How to add drop shadows to text in Canva

Course contents
SECTION: 2
Project 1 - Social Post Design 3:51
SECTION: 11
Project 3 - Proposal Document 2:30

Questions

Course info

85 lessons / 8 hours 23 quiz questions 20 projects Certificate of achievement

Overview


Welcome to the Canva Design Essentials course! Led by professional designer Dan Scott, this course is your gateway to mastering Canva and building a strong foundation in design principles. Whether you’re new to design or looking to sharpen your skills, you’ll learn how to create impactful, real-world designs with ease.

With 17 years of professional design experience and multiple teaching awards, Dan has taught over a million students worldwide. His hands-on approach and industry insights make learning engaging and accessible, empowering you to reach your creative potential.

You’ll learn:
  • - Design Fundamentals
- Social Media & Marketing Graphics
- Logo Design & Branding
- Create Professional Documents & Presentations
- Learn how to Edit Video
- Canva’s AI Features

This course is ideal for beginners in Canva and design, whether you’re a teacher, student, small business owner, or aspiring designer. With step-by-step instructions, you’ll gain confidence in creating visuals that communicate effectively and look professional.

Take the first step toward becoming a Canva Hero—sign up now to transform your design skills!

Requirements:
  • - All you need is a free Canva account. You can get a free trial from Canva here to get started.

Who this course is for:
  • - Absolutely no previous Canva experience is required.
  • - This course is designed for newcomers to Canva and design in general, so no prior design experience is necessary.
  • - This is a relaxed, well-paced introduction, perfect for producing a wide range of projects. Only basic computer skills are necessary - if you can send emails and surf the internet, you're more than capable of mastering this course.

What you'll learn:
  • - Creating Designs in Canva
    - Working with Free & Paid Images in Canva
    - How to Crop Photos in Canva
    - How to Crop with Frames in Canva
    - How to Name Your Canva Documents Right
    - Uploading Your Own Images into Canva
    - Where to Get Free Photos for Canva
    - Understanding Workspaces
    - Squares, Circles + Layers & Position
    - How to Export a JPG & PNG from Canva
    - Mixing Colors in Canva
    - Design Styles & Color Palettes in Canva
    - Working with Text & Fonts in Canva
    - Adding Drop Shadows to Text in Canva
    - Curving Text Around a Badge
    - Group, Lock & Aligning Elements in Canva
    - Creating Dotted & Arrowed Lines with Text
    - Modifying Shapes in Canva
    - Changing Color of Graphics & Collections
    - Editing the Background Remover Tool
    - AI Image Generator with Magic Media in Canva
    - Mockups in Canva
    - Testing & Posting on Your Phone for Instagram
    - Editing Canva Designs on Your Phone
    - Using Canva Template Logos
    - MoodBoard WhiteBoard Brainstorm
    - Using Markup Tools, Stickies, Comments & Sharing
    - Logo Competitor Analysis in Canva
    - Designing a Custom Logo in Canva
    - Picking Fonts for Your Logo
    - Choosing Logo Colors
    - Using Gradients in Canva
    - Understanding Brand Kits
    - Light, Dark & Stacked Versions of Your Logo
    - Working with a Word Style Doc in Canva
    - Font Combinations & Pairing in Canva
    - Changing Text Styles in Canva
    - Styling Tables in Canva
    - Designing Header Banners in Canva Docs
    - Using Highlight Blocks, Dividers & Quotes in Canva Docs
    - Presentation Templates & Styles in Canva
    - Using Layouts in Presentations in Canva
    - Page Transitions in Presentations
    - Animating Pages & Page Elements
    - Creating Charts in Canva
    - Adding QR Codes in Canva
    - Adjusting Images in Canva
    - Darkening Images for Text Overlays
    - Using Magic Eraser in Canva
    - Magic Edit in Canva
    - Magic Expand in Canva
    - Trimming Video in Canva
    - Applying Video Filters & Adjustments
    - Animating Text & Changing Timing in Canva
    - Changing Stickers & Adding Motion Effects
    - Animating Photos in Canva
    - Finding Free Videos for Canva
    - Exporting Video for Social Media in Canva

Daniel Scott

Daniel Scott

Founder of Bring Your Own Laptop & Chief Instructor

instructor

I discovered the world of design as an art student when I stumbled upon a lab full of green & blue iMac G3’s. My initial curiosity around using the computer to create ‘art’ developed into a full-blown passion, eventually leading me to become a digital designer and founder of Bring Your Own Laptop.

Sharing and teaching are a huge part of who I am. As a certified Adobe instructor, I've had the honor of winning multiple Adobe teaching awards at their annual MAX conference. I see Bring Your Own Laptop as the supportive community I wished for when I was first starting out and intimidated by design. Through teaching, I hope to bring others along for the ride and empower my students to bring their stories, labors of love, and art into the world.
True to my Kiwi roots, I've lived in many places, and currently, I reside in Ireland with my wife and kids.

Certificates

We’re awarding certificates for this course!

Check out the How to earn your certificate video for instructions on how to earn yours and click the available certificate levels below for more information.

How to earn your certificate

Work your way towards your certificate for this course by following these simple steps.

  • Watch the course videos
  • Complete the Class Projects - look out for the videos marked with
  • Upload your class projects into the My Projects area in your account
  • Complete and pass the Knowledge Quiz (Merit level courses only)
  • Complete the Distinction Certificate Project (Distinction level courses only) - look out for the video marked with
  • Upload your Distinction project to the My Projects area in your account
  • Request your certificate when you've completed the requirements for the certificate level you're working towards

Good luck!

Pass certificates

We're awarding 'Pass' level certificates for this course.

You can work your way towards your 'Pass' certificate by following these simple steps.

  • Watch the course videos
  • Complete the Class Projects - look out for the videos marked with
  • Upload your class projects into the My Projects area in your account
  • Don't forget to request your certificate when all your projects are complete

Good luck!

Merit certificates

We're awarding 'Merit' level certificates for this course.

You can work your way towards your 'Merit' certificate by following these simple steps.

  • Watch the course videos
  • Complete the Class Projects - look out for the videos marked with
  • Upload your class projects into the My Projects area in your account
  • Complete and pass the Knowledge Quiz
  • Don't forget to request your certificate when you have passed the quiz and completed all your projects

Good luck!

Distinction certificates

We're awarding 'Distinction' level certificates for this course.

You can work your way towards your 'Distinction' certificate by following these simple steps.

  • Watch the course videos
  • Complete the Class Projects - look out for the videos marked with
  • Upload your class projects into the My Projects area in your account
  • Complete and pass the Knowledge Quiz
  • Complete the Distinction Certificate Project - look out for the video marked with
  • Upload your Distinction project to the My Projects area in your account
  • Don't forget to request your certificate when you have passed the quiz and completed all your projects

Good luck!

Downloads & Exercise files

Transcript

Hey everyone, let's explore some  of the text effects in Canva. Uh, basically they allowed us  to add things like drop shadows,  really good when we want text to kind  of really separate from the background if it's hard to read,  okay, there's some kind of interesting kind of cool effects  and stuff you can do with type add a bit  of excitement to your heading text. Alright, let's jump in. Alright, uh, first thing is I'm gonna click on the little  zoom option and say fit. Um, and scroll to the top. I'm gonna work on this first option.

Option A one. Actually it's one A, uh, the very first one we did. Okay, so what I'm gonna do is, the first thing you need  to know about text effects is  that they can't apply to all text. So this text here, okay, sitting on top  of this rectangle has text effects, okay? This text that's inside of a rectangle, so we started  with a rectangle, we added text inside  of it doesn't have effects. So if you did want this to happen,  what you'd end up doing is with a T tool click T.

Okay? You'd have a paragraph  and clicking off moving it there. Then separately you'd have an element  and you'd go get rid of photos, go down to shape, okay? And you'd make these two things separately. Okay? Can you see the text is flashing in there?

That kind of works what we wanna do up here. But if we wanted to add effects to this,  we'd have these two separate things. A text inside of a rectangle. They are separate. I'm gonna delete you and delete you. So we've got this one and  what I wanna do is have this kind of up the top.

I'm going to move this down the bottom. Okay. I want this to kind of appear on the background image. Now mine stands off pretty well. Yours is probably not. You've got a different brand.

Um, different font, different color,  and double click on mine and kind of move it around. So that is less good. Turn my rotation back to zero. Kind of get it up here. Is that worse? Yeah, it's getting a bit worse.

So text effects are really good for not just kind  of like styley effects but actually making things legible. Especially when there's text against  a kind of a modeled background. Let's click effects and you probably don't need  me to go through them all. Okay? A shadowed drop shadow. Um, the one thing I will mention is shadow and lift.

For me, they feel like they're kind of the same  but they're, I don't know, uh, they feel different. Um, I feel like this should be good  shadow and that should be called lift. So lift is, I dunno what I call a traditional drop shadow. Can you see that? Kind of like, you know the  yeah, the shadow, the drop shadow. But they call it lift.

Okay? And shadow is just, uh, it replicates the color  that's being used in the font, okay? And just makes another copy of it. Let's zoom in. Okay? This kind of helps it stand off.

The one thing about this is this is confusing. It's not once you get used to it. So what happens is if I click none,  we've got all these options here, okay? If I click on shadow, what happens is all the shadow options  open up underneath it  and push this down so they're all still here. You can switch to splice. You see now splice has kind  of come up and showing me my splice options go back to none.

So if you are kinda just going, uh, figuring it out  and going, oh, I wonder what this one done  and you feel like you might've lost something,  just go back to none, okay? And it will clear 'em all off and then you can start again  and go, all right, neon intensity. They all have their own options. I'm not gonna go through them all. The one things I do wanna  show you is some fonts do some weird stuff. This one here, what is this one called?

This one is called Oh yeah, GLIN. I'm  Sure there's a better way of pronouncing that,  but some of the effects in this one. Let's have a look at hollow dozen weird stuff. So if your font's doing some weird stuff,  it's probably not the effects problem, it's the font. It has some complexity  that this doesn't know what to do with. I'm gonna undo it.

I'm gonna go back to this top one here  and uh, let's go back Tom. Add shadow. Actually lift. You can see here, you can play around with like  how well it separates for itself from the background. All of these are just kind of like variations of it. Um, one of the ones  that are interesting is Neon will wash out your color.

So if you start with let's say black  and I click on neon, it kind of goes weird. So what you want to do is start with a nice color. Okay? So I'm gonna go to my colors, start with something vibrant  and then, or not that vibrant, um, and then go to my effects  and then hit that and you'll see it kind of, I don't know,  works better when you start with a color. Last thing I wanna show you in terms of I'll let you play  around with the effects is one, is this one here background. That is quite a useful one.

It's kind of doing the same thing but differently. This one here is a rectangle with text in it. This is a text box with a rectangle around the outside. They're actually quite different. Um, well they're not, they look the same. Okay?

But this one here kind of wraps around the text  and the cool thing about it is  that it changes depending on the size of the text. Whereas this one uh, is more of a frame, okay? And everything tries to fit within the rectangle anyway. Very similar. Okay, that's the only other one you might use. Is that background color  or often I'll end up just drawing a rectangle in the  background 'cause I want it to be a little bit wider  than it is tall.

I don't like the kind of like evenness around it. I like my text boxes is to often have a little bit  of extra space left and right. It's not really a rule. My rule. Okay, and this one here has roundness. I like to pull off.

Okay? And the color I'm going to adjust. So they all have their own kind of options in terms of like  what you might do in addition. Okay? Select them. Have a mess around with these.

They're pretty easy to work through. Roundness spreads are kind of a weird word,  but it's just like how far out from the text  and do you want it to be transparent or not? Ooh, fancy. You've all probably done it. You click on glitch. Ooh, do love a bit of glitching.

Probably the wrong color for it but you get the idea. That is text effects. Really good for getting text to pop off the background. Ooh, one last little hack before I go. I end up doing this a lot. So instead  of using the rectangle okay and try  and transparency, what I'll tend to do is turn it to none.

Grab my shape tool. Okay, so elements I'm gonna go  to shapes, rectangle and I'm going to, depending on  what sort of size you want it to be, end up doing this. So we're doing a similar sort of thing,  but I get to kind of decide like the height and the width. Okay, maybe it's like this pc, I want it to kind  of tidy in on the edges here. If you hold down option, key on a Mac, alt key on a PC  where you drag the corners, okay the sides,  it does both the left and the right  and say I want something like that. Remember the spread on the last one,  the height was exactly the same as the width of the box.

And then do something like this. I want you to be uh, black  and then I'm going to close it down. Play with transparency. This one here. How see through this it is,  and I find this is kind of a good way of cheating  and like without it being a real obvious design element,  the text to kind of separate  from the background quite easily. One last quick thing.

If you have got effects already  applied to something or it's come from a template,  just select on it, click on effects  and it should open up with the effects that are applied. Alright, that is it. Text effects in Canva.
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