Based on 1678 reviews and ratings
Based on 438 reviews and ratings
Highlights
Adobe Photoshop and Canva are both graphic editing software. Adobe Photoshop is the market incumbent, while Canva is a new, more niche offering. Both products are rare among enterprises, but Canva is more concentrated in the small business market due to its robust free package and focus on user-accessibility.
Adobe Photoshop is positioned as the legacy market incumbent, with advanced features for a range of more intensive editing uses. Canva specializes as an online entry-level editing software particularly well suited for social posts and graphics.
Features
Both Adobe Photoshop and Canva offer basic graphic editing features, including graphic creation and editing existing content. However, they each provide features tailored to their specializations.
Adobe Photoshop has invested more heavily in powerful and advanced editing capabilities. This allows Photoshop to provide deeper functionality for most editing and graphic design needs. The range and depth of its capabilities makes Photoshop ideal for frequent or power users. Broadly speaking, Photoshop has set the baseline on which editing software is compared to.
In contrast, Canva differentiates by being more accessible for more casual or inexperienced users. Canva provides a free version that is fairly sufficient for many basic tasks, and includes a range of prebuilt templates for common use cases, such as social media graphics. It is designed to be extremely user friendly and accessible to users, regardless of prior experience or skill level.
Limitations
While both Adobe Photoshop and Canva offer strong features, they also have some limitations worth considering.
Adobe Photoshop’s power also entails greater complexity. The more advanced features and interface often requires a steeper learning curve to become proficient and work efficiently within the tool. Additionally, Photoshop has no free version. This requires more up front investment in the application than freemium products.
In contrast, Canva is more limited in its functionality. Many of the better or larger graphics and images are paywalled, placing a ceiling on what can be done with the free version of Canva. There are also more limited account management features within the software. The lack of these features is most pertinent to freelancers or contractors, who may manage graphics for multiple clients within the software.
Pricing
Adobe Photoshop is sold individually for $20.99/month. It can also be bundled with Adobe Lightroom for $9.99/month.
Canva has 3 pricing tiers. The free version provides 8,000+ templates, 100+ design types, and many free images and graphics. The Pro version additionally offers a Brand Kit for white labeling, more free templates, premium images, and custom templates. The Enterprise version includes multiple Brand Kits, team management, workflows, and additional security features and support.
Provided by the TrustRadius Research Team
Published on May 21, 2020
Likelihood to Recommend
Adobe PhotoShop

Canva

Pros
Adobe PhotoShop
- Adaptability - there are so many different tools that can be used to solve so many different problems.
- User Interface - hover cards and tools and tips can help beginners.
- Photo Manipulation - being able to fix images pixel by pixel is extremely beneficial.

Canva
- It has lovely templates if you want to start from a beautiful starting point.
- You can easily customize templates are start-from-scratch on your graphics.
- There are lots of free graphics to use, but you can also pay for more premium ones.
Cons
Adobe PhotoShop
- Price: They used to charge $800 every few years for a newer upgraded version, and now it's on subscription status. Now, to use PhotoShop it's $50 per month. It's not awful, but I'd be a more passionate brand evangelist if they took the cost down a bit more :)
- Adobe PhotoShop CAN but it isn't ideal to create brochures and multi-page print layouts (you can, but InDesign is a much better product for that).
- Photoshop is OK for social graphics. Adobe SPARK is the new product to help with batch graphics. (thank you adobe).
- The difficulty of use - This is an advanced program. I really wouldn't recommend it for newbies. It takes a learning curve to work with it.
Canva
- Perhaps it is a function of a higher pay-tier, but the ability to export the finished product into a different filetype would be helpful. Currently, it exports into .jpg, .png, and .pdf. Being able to use .doc, .eps, or .indd would be advantageous.
- Though Canva features a great font selection, it would a nice to be able to upload a font for use in the product.
Likelihood to Renew
Adobe PhotoShop
Canva
Usability
Adobe PhotoShop
Canva

Reliability and Availability
Adobe PhotoShop
Canva
Performance
Adobe PhotoShop
Canva
Support Rating
Adobe PhotoShop
Canva
In-Person Training
Adobe PhotoShop
Canva
Implementation Rating
Adobe PhotoShop

Canva
Alternatives Considered
Adobe PhotoShop
Canva

Scalability
Adobe PhotoShop

Canva
Return on Investment
Adobe PhotoShop
- Photoshop is well worth the monthly subscription individually or with the whole CC suite. We have needs for Premiere Pro, Illustrator and other Adobe products, so it makes sense for us to pay for the whole CC suite.
- Photoshop allows us to edit images quickly and has made our workflow more efficient.
- Because we use Photoshop, we are able to provide visually stunning and engaging online training courses.
Canva
- I managed to impress many of my clients with the speed we managed to turn around and update social media designs. This helped us retain them for longer periods of time
- You can't go wrong with fancy reports, my managers always expressed their delight whenever I delivered a professional looking elegant report
- Saved me a lot time that I would've spent learning more complex tools like Photoshop and Illustrator to deliver simple designs.

Pricing Details
Adobe PhotoShop
General
Free Trial
—Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
Adobe PhotoShop Editions & Modules
Edition
Single App | $20.001 |
---|
- Per Month
Additional Pricing Details
—Canva
General
Free Trial
—Free/Freemium Version
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
Canva Editions & Modules
Edition
Pro | $12.951 |
---|---|
Enterprise | $30.002 |
- Per Month
- Per Month Per User