Canva has added a new tool called Brush to its design platform, giving users a way to make AI-driven edits by painting directly over parts of an image or layout. The launch, which appeared on Product Hunt this week, extends a feature set the company has been building out for more than two years under its Magic Studio branding.
Brush works on the same basic premise as other "paint to edit" tools now common across design software: a user selects an area of an image with a brush stroke, then describes or triggers an AI change to just that region, rather than regenerating or editing the whole design. This differs from Canva's earlier Magic Edit and Magic Eraser tools mainly in how directly it lets users control which pixels get touched, rather than relying on automatic object detection.
Canva has spent the last two years layering AI tools onto its core product rather than launching a separate AI app. Magic Media handles text-to-image generation, Magic Switch reformats a design for different platforms, and Magic Grab isolates objects within a photo. Brush appears to sit in that same family, aimed at giving users finer, more localized control over AI edits within designs they're already building.
The company has not published detailed technical specifications or pricing tiers for Brush separately from its existing subscription structure, which bundles most Magic Studio tools into Canva Pro and higher-tier plans. That bundling approach has been consistent with how Canva has rolled out nearly every AI feature since 2023.
Why it matters
Brush fits a pattern now well established across design software: Adobe's generative fill, Figma's AI tools, and Photoshop's content-aware features all work on the same premise of letting users point at a specific area and modify it with AI, rather than regenerating entire images from scratch. Canva adding a comparable tool is less a leap forward than a catch-up move, bringing it in line with capabilities competitors have offered for one to two years.
What's notable is less the technology itself and more where Canva is choosing to add it. The company has consistently prioritized features that reduce the need for a dedicated designer or separate photo-editing software, a strategy aimed squarely at the small business and solo-operator market rather than professional design studios.
What this means for small businesses
For a small business that already uses Canva for social posts, flyers, or product images, Brush likely means one less reason to open a separate photo editor or hire out small fixes. Touching up a product photo, removing a background element, or adjusting a graphic without starting over could save real time for anyone handling their own marketing.
The trade-off is familiar: features like this tend to land behind paid tiers, and Canva has steadily moved more of its AI tools into Pro and Teams subscriptions rather than its free plan. Businesses relying on Canva's free tier should check whether Brush requires an upgrade before building workflows around it.
There's also a quality question worth testing before relying on any new AI editing tool for client-facing work. Early versions of AI inpainting tools across the industry have had inconsistent results with textures, text, and faces, so a trial run on low-stakes projects is a reasonable first step.
What to watch
Watch for whether Canva makes Brush available on its free tier, how it performs on faces and text (a weak point for most AI inpainting tools), and whether competitors like Adobe Express or Figma respond with comparable brush-based controls of their own.
The bottom line
Brush adds a more precise AI editing option to a tool many small businesses already pay for, but its real value depends on whether it's accessible on your current plan and how reliably it handles the kinds of edits your business actually needs.