Your Cover Images and Preview images will drive traffic to your products and increase your conversion rates, so making them look amazing is important. But what program should you use to help you with this.
Obviously, you can make great images on many different platforms: Photoshop, PowerPoint, Pablo, and many others. However, I recommend using Canva over all of these. Here’s why:
1. User-Friendly Interface
Canva’s has an intuitive drag-and-drop interface that makes it eas to use and easy to import your product images into your cover image or preview image. Canva’s simplicity allows teachers to create professional-looking designs without extensive design knowledge. PowerPoint is also user-friendly, however its interface is primarily designed for presentations rather than graphic design, which can make creating visually appealing cover images more cumbersome.
2. Design Templates
Canva offers a vast library of customizable templates specifically designed for various purposes, including educational resources and TpT products. These templates are created by professional designers and can be easily adapted to fit specific needs.
You can also purchase templates for Canva.
These templates are easy to edit and look amazing.
3. Access to Graphic Elements
On Canva, you have access to millions of free and premium graphic elements, such as icons, illustrations, and photos, directly within the platform. This extensive library makes it easy to find and incorporate high-quality visuals into your designs.
It’s also quick and easy to add them to your design. PowerPoint requires you to find the images, check their copyright information, download them to your computer and upload them to your design. It’s cumbersome and time consuming.
4. Collaboration Features
Canva allows real-time collaboration, enabling multiple users to work on a design simultaneously. This is particularly useful for teachers working in teams or seeking feedback from colleagues.
Other platforms often support collaboration. However they are not as seamless and don’t have as many time collaboration features. Beyond this, the number of users on Canva is more than other platforms, making it much more accessible to you and your collaboration buddy.
5. Easy Export Options
Canva offers easy export options for various formats (PNG, JPG, PDF, GIF) with customizable quality settings. It also provides specific export options optimized for digital and print use.
6. Cloud-Based Accessibility
Being a cloud-based platform, Canva allows you to access your designs from any device with internet connectivity. This flexibility is ideal for teachers who may work on multiple devices or need to make quick edits on the go.
This has been a great help to me, as my computer has sometimes lost my or corrupted my files. Plus I am able to access my designs from anywhere, even my phone. So if I find myself somewhere unusual and need to access my stuff, I can.
7. Cost-Effectiveness
Canva offers a robust free tier with access to a significant number of features and elements. The Pro version is affordable and provides additional benefits such as premium elements, resizing tools, and brand kits.
PowerPoint requires a Microsoft Office subscription, which can be more expensive than Canva’s offerings, especially if the user only needs it for design purposes. Adobe’s subscription model is also quite expensive.
8. Integration with Other Tools
Canva integrates seamlessly with various other platforms and tools, such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Pinterest, and social media websites. This integration simplifies the process of importing and exporting files.
9. Apps
Canva has a wide array of Apps that make photo editing super easy. And the number of apps is increasing. The amount of things you can do on Canva is astounding, and these apps are helping simplify and speed up the process.
Conclusion
By leveraging Canva’s specialized features and user-friendly design, teachers can create compelling and professional product covers that stand out on TpT, ultimately enhancing their product’s appeal and marketability.
If I were to recommend one platform for TpT image creation, it would be Canva.
If you would like to checkout some premade Canva Templates that I have made for your TpT cover images, preview files, and other elements of your TpT store, check out my Optimization Kit.
