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A prospects first impression about your business online is one of the major determining factors of whether they are going to convert into a customer or bounce to your competitor’s website.
Graphics play a huge role in this decision, which is why it’s necessary to take care of your visual content.
Canva and Photoshop are king and queen of the design world. Choosing the right solution for your business is going to be difficult. Since I have used both of the platforms, I will break down everything you would like to know about the two so that you can make an informed decision.
Table Of Contents
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Our Pick
Canva is our recommended online design software.
Try it for free and you won’t be disappointed.
Ease of Use
Both Canva and Photoshop are amazing graphic design platforms to use, but which one is easier to use?
Ease of Use: Canva
Canva, as popularly advertised on top media networks, was made for anyone who would like to create amazing graphics for their projects. Anyone in this context means beginners, intermediates, and advanced graphic designers of all sought.
Canva has pre-made templates for infographics, eBooks, workbooks, and social media graphics, etc. Your job as the designer is just to fill those templates with your own images, text, icons, frames, fonts and other design features and you’re done.
Canva Ease of Use Score: 5/5
Ease of Use: Photoshop
Photoshop is a downloadable graphic design software that was made for professionals or anyone with prior training.
Using it effectively will need you to spend some time learning how to use it. If you aren’t good at design then you are in trouble. Even though it is one of the best editing and design software in the world you might not be able to use it if you were not taught how.
Photoshop Ease of Use Score: 2/5
Canva wins the round for “ease of use” though if you put some effort into learning how to use Photoshop, you’ll see that it is not as difficult as you thought it would be.
Platform
Canva is a web-based whilst Photoshop has a web-based version as well as a computer program that can be used without an internet connection – Let’s see how they pen out on how good both platforms are.
Platform: Canva
Canva can only be used if there is an internet connection. Advantages of online software is that you can get access to millions of stock photos as well as other design material with little fuss.
One key disadvantage of it is that you are going to need a good quality, stable internet connection – If it’s not good or stable, there will be some glitches as you work on your designs.
Canva Platform Score: 4/5
Platform: Photoshop
To use Adobe Photoshop, you will need to go to their site and download the software onto your computer then install and activate it. You can get the web-based version from Creative Cloud. Having the program offline is great because you can use it anywhere without having to worry about an internet connection.
Photoshop Platform Score: 5/5
Adobe Photoshop takes this round simply because you can use it offline which is very convenient for most small business owners.
Performance
Canva and Photoshop are both well-oiled machines that perform their graphic design duties in a world-class manner. You might be wondering which of the two platforms performs its duties best – well here is your answer.
Performance: Canva
Canva’s design performance is dependent mostly on the speed of your internet since it’s cloud-based. That said, if you stick to the premade templates, you can design almost anything with little to no glitch. One negative thing you’ll realize when using Canva is that when you try to edit uploaded images, you are going to have a bit of a hard time. Their editing feature for uploaded material is very limited and basic. All-in-all, Canva performs reasonably up to the required standard.
Canva’s Performance Score: 4/5
Performance: Photoshop
Photoshop has been around since the 1980s, so you might be telling yourself that their platform’s performance levels must be on another level – well it is.
Adobe Photoshop is probably the pinnacle of performance primarily because they have a computer program which allows you to design without any glitch interference. They are just amazing.
Photoshop’s Performance Score: 5/5
If only Canva had a computer program like Photoshop, it would have the same performance score as them. With that said, Photoshop again takes the round.
Design Tools and Features
Canva and Photoshop are by far the most popular design platforms out there – Why? Because they have the very best design tools and features. – But which one is better? I guess you’ll have to find out below.
Design Tools and Features: Canva
Canva is a blessing from the “graphic design gods.” It literally makes a non-designer create professional graphics in a matter of minutes or even seconds with ease.
Their premium plan which is called Canva Pro includes:
- Over 420 000 readymade design templates in which you can choose and start designing.
- A media library of over 75 million different design components such as stock photos, videos, audios, etc. which you could include in your designs.
- A content planner which helps you plan and upload your content at a specified time.
- A hundred gigabyte worth of storage space for all your media
- A professional brand kit and many more amazing stuff to choose from.
Canva will revolutionize the way you look at design – You’ll instantly start loving it.
Canva’s Design Tools and Features Score: 4/5
Design Tools and Features: Photoshop
Photoshop probably has most features found in Canva and twenty times more. They are an extremely robust design platform with so much potential.
Photoshop has:
- Thousands of templates that are better-looking than Canva’s
- Many different color schemes you can create yourself
- Thousands of different text fonts which you can customize easily.
- A pen tool which you can use to create paths which allows you to mask objects and to create custom shapes.
A recent study I made on myself showed me that after using Photoshop for over 5 years now, I have just used about a third of their features and tools. This leads me to put it upon myself to update my design skills so I can get the most out of this monster application.
Photoshop’s Design Tools and Features Score: 5/5
Again Photoshop scoops this round. Even though they have more and better design tools and features than Canva, you will probably need lots of hours of training to start using them.
Photo-Editing Capabilities
The main reason anyone would like to use Canva or Photoshop is for their photo-editing capabilities.
Which service between the two is better at photo-editing?
Photo-Editing Capabilities: Canva
Canva has very basic photo-editing capabilities. You can scale and crop photos as well as do some minor color changes that any other design software can do – but that’s about it. If you are looking to customize your image further, you will be out of luck because you won’t be able to.
Canva’s Photo-Editing Capabilities Score: 3/5
Photo-Editing Capabilities: Photoshop
The name “Photoshop” has become synonymous with photo-editing. Their photo-editing capabilities are second-to-none. Photoshop can literally help you get any look in your photos. If you can dream it you can create it with Photoshop.
Photoshop’s Photo-Editing Score: 5/5
Photoshop scoops this round. If you are looking to do basic edits to your image, look no further than Canva, if you’re looking to do more advanced photo editing, then choose Photoshop to help you get the job done.
Video Editing Capabilities
Video is probably the most popular form of content these days, so you might be wondering which of the two would be better at editing videos – well, here’s the answer.
Video Editing Capabilities: Canva
Traffic to videos these days has more than quadrupled, for this, Canva is upping its game on providing video editing capabilities. Its recent update was the ability to create and edit video pins. Other than that, you can create gifs and short Mp4 videos.
Canva’s Video Editing Capabilities Score: 2/5
Video Editing Capabilities: Photoshop
Photoshop, like Canva, hasn’t really focused on video editing, for that. their video editing capabilities are really limited. If you want more advanced video editing functionalities you will need to subscribe to their other software like Adobe Premiere Pro or After Effects.
Photoshop’s Video Editing Score: 2/5
Both Canva and Photoshop do not specialize in video editing which makes this round a tie at 2/5 apiece.
Integrations & Plugins
We all use various platforms to complete different tasks. Having a software or service that can integrate with other ones is great because it makes work much easier. So between Canva and Photoshop – which platform has more or better integrations and plugins?
Integrations and Plugins: Canva
Canva integrates with most notably:
- WordPress – with the Canva plugin
- Rippling – which is a payroll software
- And Eclincher – which is a social media management software, etc.
Canva’s Integrations and Plugins Score: 3/5
Integrations and Plugins: Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop integrates with mostly other platforms that have something to do with images such as:
- Luminar 4
- Pichon
- And SHIFT, etc.
Photoshop’s Integrations and Plugins Score 1/5
Canva takes this round with a 3/5 score. Canva integrates with many popular platforms as well as the fact that they have a WordPress plugin which helps you to upload amazing graphics to your site with ease.
Price
The price for both Canva and Photoshop is reasonable – but which one is better?
Pricing: Canva
Canva has a free plan which has very limited design capabilities. If you want to upgrade to Canva Pro (which has all their premium features), you will have to pay a small fee of $12.95.
Canva’s Pricing Score: 4/5
Pricing: Photoshop
Photoshop doesn’t have a free version for their software. To use their platform you will have to pay a small fee of $9.99 which is a huge bargain if you ask me.
Photoshop’s Pricing Score: 4/5
This round is a draw because Canva has a free plan and a slightly higher monthly fee – on the other hand Photoshop has no freemium plan but has a slightly lower monthly fee.
Results
The champion for the best graphic design software goes to Photoshop, but that doesn’t mean that Photoshop is meant for everybody.
Conclusion
When to choose Canva: Choose Canva when you know nothing about graphic design but really want to create industry standard graphic designs.
When to choose Photoshop: Choose Photoshop if you have prior training or experience using it. Adobe Photoshop was made for the professionals.
As we have both seen from the review, both Canva and Photoshop are powerhouses in their own right.