Repost: Custom Graphics with Canva

Website Wednesday

Canva is a website (and an app) that helps you create beautiful graphics to use in social media, slide shows, blog posts, documents and more.

You can also log in with your Google account so that makes it easy to remember your user information. :)

From the website, just select the type of graphic you want to create - it's ok if you don't see the exact thing you are looking for, you can do a custom size graphic as well. Also remember, just because it says social media as the graphic type don't let if fool you. You can still use that graphic for many things. Click the + sign to see more graphics options. Finally, there are free tools and paid tools. I've never paid for a graphic, but if I need to, they are very inexpensive. I encourage you to take a look at this site - you won't be sorry.

Want to see Canva in action? Join us today at 4 PM for our EdTech Talks webinar. Laura will guide you through the set-up and all the cool features that Canva has to offer. Begin today designing professional quality graphics. 

All FREE!

Website Wednesday

Need photos, illustrations, or videos for your presentation, document, or website? Not sure if they violate copyright? Well, your search is over. Just use..

Pixabay has over 850,00  high-quality photos and illustrations and over 3,000 videos that can be used for free by anyone, anywhere, and on anything. You don't have to worry about copyright. AND it's so simple to use. Just search, download, and insert into a document, presentation, website, and more. 

Check out the advanced search features that are also offered. You can search for graphics by size, orientation, color, or category. Need a graphic that doesn't have that pesky white background? With Pixabay you can search for graphics with transparent backgrounds.Create an account, upload, and keep graphics in your personal library. 

So for your next presentation be sure to check out pixabay.com. 

Custom Graphics with Canva

Canva is a website (and an app) that helps you create beautiful graphics to use in social media, slide shows, blog posts (my graphic was made with Canva), documents and more.

You can also log in with your Google account so that makes it easy to remember your user information. :)

From the website, just select the type of graphic you want to create - it's ok if you don't see the exact thing you are looking for, you can do a custom size graphic as well. Also remember, just because it says social media as the graphic type don't let if fool you. You can still use that graphic for many things. Click the + sign to see more graphics options. Finally, there are free tools and paid tools. I've never paid for a graphic, but if I need to, they are very inexpensive. I encourage you to take a look at this site - you won't be sorry.

Adobe Post - Creating Beautiful Social Graphics

I've only recently learned about an app called Adobe Post. It's an iPhone app, but it works on the iPad too. Using Adobe Post, you can quickly create beautiful graphics that are meant to be posted to social media. Each image is formatted so it will fit perfectly into any social media application, but you aren't limited to that use. It would be a great tool to create an introduction graphic for a video or slide show. You could also use it as a signature graphic for e-mails or use an Adobe Post graphic in conjunction with other graphics in a collage.

Adobe Post is a free app, but you will need to create an Adobe ID to use it. If you are already using Adobe Voice or Adobe Slate you can use the same ID for this account as well. That's one of the things I like about Adobe - it saves all of your work under your ID so you don't have to worry about losing any of your pictures if you happen to share a device with someone else.

To create a graphic there are four simple steps:

1. Click the + sign and select a graphic (yours or theirs - and they have some high quality graphics).
2. Select a Palette.
3. Enter Text.
4.Export it.

Inside the app, you can change almost anything - so you have a lot of flexibility to create some amazing graphics.

Beautiful Online Photos - FREE!

Finding good quality photos that are free to use online or in a project isn't easy - until now. I just came across a great website called unsplash.com. It provides users with 10 new photos every 10 days - and they are all free! These photos are beautiful, high quality images with a Creative Commons Zero license. 

Take a look at their website and get inspired!

Reverse Image Search

Reverse Image Search in Google is a handy tool if you ever need to know where an image came from, other locations of the image on the web or if you want to find similar images.

- Go to images.google.com
- On your computer, open  the folder that contains the image you want to search for.
- Click and drag the image into the search box. 

This page shows the image that was uploaded, similar images and other pages that contain the same image.

Free Graphics from Pixabay

Who loves free stuff? I'm all about it as long as it's something I can really use. Well, hold on to your hats, because I have a website full of free graphics that can be used on websites, documents, presentations, and more. 

Pixabay.com provides you with over 470,000 public domain photos, graphics and illustrations. All of the graphics I've used from this site are great quality and easy to download. Instead of going directly to Google to search for images, try going to Pixabay. You don't have to worry about copyright and can feel confident the images you use will be a great addition to any project.

Removing a Background from a Graphic Using PowerPoint

We've all been there. We find the perfect graphic to use in our presentation or in a publication and it has an awful background around it that ruins everything. Have no fear, there is a way to remove that background. 

I like to use PowerPoint to remove backgrounds - just insert the graphic onto a slide and use the remove background option to get it looking good. 

Here's a quick video to show you how it's done. 
https://youtu.be/YkcSJjNwFL0