Best Free Graphic Design Software

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What can be better than having the best free graphic design software? It will help you make it a tech-heavy graphic designer in this highly competitive industry. In this article, we have listed the best of the best options you can have for creating some kick-ass graphic designs.

If you want to become a designer, you needn’t always have a formal education but you should be familiar with graphic design software and its functioning. You may think that that software is highly expensive. But it doesn’t have to be. There are many available for free and absolutely worth your time.

Although free graphic design software won’t always give you a plethora of fancy features like Adobe’s CC or Affinity’s software, you can do almost any design job with the available tools. And choosing what you get for free means you can splash out in other areas, to combine free and premium tools.

It’s also often easier to learn as they have a low learning curve. These generally have the more basic interface and tools and avoid menus of the subscription-based or more expensive programs.

We’ve listed our best free graphic design software below, Choose the software according to your needs. These can be divided into handy sections like: 

  • Vector art software, 
  • Software for creating and editing images
  • Creating data visualizations.
Free Graphic Design Software

Gravit Designer

Gravit Designer is a fully-featured vector design app. It is also suitable for all sorts of design jobs. Starting from screen, app, icon designs to presentations, illustration, and animation, you can design anything you want.

It has a clean and intuitive interface that adjusts itself according to your needs. This free graphic design software packs lots of tools for creating detailed and beautiful vector imagery. It also includes: 

  • Non-destructive booleans.
  • A knife tool.
  • Path graphs. 
  • Multiple fills.
  • Blending modes.
  • A powerful text engine.

You have both the options of using Gravit Designer online and downloading a copy to your computer. You automatically start on a (free) trial of Gravit Designer Pro after signing up. Once your trial is over, you transition to the free version. Obviously, you lose the Pro features unless you pay for the subscription. 

However, Gravit Designer’s free version is still amazing. You can export as PDF, SVG, or Bitmap. The varied number of file formats in which you can save the files is really amazing! You also get access to the Gravit Cloud service which is an add-on. It enables you to get to your work wherever you are. 

RawTherapy

RawTherapee works on all the relevant platforms like Mac, Windows, and Linux

RawTherapee enables its users to: 

  • Correct distortion, 
  • Boost colors, 
  • Recover details 

There are many more features available for creating amazing designs online. It means that users can easily make tweaks to their images until they’re looking exactly how they want. Pretty cool, right?

This free software also speeds up your workflow as it allows batch processing of the images. You can also send images to other software, such as GIMP or any other photo editing software or graphic manipulation software if you want to.

SVG- Edit

If you’re looking for a platform to quickly output SVG files. Perhaps edit an existing SVG file, there are a few online editors that will do the job maintaining the class of Adobe Illustrator, and that too for free. SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) is an open format that allows you to reproduce your Vector drawings mathematically, and one of the nicest platforms is SVG-Edit.

This is entirely built on HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript without any server-side processing. Not only you can use it to create and edit documents, but also you can download and tweak the code using one of the best code editors – making your own version if you want. Of it because it is open-source software.

The standard basic tools of every vector-image editor are here on this platform. Although it’s limited to the SVG format, it’s surprisingly capable of creating stunning designs. 

Note that if you’re not familiar with code, this option probably isn’t for you.

DAZ Studio

Daz Studio is an amazing software for 3D figure customization, posing, and animation which enables every designer to create digital art. Its highly intuitive nature allows even beginners to create stunning designs. It doesn’t have any high learning curve.

Different animations can be created using: 

  • Virtual people
  • Animals
  • Props
  • Vehicles 
  • Accessories 
  • Environments

With Daz Studio, you can create custom 3D characters and avatars. You can use them along with some designs of virtual environments, produce graphic design elements, and create an animation story. 

A handy table is also available which shows you what this free tool offers in comparison to its paid alternatives. You won’t regret it and it’s worth your time. It is fun to design creative stuff with this application.

Sculptris

If you’re interested in digital sculpting, you should definitely check out 3D software Sculptris from Pixologic. It is one of the very rare arts that very few people get attracted to. But aesthetically speaking, it looks amazing when you look at the final product.

This platform is absolutely perfect for all skill levels, the software is a great starting point for users new to the discipline. Beginners can start expertise in this field using this software. More experienced CG artists will find it a quick and easy way to realize the concepts.

Sculptris is based on Pixologic’s ZBrush, the most widely-used digital sculpting application in today’s market. So, when you’re ready to move on to the next level of detailing, skills learned in Sculptris can be directly translated into ZBrush.

Houdini

Houdini is specially designed for 3D animation and visual effects. It is used widely throughout the media industry. Its wide application is in the film, broadcast, entertainment, and visualization sector. Its cheapest version costs just a little under $2,000.

The makers of the program ( SideFX )  knowing that cost can be an issue, offer an Apprentice version for free. It is obvious that buying the professional version isn’t of much use if you don’t have a dedicated purpose, and have production houses.

With this free version, you can access all the features of the full version in order to develop your skills and work on personal projects. The program is purely for non-commercial and learning purposes. Have fun while using it!

Pixlr

This free graphic design software Pixlr claims to be ‘the most popular online photo editor in the world’. Take my word, if you ask anyone in this field about a reasonable graphic design software for beginners, they would recommend Pixlr.

It boasts over two million combinations of free filters, overlays and borders, and lets you do all the things you would expect from an image editor. Starting from cropping and resizing to removing red-eye and whitening teeth. It has a very basic and intuitive interface that allows you to easily handle and use all the tools.

If you’re used to using Adobe Photoshop, then you’ll find Pixlr’s user interface very easy to pick up, as it’s very similar. This free app is available for both iOS and Android varieties. 

Note that the app has some in-app purchases – you can pay $2.99/£2.99 for removing the ads. You can also pay extra for things such as borders and stickers, and other advanced functionalities. If it is convenient for you, you can pay. Else, the free version also has a lot to offer.

Sumo Paint

Sumo Paint is a highly capable browser-based image editor software. You will get all the standard features you’d expect from a desktop tool. The tools are precise and correct. You also have the option of buying the Pro version, and you can install a desktop version of the app if it’s convenient for you.

You need the Adobe Flash Player to use this tool. So in this era, where flash players are almost obsolete, it may be considered as a drawback. So you’re not going to be using Sumo Paint on your iPad. That said, it’s lightweight and quick to load, and the free version is very usable. Even if you have a low-end computer, it wouldn’t be an issue for you.

It has all the standard range of tools and adjustments you’d expect. Some example is:

  • Brushes, 
  • Pencils, 
  • Shapes, 
  • Text, 
  • Cloning, 
  • Gradients and so on. 

All of these can be quickly accessed from the Photoshop-Esque floating toolbar. It can also open saved documents from your hard drive, making Sumo Paint a perfectly viable option for editing and re-editing.

Free Graphic Design Software

Conclusion

Try out all these software and choose what is best for you. Check out our other articles on app reviews.

Comment your opinion in the comment section!

Happy Editing!

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