Graphic Design Software – Revolutionizing Businesses

Graphic design is essential to any business’s marketing and branding strategy. Graphic design software can be used across various platforms, from website design to print collateral. A selection of the most comprehensive graphic design software, both free and subscription-based, has been compiled to provide creatives with the means to produce remarkable digital artwork.

Here is the list of top graphic design software you can try for your work.

Paid

1. Adobe Photoshop
2. Sketch
3. Adobe Illustrator
4. Mega Creator
5. Affinity Designer
6. Adobe InDesign
7. CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 2019
8. Eagle
9. Xara Designer Pro X
10. Visme
11. Vectr
12. Colorcinch
13. VistaCreate
14. Canva
15. PixTeller
16. Infinite Design
17. Adobe Comp
18. DocHipo

Free

1. Design Wizard
2. Setka Editor
3. Adobe Spark
4. Krita
5. Lunacy
6. Gravit Designer
7. Blender
8. Inkscape
9. SketchUp
10. GIMP
11. Genially
12. Paint 3D

Let us see each software individually, covering the key features and design utilities

List of Paid Softwares

1. Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is an industry-leading image-editing graphic software used by photographers, graphic designers, and other professionals in the creative field. It offers an impressive array of effects and filters, enabling users to add unique touches to their work. Additionally, Adobe Photoshop is compatible with other Adobe products, including Photoshop Elements and Adobe Creative Cloud, so users can easily collaborate on projects and share their work with colleagues. 

Key Features

1. Layer Basics

2. Colour Adjustments

4. Textures & Layer Styles

5. Retouching Tools

6. Dodge & Burn Tools

7. Actions Panel

2. Sketch

Sketch software is a vector graphics editor developed exclusively for Apple’s macOS operating system. Web designers, graphic designers, and digital illustrators primarily use it for creating and editing interfaces, icons, and illustrations. Sketch graphic design software also includes advanced features such as pixel precision, custom pixel grid, and export options for multiple formats.

Features:

1. Vector/Raster Graphics

2. Multiple Pages & Artboards

3. Layers

4. Guides & Grids

5. Symbols

6. Export Toolkit

7. Plugins

3. Adobe Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator is a vector-based graphic design software used by professionals worldwide. It creates logos, icons, illustrations, typography, and complex graphics. Illustrator has a comprehensive set of tools, including the Pen tool, the Shaper tool, and the PathFinder panel. It also features advanced features such as Live Trace, Kuler panel, and Global Color.

Advantages

1. Vector Drawing Tools

2. Typography

3. Fill & Stroke Controls

4. Pen Tool

5. Swatches & Colours

6. Artboards & Layers

7. Image Trace & Exporting Options

4. Mega Creator

Mega Creator is an innovative online graphic design platform for crafting attractive visuals from pre-made elements. It is a leading web and mobile app design program for web designers, social media professionals, bloggers, writers, educators and learners, and anyone requiring professional-grade images in a simple format.

Key features

1. Drag-and-drop builder

2. Templates

3. Thumbnails

4. Animation Library

5. E-commerce integration

6. Analytics integration

7. Mobile optimisation

5. Affinity Designer

Affinity Designer is an industry-leading vector graphic design software. It is an incredibly powerful software to design graphics that allows precise control over vector artwork production. It has features, including live pixel preview, vector brushes, artboards, non-destructive effects and more.

Features

1. Live Tracing

2. Non-destructive Transformations

3. Pen Tool

4. Pixel Preview Mode

5. Symbol Library

6. Adobe InDesign

Adobe offers Adobe InDesign graphic software, which is ideal for graphics design. This advanced graphic design platform is widely used in publishing, enabling users to design magazines, booklets, books, posters, interactive PDFs, brochures and more. Its ‘adjust layout’ feature allows for customised layouts.

Key Features

1. Design Template Library

2. Advanced Text Editing

3. Graphics & Images

4. Interactivity within Documents & Publications

5. Automation Tools

6. Print Production Features

7. Asset Management Tools

7. CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 2019

CorelDRAW has advanced to embrace Artificial Intelligence with the addition of LiveSketch–an innovative feature that transforms free-hand sketches into precise vector curves. This comprehensive suite has graphic design, layout tools, and Photo-Paint and Corel Font Manager for managing photos and fonts.

Advantages

1. Vector Illustration and Design

2. Photo Editing & Effects

3. Typography Tools

4. Sketch & Paint Tools

5. Output Formats

6. Color Harmony Palette

7. Graphic Design Suite Bundle Integrations

8. Eagle

Eagle is a cutting-edge digital asset management solution that simplifies design file collection, searching and organization into a logical structure – all in one convenient place. With Eagle, the tedious and time-consuming task of creating a design library is eliminated, allowing for efficient and stylish results. Any file format can be imported.

9. Xara Designer Pro X

Xara Designer offers extensive features tailored to bitmap and vector applications. With seamless desktop publishing, graphic design, illustration and photo editing capabilities, users can access hundreds of template layouts, design elements, and a library of over one million photos. Xara Designer is one of the design software used to create professional logos for businesses and websites quickly. It has many tools for designers to create logos of all shapes, sizes, and colours that look professional and modern. With its extensive library of templates, symbols, and fonts, you can easily find an existing design template that works with your brand or customize one to make it unique.

10. Visme

Visme enables businesses and individuals to easily create engaging, interactive visual content without complex graphic software or design experience. Users can access hundreds of templates and various features beyond basic design capabilities through its simple drag-and-drop editor. An extensive selection of over 40 categories of templates is available, ranging from presentations and infographics to press releases, reports, and social media graphics. This is one of the popular design platforms with over 1.3 million users. 

Key features

1. Easy-to-Use Interface

2. Professional Templates

3. Powerful Graphic Design Tools

4. Built-In Stock Photo Library

5. Branding Options & Social Media Sharing

6. Team Collaboration Features

7. Animations & Videos

11. Vectr

Vectr is a vector graphics editor that uses simple and easy-to-learn tools to create stunning designs. It allows users to draw shapes with the mouse, apply filters, clone objects, and create custom brushes for unique design effects. Vectr doesn’t use pixels to create the design; it uses mathematical equations.

Advantages

1. Vector graphics editor

2. Colour palettes

3. Layering

4. Path operations

5. Grids & Guides

6. Text properties 

7. Export/Import capabilities 

12. Colorcinch

Colorcinch is an innovative and reliable photo-editing solution that offers users a wide range of features to customize their photos. Its intuitive user interface simplifies importing, editing and sharing photos in various formats. Its advanced photo-editing features enable users to easily adjust contrast, colour, saturation, and brightness and make precise colour corrections. It also offers easy-to-use tools for cropping, resizing, and adding text and shapes. One of the top-rated software for graphic design, Colorcinch provides a wide range of filters, frames, and effects to enhance photos and make them look more professional. With Colorcinch, users can quickly turn amateur photos into stunning works of art.

13. VistaCreate

VistaCreate graphics designer software is the perfect solution for any business looking to create high-quality visuals that stand out. This graphic software has various powerful tools and features, including 3D rendering, vector illustration, typography, and photo editing capabilities. This makes it easy to create stunning visuals for print, web, and mobile in a fraction of the time and cost of traditional design methods.VistaCreate offers about 10,000 animated objects to follow the latest trends in design and helps you craft high-quality visuals.

14. Canva

Canva is an online graphic design platform with a user-friendly interface and a library of over one million stock photos, graphics, and fonts. Canva enables users to create professional quality designs easily and quickly. It offers an array of templates for a wide range of projects, such as presentations, posters, logos, and business cards. Additionally, users can personalize their designs with colour palettes, fonts, images, and illustrations. The platform also offers a range of features and tools, such as drag-and-drop design, photo editing options, and a library of free stock images.

Advantages

1. Easy-to-use design templates

2. Built-In Editing Tools

3. Ability To Add Graphics, Text & Images

4. Drag & Drop Interface

5. Customizable Color Palettes & Themes

6. Access To Professional Photos & Graphics Libraries

7. Shareable Links Or Downloadable Files Available On Demand

15. PixTeller

PixTeller is a powerful and easy-to-use editor tool that allows users to create graphics (available for download in PNG, JPG, and PDF formats) and animations (available for download in MP4 and GIF formats). Whether for personal or business purposes, users of any skill level can create stunning images, GIFs, and videos without technical or design expertise.

16. Infinite Design

This Android-exclusive vector graphics application enables users to create sophisticated and visually striking designs with minimal effort. As its name implies, the app features an extensive workspace wherein users can easily zoom, pan, or rotate. This graphic design app offers four types of symmetry to experiment with and limitless layers to work on. Advanced features such as translation, scaling, flipping, and distortion are available, and the image created can be transformed into a fully editable vector path.

17. Adobe Comp

Adobe Comp is an invaluable tool for designers, marketers, and content creators. The app is designed to help users create quick and precise visual compositions. It lets users quickly compile their ideas, combining multiple images, text, shapes, and drawings within a single canvas. Adobe Comp provides an intuitive and easy-to-use interface with essential features like auto-alignment, resizing, layer management, and precise colour control. It is also cloud-based and lets users quickly share their work with other Adobe products, such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and XD. With Adobe Comp, users can quickly create robust comps that can be used as a starting point for their design process.

Key Features

1. Layer Masks

2. Custom Brushes

3. Vector Drawing Tools

4. Transform & Align Toolset

5. Creations Library

6. Mobile Export Options

7. Collaboration & Sharing Features 

18. DocHipo

The essential drawing tools provided by DocHipo are some of the most straightforward and intuitive on the market. With a few clicks, you can easily create simple diagrams, diagrams with labels, organic shapes, bezier curves, and more. These basic features allow beginning users to create powerful visuals without training quickly. This platform enables you to collaborate with multiple team members on any design in real time. Furthermore, DocHipo offers the ability to be part of multiple companies through a single login. Finally, you can export your designs in multiple formats, such as PNG, PNG (transparent), JPG, and PDF.

Free

1. Design Wizard

Design Wizard has an ever-growing library of over 100,000 template designs from some of the best designers in the world today. This makes it easy for anyone – even those with no design experience – to get their message across beautifully without creating anything from scratch. Design Wizard is ideal for creating visual marketing materials, logos and web images. It also incorporates advanced features like image storage and sharing, social media integration, and editing tools.

Advantages

1. Drag and Drop

2. Templates

3. Upload Own Assets 

4. Social Media Ready 

5. AI-Powered Design Assistance

6. Collaboration & Team Accounts 

7. Advanced Edit Mode 

2. Setka Editor

Setka Editor is an advanced, user-friendly graphic design software for web content authors and publishers. It provides robust tools to streamline content editing, including custom formatting, drag-and-drop images and videos, and a powerful WYSIWYG editor. Additionally, Setka Editor is fully integrated with popular content management systems, allowing users to publish content quickly and easily.

Features

1. Drag and Drop Design

2. WYSIWYG Editing

3. Block Library

4. Reusable Components

5. Layout Control

6. Inline Editing Toolbar

7. Templates And Export Features

3. Adobe Spark

Adobe Spark is a free alternative to the company’s famous, for-pay Adobe Illustrator – a graphic designing software. While it’s not nearly as full-featured, it does support integration with other Adobe products. Adobe Spark software is an innovative and intuitive digital design tool that empowers users to create beautiful and impactful visuals easily. It is the perfect companion for social media professionals, digital marketers, and creatives. It is one of the sought-after graphic design software with its beautiful features. With its intuitive tools and features, Spark allows users to create stunning visuals and graphics quickly. With integrated tools and features like templates, typography, and image editing, Spark enables users to quickly and easily create stunning visuals from scratch.

Salient Features

1. Project Creation

2. Brand Customization

3. Easy shareability

4. Automatic optimization & individual access control

5. Intuitive Collaboration & Reporting Tools

4. Krita

Krita is a free and open-source digital painting software for illustrators, concept artists, and comic book artists. It is built on top of the robust Qt framework, providing a wealth of features tailored to the needs of digital artists. Krita offers various tools, from basic drawing and shading to advanced features like perspective grids, layer masks, and colour palettes.

5. Lunacy

Lunacy is a cost-effective vector graphic design software offering extensive features without hidden charges, advertisements, or locked content. It is ideal for novice UI/UX designers who cannot pay for costly graphic design applications. Lunacy’s flexible styling tools and re-use elements with its Symbols feature. It also offers a robust animation system for creating interactive prototypes. Lunacy software is an excellent tool for anyone who wants to create attractive visuals that are easy to share and use. It is also free to use, making it accessible to everyone.

6. Gravit Designer

Gravit is an advanced vector design program developed by the creators of Corel Draw. Gravit is a top-tier free graphic design software for Mac, Windows, ChromeOS and Linux, featuring a wide range of vector art tools and an intuitive interface. Gravit allows users to create professional and attractive diagrams for showcasing data presentations and concept models. The diagrams have a range of features, including multiple styling options, colour palettes and unlimited object layers to create more detailed visuals. The text tool helps create amazing typography effects quickly and easily on the canvas with clicks, like custom 3D stylized text effects, smooth shadows, rotations and perspective distortions.

7. Blender

Blender software is a powerful and versatile 3D creation suite used by animation and 3D modelling professionals. It is open source, meaning it is free to use and customize. Blender is renowned for its intuitive user interface, making it an ideal choice for beginners and experts. It is cross-platform compatible and can be combined with various other software solutions. It also has a comprehensive library of tools, including rigging, simulation and rendering, allowing users to create realistic 3D projects. It is regularly updated, ensuring that users can always access the latest features and improvements. It is also highly customizable, allowing experienced users to make their creations unique. In short, Blender is the perfect choice for any 3D modelling project.

8. Inkscape

Inkscape is a vector graphics editor allowing users to create vector shapes, art and designs from scratch. This makes it ideal for logo development, graphic illustrations, artwork, and website design. Vector drawings are made up of points with straight lines connecting them and can be scaled to any size for detailed designs. Inkscape is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, making it an excellent choice for any user.

Salient features

1. Vector Graphics Creation

2. Modifying Existing Bitmap Images

3. Layer Management Options

4. Text Editing Features

5. Export & Import Formats

6. Complex Shapes Toolset & Path Operations 

7. Scripting Support & Extensibility

9. SketchUp

SketchUp offers various design plans, from free to paid, with the free version still providing valuable benefits for designers. A powerful modelling interface makes it a formidable instrument for constructing two-dimensional or three-dimensional designs, such as furniture or intricate objects.

Advantages

1. User-Friendly Design

2. 3D Modeling

3. Dynamic Components

4. Style Builder

5. Animated Walkthroughs

6. Layout Functionality

7. Rendering Support

10. GIMP

GIMP, one of the most well-known open-source design tools, often finds itself compared to for-pay Photoshop, with advocates from both platforms avidly voicing their opinions in favour of their respective programs. One of GIMP’s most powerful features is its ability to perform non-destructive editing, allowing you to make changes without damaging the original image. This ensures that any changes you make are not permanent and can easily be undone or modified if necessary, giving you complete control over how your project turns out. Gimp is widely lauded as a free design tool due to its comprehensive support of all file formats, streamlined digital retouching capabilities, and ability to generate unique designs from the ground up. 

Key features

1. Non-destructive editing

2. Batch Processing

3. Colour Management 

4. Selection Tools

5. Layer Masking

11. Genially

Genially offers a range of professionally made templates for different purposes and tasks. These include templates for presentations, video brochures, infographics, e-cards and more. With these templates, you can customize images, videos, buttons and text to create an engaging and interactive experience for your audience. This professional production feature from Genially enables users to easily add chroma-keyed personal video messages or photos into their creations without requiring additional software! Chroma keys allow for transforming any background element onscreen into transparent using only 4 keys—green, blue, red and alpha (transparency). Utilizing this handy tool, you can be sure whatever presentation you design looks flawless from start to finish!

Advantages

1. Templates

2. Animation Tool

3. Linking Functionality

4. Embedding Feature

5. Chroma Key Tools

12. Paint 3D

Microsoft Paint has returned, now available for free, with enhanced features. Although it may not offer the same level of complexity as other design tools, Paint 3D offers realistic textures, 2D cutout tools, and a range of 3D tools and effects, making it an ideal choice for new users looking for a straightforward design program.

Conclusion

Using a professional graphic design agency can be an excellent choice for businesses who want to ensure their branding message is delivered professionally and consistently. Professional graphic designers have the skills and expertise to create designs that will be eye-catching and on-brand for your business. They can also help you to create materials that are tailored to the needs of your target audience. Not only can they provide you with unique designs, but they can also offer advice on making your materials more effective. Professional graphic design agencies ensure that your branding message stands out and is consistent across all channels, essential for any business wanting to increase brand recognition.

Why should you hire Visual Sculptors as your Graphic design Expert?

“Visual Sculptors is a leading global provider of Best Presentation Services led by Ex-McKinsey Presentation Designers. A Professional Presentation Agency comprising Business Presentation Specialists with 10+ years of experience at McKinsey. A Top Rated Plus PPT Presentation Design agency in Upwork with 4,080 jobs and 28,254 billed hours. This speaks to our team’s dedication, competing for the Top 10 Presentation Design Agency in India and worldwide. We offer excellent Management Consulting Presentation Services for clients globally, delivering top-notch presentations in PowerPoint/PPT. Our services include Business Presentation, Consulting Slides specializing in McKinsey, BCG, and Bain-type Business Presentations, including think-cell charts”

Experience the power of excellent graphic design services from Visual Sculptors. When it comes to graphic design for your business, you have two options: create a distinct graphic design department or hire a professional graphic design company that is more cost-effective and efficient.

The post 30 Best Graphic Design Software for Designers in 2023 – Free and Paid appeared first on .