These HIDDEN CANVA FEATURES Will Blow Your Mind 🤯

About this video

Kate Hayes walks through hidden Canva features most users never find. First, the Tracer app (under Edit > Apps) converts a photo into an editable vector in black and white or full color; a threshold slider controls dark vs. white space in the monochrome version, and toggling off ‘auto color numbers’ lets you choose how many colors the color version uses (her demo used 14), after which the vector’s colors can be changed like any graphic element. Second, the Background Generator (Canva Pro, marked with a crown) replaces a photo’s background from a text prompt — her example puts a mug on a tree stump in a wildflower field and offers four options. She then uses Adjust > Select Area to edit only the background (lowering sharpness for blur, adding a vignette) or only the foreground separately. Third, Magic Expand, found under Crop > Expand, uses AI to extend a photo to fill a whole page or a chosen aspect ratio instead of cropping it, again with four variations to pick from. Fourth, the Guides view (File > Settings > Add Guides) overlays purple ruler guides — 12 columns by default, or a 3x3 grid or custom rows/columns with set gaps and margins — to align elements and keep margins consistent across multi-page documents, and can be cleared from the same menu. Fifth, inside the Canva Pro Brand Kit, ‘Generate from photo’ creates new on-brand images in the style of an existing photo from a prompt, and ‘Extract color palette’ builds a palette with hex codes from any image. Sixth, the Texture app applies paper, paint, VHS, grit, film grain, or grunge textures to a photo with blend modes, scale, rotation, and opacity controls. Finally, her favorite: Canva’s Color Wheel tool, where you pick a base color and a combination type (complementary, analogous, triadic, and more), then export the palette or jump straight into templates using those colors with category, style, and other filters. She also promotes her free 45-minute Digital Product Powerhouse masterclass and free digital product starter guide.

Key takeaways

• The Tracer app turns any photo into a recolorable vector, in black and white (threshold slider) or full color with a controllable number of colors
• Background Generator (Pro) creates a new AI background from a prompt, and Adjust > Select Area lets you blur or edit just the background or just the foreground
• Magic Expand (Crop > Expand) AI-fills a photo out to fill the whole page instead of cropping off the top and bottom
• Brand Kit can generate new photos in the style of an existing image and extract a color palette with hex codes from any photo
• Canva’s Color Wheel builds guaranteed-matching palettes (complementary, analogous, triadic) you can export or apply directly to filtered templates

Episode details: published August 12, 2025 · 14:37 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Kate Hayes’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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