The art of graphic design is growing in popularity as the world digitises and businesses understand the need for visually aesthetic designs to promote, inform and assist internet users. Graphic designers can portray ideas through images, symbols and texts, creating visual compositions, also known as visual communication.
There are many different graphic design softwares on the market and it can be overwhelming to look through and choose the best. But, whether you’re a freelance graphic designer, working for agencies, an amateur or a business owner looking for the right tools to help your graphic design team, it’s important to choose the right kind of software for your needs.
We’ve put together our top 15 graphic design softwares on the market but before making a decision you should look at what you require from the software to meet your business needs. Fortunately there are many free options now so you can either take a free trial or start using a free tool so you don’t need to fear making a big investment.
In our list, we look at each software as a whole, its main features, and the price, so you can decide which best meets your needs and choose accordingly, without having to go through the extensive research process yourself.
1. Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop can be considered the original graphic design software. Created in 1988, it’s now so well known that “to photoshop” is considered a real verb and most other graphic design software still don’t come close to the capabilities that Adobe Photoshop offers.
Supported by Windows, MacOS and iPad, this comprehensive software allows editing and composing of raster images in multiple layers, many different colour models and allows editing and rendering of text, video and 3D graphics.
Features
The editing features of Adobe Photoshop make it very simple to resize images, change the colour, and add effects or filters, while also removing objects, altering facial features to get that perfect picture, and changing backgrounds and creating collages. In 2023 you can now utilise AI technology to add motion to images to enhance your memories.
While Adobe Photoshop has many remarkable features already, its capabilities can be expanded greatly through plug-ins; thanks to the many supported file formats and types, and the extensive Adobe software selection, Adobe Photoshop is compatible with .png and .gif files, among many others, as well as working well with Illustrator, InDesign and Premiere Pro.
Price
$20.99 per month or $239.88 per year.
2. CorelDRAW
CorelDRAW is one of the best graphic designs softwares in terms of its flexibility. Supported by Windows, MacOS, Browser and iPad, you can now choose from two different formats. CorelDRAW Standard is more geared towards graphic designers with great interest in the art but with less experience, and CorelDRAW Graphics Suite is designed more for experienced professionals who need more capabilities from their software.
Features
CorelDRAW has a wide range of features for many graphic designers in different industries, from illustrators to eCommerce to textiles. Page layout tools allow you to create the perfect designs for websites and magazines, vector illustration enables you to create perfect artwork from simple shapes and typography features help you to make outstanding textual images.
It’s also capable of importing and exporting AI, PSD and PDF files for easy editing and sharing of graphics.
Price
CorelDRAW Standard 2021: $419
CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 2021: $644
CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 2022: $27.42 per month for a yearly subscription.
3. Canva
Canva is a great graphic design software for image editing, collaboration and design sharing, with options to easily print and ship your images when they’re done. It’s supported by Browser, iOS and Android and has a few different payment options.
Features
It has a full design suite allowing you to edit your images easily, adding filters, text or resizing them. None of these capabilities are restricted with the free version, which doesn’t add watermarks either.
Along with the image editing features, you can also make collages, use the colour palette tool and make infographics.
Price
Free
Pro: $54.99 for one user per year
Teams: $84.90 for the first five people
4. Adobe Illustrator
Adobe has great expertise in the field of graphic design and this software is one of their best. As part of the creative suite, it is similar in its capabilities to Photoshop and InDesign, but remains a popular vector graphic editing program.
Features
Adobe Illustrator allows you to create and edit vector graphics simply and easily. You can import pixel-based raster graphics and use many different effects. You can even create your own effects using the interface.
As part of the Adobe family you have many plug-ins available, useful templates and apps that can help you get the most out of your artwork.
Price
From $20.99 per month
5. Inkscape
Another vector graphics editor, Inkscape is useful for many technical illustrators, including logo design and typography. It works with Windows, MacOS and GNU/ Linux and using vector graphics rather than raster graphics, it creates sharp images upon completion.
Features
Inkscape has a very simple interface so you can easily perform tasks such as tracing bitmaps and editing nodes. Different tools allow you to make acute adjustments to shapes including free-hand editing and typography is supported through spell check and multi-line text tools. You can also manually or automatically scale, rotate, resize, mirror chosen objects relative to the page.
Price
Free
6. Sketch
Unfortunately for Windows or mobile users, Sketch is one of the best graphic design softwares for prototyping and UI design, but it’s only available on MacOS. It might even be more beneficial to use Sketch over Adobe if you’re just working on UI design because its interface is slimmed down and so much simpler.
Features
Sketch has great new collaboration features so any browser on any operating system can access your design on your Sketch account. It has all the essential features for UI designers and thanks to its extensive range of plugins, it has many more available features for those who need them.
Price
$9 per month per editor
7. GIMP
GNU Image Manipulation Program, or GIMP, is a free open source graphics editor with many powerful capabilities that can easily work with many different file types using many kinds of tools. It’s available for Windows, MacOS and Linux.
Features
Many image editing tools are available with GIMP, so you can make small and great adjustments easily, as well as add one of the many filters and effects on offer. If there’s any function you want to perform but can’t, check out the expanse of available plugins to increase the softwares capabilities.
Price
Free
8. Krita
The main attraction of Krita is the wide range of painting tools that it offers, so it’s geared mainly towards artists. In fact, it’s made by artists, so creating manga, illustrations and comics has never been easier. It’s also open source and works with Windows, MacOS and Linux
Features
Of course Krita offers a huge number of brush types, stabilisers and painting assistants to help you create amazing art. There are also a large range of layer options from colour management to group layering. You can adjust the canvas view as you please and even get help creating animations.
Price
Free
9. Affinity Designer
Working on both Windows and MacOS, as well as iOS and Android, Affinity Designer is a truly groundbreaking vector graphics editing software, allowing you to work on many different projects from UI design to branding and web pages.
Features
Graphic design projects have never been easier thanks to Affinity Designer’s customisable interface, with various artboards and guides. The font manager gives you access to thousands of fonts available for preview, and you can utilise the million-per-cent-plus-zoom for greater detail.
Price
One off cost of $40.99
10. Procreate
Procreate is designed for artists who work on their iPad, with impressive painting tools that can allow you to create great art. It’s not a full design set-up, but for those who don’t need any more than painting tools, this is a great choice.
Features
With Procreate you have many different brushes to choose from as well as assistant tools that help shape your lines and create faultless images. You can even use filters on your canvases.
Price
One off cost of $9.99
11. Xara Designer Pro X
Xara Designer Pro X is a very advanced software available on Windows only. You can edit photos and website pages as well as create illustrations with this vector rendering tool.
Features
The drag-and-drop feature of Xara Designer Pro X saves you time and makes the moving of objects incredibly quick and easy, further enhanced by the unlimited redo options. Its vector rendering capabilities allow for very complicated and professional designs to come to life.
Price
Xara Designer Pro+: $16.95 per month
Team+: $9.98 per month
12. Photoscape
For the amateur graphic designer, Photoscape is a great starting point. Developed in South Korea, it has every feature you need for editing and organising images.
Features
Although not designed for professional use, you can still achieve a lot with Photoscape. All the basic image editing functions are there, from cropping to removing redeye – which you can do for multiple images at once – and creating image mosaics.
The simple interface makes it ideal for home use, which anyone can use thanks to the 30 languages available to download. You can also create gifs from images or videos.
Price
Free
13. Genially
Hailing from Spain, Genially is a design software that oozes creativity and fun. It allows you to create aesthetically pleasing content, including infographics and presentations, that you can then share quickly and easily.
Features
Bring your content to life with animation tools, GIF makers and image editing features from Genially. You can even track metrics of your content on your analytics dashboard to see who’s interacting with your art.
Price
Free (with watermarks) and paid available
14. Vectr
Made for Browser, Vectr is a vector graphics editing program that users describe as simple and intuitive to use. It still has powerful capabilities to enable you to create the best and boldest designs.
Features
As well as editing your images expertly, with Vectr, you can also collaborate with other artists by sharing links to projects and posting easily on social media platforms. You can create logos, animations, icons and UI designs all from within the app.
Price
Free
15. Adobe Express
Available on Browser as well as via a mobile app, Adobe Express, also known as Adobe Cloud Express, offers a free plan as well as paid options, for a basic yet still very useful photo and video editing tool.
Features
You can utilise the basic image editing tools as well as make use of a small collection of stock photos, templates and fonts from Adobe.
Price
Free
Premium CC Express: $9.99 a month or $99.99 per year
30-day free trial
Final Thoughts
As a graphic design service, we at nippybrands.com like to think we know our stuff. But ultimately, the best graphic design software is a subjective choice according to each individual’s needs.
For more information, check out our other blogs here.