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Hi there friend,

I’ve gotten overwhelmingly positive feedback from the last two newsletters about using Canva (right inside of AWeber) first to edit, retouch, and spice up and then to create entirely new images. This is the last email in the series, and the one that’s (IMHO) the most mind-blowing.

Today, we’re talking about Canva's AI-powered Magic Studio tools. Last year, we introduced a writing assistant into AWeber to help unblock you from starting an email, and give you the help you need to get it finalized and ready to send.

Pairing that with the magic studio image tools in Canva adds an additional layer of support to your email creation process.

Most of these Canva features require a paid account to use. If you don’t have or want a paid Canva account, why not check out one of our most popular recent editions of the newsletter:

• Where will your next email idea come from?
• 3 email design tips you can try Right Now!
• Is your welcome email doing its job?

Background (BG) remover

I’ve mentioned (whenever I get the chance) that I’m a designer at heart, and over the 20 or so years I’ve been designing, I’ve removed a LOT of backgrounds in Photoshop. It’s not fun; but it’s one of the most common tasks I have to do because I frequently want to put a picture of a person or important object on a different background.

Canva’s BG Remover tool makes the whole process as simple as pushing a button.

Don’t have Canva Pro? Try remove.bg, a free online background removal tool.

Magic Expand

The first time I used this tool, I was shocked at how well it worked. This is one of those AI use cases that feels like it can’t possibly produce quality results until you see it in action. The Magic Expand tool lets you take a picture and… expand around the edges.

This is particularly helpful when you have an image that doesn’t fill the space you need to fill. Like if you have a square picture you want to fit into a rectangular form factor. In the past, you would’ve had to crop the edges of your picture, and potentially lose important pieces of the image. Now, you can use Magic Expand to fill in the missing space.

There’s a caveat, like many AI-powered image editing tools, Magic Expand has some real issues when trying to expand complex organic things like faces or hands. But if you’re trying to expand a background scene behind the subject of your picture (like I’m expanding the greenery behind me in the gif above), it works super well.

If you don’t have Canva, but do pay for Photoshop, their Generative Expand is shockingly good.

Magic Eraser

Another previous Photoshop time sink I used to get bogged down in was removing clutter and unwanted images from photos. Canva’s Magic Eraser (very similar to Photoshop’s Content-Aware Fill) lets you remove objects from your images by simply painting over them. Canva does the hard work of figuring out what should appear in the object’s place for you.

A general rule of thumb with these replacement tools is that the bigger the object you’re trying to replace, or the more cluttered your picture, the worse result you’re going to get. So try to use Magic Eraser to remove smaller objects in fairly simple images.

Generating content

Last, but not least, you can use Canva’s Magic Edit tool to add whole new objects to your images. In my example, I added a stylish cowboy hat; but I could think of a ton of more useful ways to use the feature:

• Updating a picture to visually communicate an idiom (like putting a bird into your hand to illustrate “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”).
• Covering over parts of a picture you don’t like with a more pleasing object when tools like Magic Eraser won’t work.

Image generation tools are still in their infancy, so your results may vary (eg. I don’t look quite as dashing in a Canva cowboy hat as I do in a real one); but it’s an interesting technology to experiment with.

That’s the end of the Canva Tips for the time being. Let me know if this was helpful and if there are other tools you’d like a deep dive into in the same way.

What did you think of this email?

❤️❤️❤️ Loved it. Can't wait to get the next one.

💔 I didn't really care for it.

When you need assistance with your written content, we’ve got you covered

I don’t believe that AI can replace the creative spark that comes from humans. But I do think it can be incredibly helpful at speeding up drudgework, finding errors, and helping us look at problems through a different lens.

That’s why we’ve made a tool designed to fill in your gaps so you can create without the frustrating limitations that got you stuck in the past.

Whenever you need some inspiration, or ideas on how to rephrase something, just pull up the writing assistant and get the help you need.

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As always, thanks for reading!

- Chris V. and the rest of the AWeber team