Canva’s AI features continue to create a lot of excitement for users of the Canva platform, and one of the fun Magic Studio tools you may not have experimented with yet is Magic Expand.
Resources Mentioned
- 45 Day Free Trial of Canva Pro (Affiliate Link)
Transcript
In a nutshell, Magic Expand enables you to extend a photo in any direction, which can be very helpful in creating images and designs in Canva.
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.
Similarly, if you wanted to take a smaller image and expand it horizontally to fit the required dimensions of a wider image size, for example a presentation or a Facebook cover image, then you could use Magic Expand in the same way.
To use this feature, you simply click the photo on your design that you want to expand, then select Edit Photo from the Canva toolbar.
Next, look for the Magic Expand option here under the Effects tab, and at this point you can select from the various expansion options.
Then click the button and wait for the magic to happen!
Now, in full transparency… are the generated results always a winner?
Admittedly no. Sometimes they’re pretty great.
Other times they are, quite frankly, super weird.
So you’ll need to experiment a bit to get a result that works for you, and some photos will work better than others.
But it’s still an incredibly useful feature to add to your Canva toolbox.
Now a final couple of quick notes about using Magic Expand…
First, it’s worth checking out Canva’s documentation on how to use Magic Studio both safely and legally. If you Google the phrase “Using Magic Studio Responsibly,” you should be able to quickly find their recommendations.
And then second, note that like many of the Magic Studio features, Magic Expand is not available on Canva’s free plan and is currently only available on a Pro, Teams, Education or Nonprofit account.
