For companies of all sizes, stunning design that appeals to an audience is critical.
Whether you’re looking for software to assist you in starting a blog like this one or editing product photographs for your ecommerce firm, using the finest graphic design software may elevate your brand identification to the next level.
In light of this tendency, Adobe Photoshop has established itself as the industry standard for image editing and graphic design software.
However, various other graphic design software tools have arisen throughout time to meet the diverse demands and tastes of designers.
Not only can a proficient graphic design tool improve productivity, but it also assists in translating breathtaking ideas into real-world design.
This post will discuss the best solutions, ordered according to their quality.
What is the best free graphic design software?
Let’s find out.
1. GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program)
Image Source: GIMP
GIMP is much more than a picture editor that includes a large number of Photoshop-like capabilities for free. It has a variety of professional-quality tools for fine-tuning photographs and creating original artworks.
Some believe it to be one of the greatest free graphic design programs available.
Pros:
- Flexibility: The user interface of the picture editing program is very configurable, and the GIMP community has created some fantastic plugins for additional functionality. Individuals with coding skills may further tweak it to meet specific requirements.
- Regular Upgrades: Due to its active development community, it receives regular updates and the inclusion of new features.
- GEGL Scripts: It is one of the greatest aspects of GIMP that contributes to its open nature as an image processing tool.
- It works with a wide variety of operating systems, including macOS, Linux, Windows, Solaris, and BDS.
- It lets users to sketch the drawing using cloning, pencil, and airbrush tools.
- GIMP provides lessons for each function to assist users.
- Its Layers function enables designers to create a new picture on top of an old one.
- For people who are new to the realm of picture editing, a simple and intuitive user interface is ideal.
- It enables you to operate using a modular and single-window interface.
- It is very lightweight and efficiently utilizes CPU resources, resulting in fast performance.
Cons:
- Adjustment layers enable you to combine several picture alterations in a non-destructive manner.
- The graphical user interface is not ideal for Mac users.
- The developer community is small. As a consequence, it is updated at a much slower rate.
Pricing:
Free
2. Gravit Designer
Image Source: Gravity Designer
Using Gravit Designer, you can create high-quality vector drawings in an HTML-based application. Graphic, product, and online design experts will find it invaluable.
Pros:
- Gravit Designer Dashboard: The dashboard is simple to browse and enables rapid switching between tabs or dark themes. Additionally, users may quickly adjust the document’s width and height through the dashboard.
- Pages: Its pages include a seamless mix of artboards and pages, which is enabled by the canvas settings.
- It includes a variety of tools, including the Bezigon tool, Lasso tool, and Pen tool. Additionally, it enables the addition of numerous fills to an element.
- It is completely cross-platform compatible with Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chrome OS, allowing the designer to work effectively from any system.
- It has a highly flexible, entertaining, and simple-to-use contemporary user interface.
- Gravit Designer provides an intuitive interface for creating social media postings on a variety of sites, including Instagram and Facebook.
- It provides inherent flexibility through online and desktop versions of the program. It exports and imports many file types.
- It enables the editing of vector drawings that are scalable.
- Users get knife and tool support for non-destructive Boolean operations, which transforms it into a powerful tool for user interface design.
- Designers may quickly open numerous documents and go to the papers on the tab.
- Its Pro edition includes an infinite amount of cloud storage.
Cons:
- A real-time collaboration feature is absent.
- There is not a lot of information present about the software from official resources.
- Fonts need an active internet connection to work.
- Designers can’t run prototypes on smartphones to find out how would they look.
Pricing:
- Gravit Designer is completely free with limited functionality.
- Gravit Designer Pro is offered on an annual subscription basis for $49.99.
3. Photoscape
Image Source: Photoscape
Photoscape delivers vital functionality for editing and maintaining picture archive. It offers itself as a wonderful free graphic design tool for novices and pros who don’t want to pay pricey memberships.
Pros:
- Photoscape has a variety of image editors, including page, batch editor, editor, viewer, print, combine, print, screen capture, animated GIF, print, and combine. Its editing toolbox provides newbies with a variety of unique and well-labeled capabilities.
- It is multilingual, including English and Korean. Designers, on the other hand, may access over 30 languages through downloaded modules.
- It has a straightforward and easy-to-use interface that enables even novices to use the program properly.
- Its design module and picture editing skills include several elements such as color modifications, size, gamma, backlight, resolution, and brightness. Additionally, it has a slew of text, design, and drawing tools, including an effects brush, filters, a paintbrush, and a clone stamp.
- The batch editor is a godsend for designers who modify photos on a regular basis. With a single mouse click, the user may resize, transform, or rename several images.
- It is capable of opening RAW files and includes a converter for simply converting RAW photographs to JPEG images.
- It’s a cross-platform design application that works on Mac, Windows, and Linux computers.
- It includes a free PhotoScapeX version for Windows 10 computers.
- Provides comprehensive editing and graphic design services.
- It is very snappy and lightweight, making intelligent use of computer technology.
Cons:
- Doesn’t provide advanced image editing capabilities like in Photoshop.
- Not available on Linux.
Pricing:
Free
4. Genially
Image Source: Genially
Genially enables you to quickly transform your material into visuals that appear professional on a website, blog, Pinterest, or Facebook.
You may share your work across all social media platforms without having to install separate plugins for each page.
Pros:
- Choose from a variety of templates, and your material is automatically inserted into the template. If desired, you may further adjust the color and style.
- It generates basic, but effective visuals. It’s simple to use and produces high-quality graphics for business and social media postings.
- Convert material into an effective and compelling marketing tool by creating presentations, infographics, and interactive visuals.
- Genially can assist you in creating gamification, graphic, and interactive quizzes.
- This software also supports video presentations.
- You may upload presentations that you produce.
- You may select from a variety of pre-designed templates or create your own.
- You may even further modify it with your own information, videos, photos, and other media forms.
- There is training material available to assist you in learning how to use the app.
Cons:
- You cannot import PowerPoint files from your PC into the free version.
- Due to the abundance of capabilities, it sometimes attempts to accomplish too much, and the UI is a little perplexing.
Pricing:
- Pro: $7.49 per month (billed annually)
- Master: $20.82 per month (billed annually)
- Team: $79.15 per month (billed annually)
5. Sketch
Image Source: Sketch
Sketch is a vector-based visual design application that excels in application, web, and interface design. It is particularly well-suited for developing interactive prototypes for UI/UX reasons.
Pros:
- Low Cost: Sketch provides a yearly subscription plan that is much less expensive than comparable plans.
- Great For Mobile and Web: It makes use of grids, snap to grid, and snap to pixel features to eliminate half-pixel renderings or misaligned elements. These details are crucial to ensuring a flexible design that works well across a range of screen sizes and resolutions.
- Screen Templates: It includes an artboard template library for iOS devices and a responsive web design layout library.
- Custom Plugins: Through powerful community support, designers may readily locate bespoke plugins for particular tasks.
- It allows easy sharing and collaboration through the cloud. Designers can share the entire interface in the cloud through a simple file sharing process.
- Users can mirror designs on larger devices for team viewing to identify how the design would exactly look in a particular device.
- Users can export any layer or group as a PNG file.
- Sketch autosaves all the changes in the design step by step to avoid any loss of design. Significant relief for designers, indeed!
- Users can leverage libraries with standard Android icons, iOS icons, and Mac icons.
- It requires a low learning curve.
Cons:
- Due to the fact that this is a new design tool, it is not completely polished and needs significant development.
- It has limited illustration skills, which may make sophisticated illustration work difficult to do.
- When accessing from the cloud, screens do not display in high quality.
- Available only to Mac users
- Absence of an option for automated layout flow
Pricing:
Free
