Knowing how to crop a source in OBS Studio is one of those small skills that becomes surprisingly useful once you start designing more complicated stream layouts. For example, maybe you downloaded or created a stream overlay with a square or rectangular space designed for your webcam. You add your camera to OBS, try dragging the edges to make it fit, and instead of cutting away the parts you don't need, OBS keeps resizing the entire camera.

Once I know what kind of vibe I want, I head into Canva and start building the alerts themselves. This is one of the reasons Canva is so good for creators. Even the free version gives you a huge amount of elements you can work with if you get a little creative. You can combine animated graphics, text, particles, lighting effects, GIFs, and layered visuals to create something that looks way more advanced than people expect.

In streaming software, a stinger is a type of transition animation used when switching between scenes. It's typically a short, animated video (often with a transparent background or keyed-out color) that plays during the cut from one scene to another. Stingers look complicated, but they’re actually easy to use. In fact, this post will show you how to make a stinger transition in Canva for OBS — for free.