Is Canva a good replacement for Adobe?

adobe canva design tools Aug 28, 2021
 

 Canva v Adobe

Designers have a love hate relationship with Canva. On the one hand it has made their job easier, on the other it has made everyone a 'designer' and a designer's job harder. This post gives you an insight as to how I use both platforms as a designer, what I think about them and the future of design. Disclosure, I use affiliate links in this post. Get your 30 day free trial of Canva here.

Using Canva as a designer

As a designer I use Canva more and more, but I have both a Canva pro and an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. I love Canva for it's pre-sized templates for digital, but I know that I could set these up in Indesign or Photoshop. I love it for the all-in-one feel for design and search. I can find elements like stock photography, graphics, icons, gifs and moving stickers quickly. I love that I can share files to clients so they can adapt templates themselves.

I use it mainly for Instagram social posts and reels, quick graphic creation and basic photo and video creation and editing. I like it for content that I know has a shorter life span, when I need to create quicker and get inspiration from templates. I love that I can quickly resize stuff for another platform. I use it mainly for digital content.

What I love about Adobe

What I love about Adobe is it's just more robust. Using Photoshop for more refined and detailed photo editing, Indesign for magazine and book layout, - the typography styling and options outweigh Canva. Illustrator is still better for creating and editing vector graphics (although I have heard Canva has something on the way for vector design.) I'm new to video editing and find Premiere pro confusing but still use it for longer form video content.  In summary, content that has a longer life span, is longer in content and where quality matters - Adobe is a better and still my choice. 

In summary

I love how Canva is disrupting the design industry and making it accessible for all. I don't love that that might put designers out of work. But such is the way of progress in many industries. Some of the foundational principles of good design are lost in that anyone can use Canva, but I think it is a great gateway into design. As we live in a visual age, Canva has made design more accessible and in some ways more important for both creators and consumers. The speed at which Canva is improving its features and offerings is amazing, I'm not sure it will ever replace Adobe, but that remains to be seen. Adobe has had a monopoly for a while now and competition is not always bad.

 

You can get a 30-day free trial of Canva, click here.