How to Use Canva to Create Consistently Sized Images for Your Project

Transcript

Hi, thanks for joining me. In this video, we’re going to talk about using Canva as a tool to maintain consistently sized images for your project. I have multiple templates that I’ve created for my various products, depending on what they are and what sizes I need. Sometimes to get the size that’s going to work best for you, you do have to play a little bit.

So you create your image, drop it in your project and make sure it looks the way that you want. And if not, you may need to adjust the size. But once you nail that template, it is so easy to move forward and maintain that consistent look in a really easy-to-use format.

So I do have the paid-for version of Canva, but I believe all of these options are available in the free version. You don’t have to pay for it, but I will say this is well worth the payment. It is such an easy way to handle templates, social media posts, quick little ads. It’s just so worth the money, but let’s talk about the template piece.

So, I have a couple right here. This one was a brand new one that I created for a project, and I didn’t name it because I wasn’t sure that I would need it ongoing and possibly delete it. But here’s a good example of one I recently created for a MailerLite template.

So, I needed an image that was going to be consistent in size to place at the top of a MailerLite email marketing campaign. And so I created this template at 600 pixels wide x 300 pixels tall. So, email marketing campaigns are typically 600. That’s how I knew how wide make it. And the height that I thought would look good, I just guessed that. And this is where I landed and it’s perfect.

But for you, it may not be. You may not want something that’s this tall. It’s really a personal preference, but I liked how this looked in the layout. So once you have your template and you click on it to come inside of it…

I’m going to back up here and show you how to create that template. So up here it says, Create a Design. You have several pre-created options available within Canva, or you can create your own custom size. And once you create that, you’re going to end up inside of that file.

And then you will want to go to the photo section, and there’s two ways to do this. I’m going to show you both. So if you want to use images that are in the photo section, you would click on Photos, and then you would click and drag it over so that it fills the page. It’s that easy, it’s just a simple click and drag.

And if you don’t like how they cropped it, which is going to be based on the dimensions of the image that you choose, all you need to do is double click on it, and then you can adjust it and you can bring it into or view it in a way that you think works for your project, and then click done and see if you like it.

If you don’t, you can simply adjust it again. You can make the images larger if you want to fill more space by simply dragging on the corner here, and then moving it around to a point that you think will work, click done and see if you like it. You cannot make the images smaller because by default Canva is going to bring it in so that either the height or the width matches the original image, depending on which is smaller.

But you can make it larger, and sometimes that’s great. You just don’t want to go too large or it ends up getting pixelated. When you have the image the way that you want it to be, then you would click on Download.

I always go with a PNG. Part of the reason for that, and this is hopefully a helpful tip for you is that when an image is a JPEG file, every time that image is re-saved, it loses quality. So you end up with a horrible image over time, depending on how frequently that image might be used.

For something like this, it may not matter. But I am just in the habit of always creating my images in PNG, because I don’t want to lose quality and PNGs don’t. And then you click on, Download. You’re going to find the file in your Download folder on your computer. For me, that’s right here. And from there, I can put it into my project.

So if you have an image of your own that you want to use and you don’t need to use the Canva images, there’s a lot in here. Then you would simply go to Uploads, which you may not be able to see because of my recording, and go ahead and upload media. So, you can click on that. Find the image that you want to use.

I’m not in the right folder here. We’ll just pick this one. And it’ll upload. When this little bar is done, it means that it’s fully uploaded. You may be able to play with it before that bar is done like I just did, but you won’t be able to save it or download it until that bar is complete.

So, I’ve made the adjustments here. This is my granddaughter. And then you would just proceed to download the image like you did before. You see this is grayed out, and it’s because this is not done uploading. And so, I need to wait until that’s done to upload. Hopefully, this was a helpful tip.

A couple of sizing pieces, MailerLite, like I said, I did the 600 wide x 300 pixels tall. My blog post images, I like them a little bit bigger. This works well for my featured image, as well as the image that goes within the content itself. And I believe those are 1200 x 780 pixels.

It will depend on if your content is full width. If it’s full width, you need to go at least 920 pixels. And then I generally like to stay between about 600 and 800 pixels tall, depending on how much space I want that to take up. So those are a few different sizes that might be helpful or give you a starting point, but sometimes you just have to play a little bit.

If you do create a file and find that the sizing is not good, you can resize it right here. I believe this option is available in the free version, but I’m not positive. And just put in your new dimensions. If you want it to stay the same proportion, you can lock it here and then click Resize. And it’ll just resize it for you.

I hope that helps. I think consistency is really important. This [inaudible 00:07:13] time I need an image, I can just come in here. Drop it in and download it. And I know that it’s going to maintain that consistent look and feel. Thanks for joining me.