10 Best Graphic Design Software Recommended by Experts

From web banners to infographics, social media images, presentations and videos; use of eye-catching graphics has become a mainstream trend for all types of communications today. In fact, according to research, social media posts containing graphics are likely to perform better as compared to simple text updates.

CoSchedule’s recent study highlights that almost 80% of posts shared by brands are structured on high use of graphics. And these posts drive a staggering amount of engagement that accounts for almost 92% of the total engagement score for these brands.

While more and more brands prioritize to spend money, time and resources in creating powerful visual content, it’s important that you take note of the right tools to stay ahead of the competition. Here we bring you a list of our top 10 graphic designing tools that will help you grab your audience’s attention and catch the buzz:

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Affinity Designer

Recognized as one of the fastest, smoothest, and most professional creative artwork software -Affinity designer was built by Serif for creating powerful print and screen visuals. Its inherent cloud functionality, flexible grids and latest guides make it ideal for handling a wide variety of design tasks.

Available for just £48.99 ($49.99) per seat on Apple Mac or Windows PC, Affinity Designer is a great pick for a team of designers working towards a common goal.

Gravit designer

Built to design impressive vector graphics, Gravit Designer is a cross-platform, free-to-use vector editing software. It comes equipped with auto-layout functionality, cloud storage, functional grids and easy navigation. Apart from being fully compatible on all browsers, Gravit Designer’s installable versions are also available for Windows PC, Linux, Apple Mac, and Chrome OS.

Whatever platform you choose to use it on, Gravit Designer provides a comprehensive set of tools to unfasten the true creativity. While complex artwork can sometimes slow down its functionality when used online, installable versions are recommended to perform without any hiccups.

Sketch

Programmed to address a narrow variety of artwork requirements -Sketch is built exclusively for Mac. It is engineered to perform fine edits that allow its users to reflect ideas down to the last pixel. It’s non-destructive editing, exporting capabilities and reusable elements make it a perfect collaborative platform for designers using iPhone, iPad and MacOS applications.

Regrettably, it is only available on the subscription model, but with regular updates, costing $99 (£75.60) per year.

Xara Designer Pro X

Xara Designer Pro X is one of the fastest, creative document solution providers in town. It is a comprehensive design application that works flawlessly with both vectors and bitmaps. Which means it can handle photo editing, desktop publishing (DTP), illustration and graphic design all in a single tool.

This bad boy comes equipped with a rich archive of photos and illustrations to use for quick mockups. Purchasing its license gives you access to thousands of template layouts and design elements that can come in handy when creating interesting art pieces.

Canva

Simple and free-to-use, a web and print graphic designing software –Canva is one of the top favorites of many designers out there. With over 8000 design templates, Canva enables its users to create professional, high-quality designs that are not only detailed enough but also attention-grabbing. It comes equipped with rich collections of photos, illustrations, icons, frames, and grids to generate quick design mockups.

Being fully compatible with all browsers, Canva offers easy team collaboration by providing free usage for up to 10 team members. It allows you to design, edit and save your work on the cloud offering up to 1GB free storage capacity.

Vectr

Quick to learn and easy to use –Vectr is a reliable, cross-platform, free vector designing tool. It offers a great versatility in type of designs you can create by offering real-time team collaborations. By assigning a unique URL to each document, Vectr allows you to easily share that with your team members, who can then watch you create and edit designs live! And not just that, this buddy allows you to scale designs to any size without losing clarity.

SVG-edit

SVG-edit is a free open-source, web-based vector graphics editor.  Which is designed to operate flawlessly on all major browsers, allowing its users to create and edit multiple canvases. It comes equipped with an array of features including hand drawing tools, shape converter and zoom that allow developers ease in scaling designs and making desired modifications.

Inkscape

Famous for its clean, consistent and stable interface -Inkscape is a free, open source vector graphics editor.  Fully compatible with the Mac OS, Linux and Windows Desktop Computers, Inkscape can be used to generate or edit vector graphics that includes diagrams, logos, illustrations, charts, line arts and complex paintings.

It also allows you to easily collaborate with your team working on the same design by making live edits in the document tree in the XML editor.

Krita

A free and open source raster graphics editor –Krita is an exclusively designed painting program for both amateur and professional artists. Widely used by the gaming industry, Krita is best known for its stunning 2D and 3D effects.  Built with more than 9 brush engines, it provides its users with a variety of options when it comes to digital painting.

The usage and manipulation of HDR is also well supported by the program. Some of its many features include pop-up-palette for quick color picking, line arts and brush stabilizers to ease and smooth out weak brush strokes.

Pixlr

With more than 130 million app downloads, Pixlr is one of the most used cloud-based, photo editing software. Available in both mobile and web-based versions, Pixlr comes equipped with two million+ combinations of free filters, photo effects and overlays to cut down the fuss and help you make creative edits.

You can get rid of any unwanted elements in a photo and/or restore textures in just a matter of minutes with Pixlr. It is available in both free and paid versions to best suit your needs.

What does it all boil down to?

As our digital ecosystem continues to diversify itself, there will be tons of new software available to help you ease things out either by automating the processes or by providing pre-designed templates. The key to success for a graphic designer is to keep on learning new tools I.e. Free PDF to JPG Converter, online vector graphics editor, project management software, etc. That will not only broaden your skills but also help win more projects.

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