eg. YouTube travel vlogger]

The Recipient's Name: [eg. Jane Doe]

The Recipient's Content Platform and Niche: [eg. Instagram travel photographer]

Collaboration Idea: [eg. a series of co-hosted virtual travel tours]

Potential Benefits for the Recipient: [eg. access to my larger YouTube audience, diversified content offerings]

Subject Line: [eg. New Collaboration Opportunity from a Fellow Travel Enthusiast]