Magic Studio
Transcript
Magic Studio is Canva’s collection of AI powered tools designed to help you edit your images and designs in a variety of ways.
I want to keep this video as succinct as possible while still also helping you better determine which of the AI-powered features, if any, may be worth the Pro subscription upgrade for you.
In full transparency, I don’t use a lot of these features myself, but every Canva user is going to be different in terms of needs and goals when it comes to design capabilities, so hopefully this video will help you to assess which of Canva’s Magic Studio components add value to your design workflow.
So to that end, I’m going to provide a quick description of Canva’s AI options and highlight if it’s included in the free version of Canva, including any usage limitations to be aware of.
Let’s start with the features that are only available on Canva Pro, with no access on a free account, and those include:
Magic Eraser, which enables you to entirely remove unwanted items from your photos.
For example, let’s say you had a bookshelf in an image and you wanted to remove a piece of decor from one of the shelves. Magic Eraser is a tool that could help you do that.
Then there is Resize & Magic Switch.
While Magic Switch enables you to transform Canva designs into other document types or to translate them into other languages, for me the most important aspect of this feature is that you can quickly resize a design into new dimensions.
You would use this if you wanted to quickly repurpose a design into multiple different sizes for different social platforms. For example, if you wanted to take an Instagram post design and resize it for an Instagram Story or a Pinterest Pin or another social channel’s specific size requirements.
Magic Grab allows you to select and separate the subject of your photo so that you can edit, reposition, or resize it.
For example, if I wanted to separate my photo from the background in one of my headshots.
Magic Expand enables you to extend a photo in any direction. For example, when you’re designing an Instagram story, you’ll often require a tall image, but obviously not all photos are taken in that aspect ratio.
With Magic Expand, you can take a square or horizontally-oriented image and extend it vertically to fit the dimensions of an Instagram Story design.
While all Canva users have access to animation effects for their designs, Magic Animate is a tool that will assist you in choosing your animations and transitions for your project.
Using AI, Magic Animate analyzes your design and then chooses the motion effects that it believes will match your content and other design components.
If you decide you would prefer to have more control over how animations are applied to your designs, you can always do it manually, and like I said, you’ll have access to all of Canva’s animation styles regardless of the plan you’re on.
However, I’ll flag that some of the variations and controls on those animations will be Pro only features.
For example, you may have access to a particular animation style but not be able to change the direction or speed of the animation, whereas you do have that capability on a paid plan.
With the Magic Morph feature, you can quickly apply effects to text or a shape (and some elements as well). For example, if you wanted to take a shape and transform it to look like a foil balloon, or a “velvet pillow”… Magic Morph is the tool you’d want to use to do that.
For me, this is unlikely to be a tool that I would use very often, but it’s an interesting design option to have in your toolbox.
And finally, Background Remover, which is kind of the OG of Canva’s AI tools, which is why I’m including it here, and honestly, of all the AI powered features in Canva, Background Remover and Resize are really the ones that I use on a regular basis.
So those are all the AI features that you won’t be able to experiment with unless you have a Pro account but then we have a variety of tools you can access on a free Canva account, but with limited usage.
Starting with Magic Media, which includes both the “Text to Image” and “Text to Video” options. Essentially Magic Media takes your text prompts and then turns them into AI created images or videos.
On a free Canva plan, you’ll have 50 total uses of Text to Image and only 5 total uses of Text to Video. So those aren’t monthly allowances, that’s total uses ever. Whereas on a Canva Pro account, you’ll have 500 uses per month of Text to Image and 50 uses per month of Text to Video.
Magic Design is supposed to enable you to turn your text prompts and media into customizable designs that match the content and context you need. For example, typing in your idea and seeing a presentation topic, outline and sample content automatically generate.
In theory, it sounds amazing and I’m hoping that we’ll get to the point that this tool is a massive time saver and source of inspiration. In execution, I don’t feel the results are at the level yet that I would confidently sing its praises. When that changes, I’ll be among the first to shout it from the rooftops.
On Canva’s free plan you’ll have 10 usage tokens total but on a Pro subscription, this feature is just included as needed.
Then we have Magic Edit, and just like with Magic Eraser, you can brush over an area of your image but instead of Canva simply removing a specified element from the image, with Magic Edit, you can add an image that wasn’t previously there, or you can replace an existing image with something new.
With this particular feature, there is no difference between the free and Pro plans: you’ll have 100 uses daily on both.
Then we come to Magic Write, which is essentially Canva’s version of ChatGPT. Magic Write is powered by OpenAI and it’s an AI text generator that you can provide a prompt to help with your content creation, whether that’s copy, blog outlines, lists, social captions or something else.
You’ll have 50 total uses of Magic Write with a free Canva plan, whereas Canva Pro gives you a usage allowance of 500 uses per month.
Then we have Translate, and with Canva’s AI-powered online translator, you can translate the written copy in any design into over 100+ languages.
Canva Free users can translate up to 50 pages total and if you’re on a paid subscription, you’ll be able to translate up to 500 pages each and every month, with it resetting at the beginning of each billing month.
Translate can be selected through the Resize & Magic Switch feature but also directly from the Apps area of Canva.
Finally there’s Beat Sync, which is not technically part of Magic Studio, but it is an AI powered tool, so it feels appropriate to include here.
If you’re on a free Canva plan, you’ll need to manually sync your video footage to your soundtrack, whereas with Canva Pro, Beat Sync will automatically sync your video to your audio.
You will find additional tutorial videos on how to use a few of these Magic Studio features listed in the resources below this video.