There’s nothing like a bit of magic and stardust to get into the ‘spirit’ of Halloween! With this in mind, I thought it would be the perfect occasion to test out some of the new Canva Magic tools using AI to create some designs.
In short, I don’t think that this technology has the capabilities yet to replace human creativity and create designs from scratch, but it does have some promising features. Let’s have a look at a few of the Canva Magic apps that I have tried recently.
Magic Design
If you’re hoping to produce quality finished artwork at the click of a mouse, then I hate to disappoint you. I found this tool to be very basic and not very intuitive. Some of the template results helped to prompt my imagination, but they didn’t come close to a finished product.
For example, I typed in “happy halloween instagram post featuring cats and dogs” and this was what I got…
Many of the elements (for example, quote marks) were irrelevant, as were some of the images. I would possibly use one of these templates as a starting point, and then change up the fonts, images and captions.
Magic Morph
For this tool, I started with my own design and decided to spice up some of the elements to give it more of a 3 dimensional feel. By selecting Apps and then Magic Morph from the design menu, I was able to modify selected elements.
The result was quite decent, but I had trouble getting it to produce my desired colours. In this case, no matter whether I asked for ‘orange’, ‘bright orange’ or ‘light orange’, they all turned out red. Still, I like this feature and I’m excited about the potential.
DALL·E
DALL·E is the AI image generator from OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT. I had lots of fun (and a few laughs) playing with this app. It’s certainly not perfect, for instance, I asked for an image depicting ‘human bonding with cat’ and got a picture of a cat with 3 ears! However, when I asked for ‘a cat sitting on a pumpkin Halloween theme’ I got some good results.
Magic Expand and Magic Switch
These two apps are an extension of the old Resize tool. It allows you to change your Facebook post to an Instagram post at the click of a button, and to fill in blank spaces by extending the background of your image. This is very handy when you are repurposing content for Facebook, Instagram, Stories and Reels.
In summary, I am always excited to try out new technologies, especially if they save me time. However, I still think that AI has a way to go in regards to image generation. I expect that it will improve quickly, as designers provide feedback and AI capabilities are enhanced. In the meantime, Canva Magic contains a whole swag of apps that are bound to tweak your imagination and creativity, and allow you to create interesting and captivating posts for your followers.
Have you tried Canva Magic? What do you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Wishing you a happy and pet-safe Howl-o-Ween.
