- Platform: Windows, Mac, others. Skill level: Intermediate. Best for: Photo editing. GIMP is an acronym that stands for “GNU Image Manipulation Program.” It’s long been popular online as an open-source free graphic design software.
- I have compiled the best graphic design software list to help you in creating stunning visuals. Some of these are free design software online while others are available for free download on your PC – Windows, Mac, Linux as well as smartphone and mobile devices –.
Create graphics, design logos and icons, edit images illustrations & presentations, all for free. Online professional vector graphic design tool - Gravit Designer.
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Professional graphic design software can be way, way too expensive. Here are 10 awesome alternative online graphic design options for every designer and budget.
Sick of sticking to just one graphic design software program? Why don’t you give some new online graphic design software a try instead?
We’ve compiled a sampling of 10 beautiful, accessible, and user-friendly options to empower you to find a design software that works perfectly for you—and will help you create some real stunners to include in your online design portfolio.
1. Design Wizard
If variety is the spice of life, Design Wizard is the tastiest graphic design software option on the menu—and one of the most accessible. With its deft attention to visual detail, Design Wizard offers thousands of aesthetically pleasing templates for both social media and print, as well as over a million high-quality images (including icons, vectors, and transparent images).
The expertly curated visual library is updated daily, and is chock-full of endless video, illustration, and graphics options. Everything is licensed and completely ready for commercial use
And with a range of packages from Apprentice (free!) to Expert ($16.95 monthly), every budget is welcome.
Design Wizard at a glance:
- Best graphic design software for beginners
- 1,000,000+ premium images
- 15,000+ templates
- Template options for both print and social media
- Affordable and scalable pricing
- Custom template resizing and other free personalization capabilities
- Integrations with Hubspot, Marketo, and Buffer
2. BeFunky
Anyone can create captivating, professional-grade visual content with this free graphic design software. BeFunky’s main offering comprises three creative tools that are simple enough for beginners but powerful enough to tackle a variety projects: Photo Editor, Collage Maker, and Designer.
BeFunky’s “fun and functional” design software proves that you don’t need a background in design to produce stunning results. With the option to work from beautiful pre-designed templates or build your own from scratch, there’s a ton of creative flexibility.
BeFunky at a glance:
- Free graphic design software
- Quick, easy, and enjoyable to use
- 1,000,000+ free stock images easily accessible (thanks to a partnership with Pixababy
- Make banners, infographics, flyers, posters, brochures, and more
- Design on the go with the mobile device app
- Upgrade to premium BeFunky Plus account any time
3. Canva
What if creating a beautiful visual canvas was as easy as drag-and-drop? Canva makes it possible by prioritizing simplicity, variety, and affordability.
When you visit their website, you will be asked to indicate what you’re using Canva’s design software for—education, small business, large company, non-profit, and so on. Canva wants to provide an excellent experience for designers of all kinds.
Billed primarily as a photo editor, Canva is a veritable Swiss army knife: it also works as a color palette generator, font selection tool, photo collage assembler, and infographic maker. It also features hundreds of free design elements for every project. Canva even provides online educational resources.
Canva at a glance:
- Impressive functionality for free graphic design software
- 100+ free design elements and fonts
- Diverse range of print, digital, and social media templates
- Templates are easily customizable and resizable
- Most tools are mobile-friendly and available as iOs and Android apps
- Upgradable to Premium based on needs and business growth
4. Pixlr
A powerful and intuitive (and did we mention free?) alternative to Adobe Photoshop, Pixlr also made our list of the best free online photo editors. With over 500 million users, we’re not the only fans.
But Pixlr also holds its own as a solid free graphic design software option, especially for beginners who don’t want to invest too much time and money or learn a complicated application straight out of the gate.
You can get started creating and editing beautiful images with Pixlr’s robust toolset in literally minutes, directly in your internet browser or via iPhone or Adroid apps—without any convoluted installation process.
Though Pixlr is especially incredible for editing photos on-the-go and provides a free vector editor and an array of free fonts, graphics, and stock images, many advanced features require a Pixlr Pro account. Luckily, it’s a small price to pay, as far as online graphic design software goes, at just $5 a month.
Pixlr at a glance:
- Excellent free alternative to Adobe Photoshop
- Easy to use for beginners with no installation required
- A variety of free fonts, graphics, and stock images
- Design on the go with iPhone and Android apps
- Supports five popular file formats (.png, .jpeg, .jpg, .bmp, and .tiff)
- Uses its own file format (.pxd) for easier editing
5. Crello
With an astounding image archive of over 65 million files, 12,000 templates, and hundreds of fonts, Crello is a frontrunner for most professional graphic design software option on the list. With expertly created templates that can be customized in a simple and streamlined way, Crello makes designing enjoyable.
This design software can help you create an extensive array of aesthetically stunning designs for print materials, digital ads, and social media posts. You can even create animated graphics. Visual assets are organized into themed collections to help inspire you.
If there’s enough wiggle room in your budget, we suggest checking out Crello Pro; it’s only $8.30 a month. Featuring unlimited commercial use without Crello watermarks or branding and access to advanced animation functionality, it’s well worth it.
Crello at a glance:
- Professional graphic design software quality that’s still easy to use for beginners
- An extensive and unparalleled library of free images, fonts, templates, and animations
- Features a gallery of design formats and themed collections to stimulate creativity and inspiration
- Help resources, tutorials, and how-to guides
- A high-value Pro option at an affordable price
6. Snappa
The best graphic design software for beginners is one that makes designing feel like a snap. Enter Snappa, the graphics software that will allow you to design like a pro.
Snappa breaks down the design process into easy, actionable steps. You can find the perfect image dimensions (whether it be for a blog, ad, email, or social media platform) in a one click, choose from thousands of crowd-pleasing templates in the blink of an eye, and take advantage of over 500,000 beautiful, high-quality stock photos in seconds.
You can also connect your Buffer account to Snappa to pre-schedule your posts, add a variety of text and effects to images, resize graphics for cross-platform posting, and make use of many other desirable free features.
Snappa at a glance:
- Quick and easy to use
- 500,000+ high-quality stock photos
- Free option includes access to templates, graphics, and five downloads per month
- Integrates with Buffer for post scheduling and more (for Premium accounts)
- Highly scalable with Starter (free), Pro ($10 per month), and Team ($20 per month) options
7. Infogram
A popular online graphic design toolkit, Infogram transforms charts, graphs, maps, graphics, dashboards, social media visuals, and more into little works of art. Infogram’s design appeal spans several industries including the non-profit sector, online publishing, education, and government, helping all kinds of business develop their own brand themes. Select from over 20 professionally designed themes or go rogue with your own color palette, logo, and fonts.
Infogram’s intuitive drag-and-drop editor allows you to plug in your data and transform it into something aesthetically beautiful and impactful—quickly. Along with personalized design options, there are also various pricing options for every creative, entrepreneur, business, and enterprise.
Infogram at a glance:
- Used by over 30,000+ companies worldwide
- 1 million images and icons
- Data integration
- Easy data integration: import from a spreadsheet or cloud service
- Five different pricing options make it very scalable
8. Tinkercad
Take your 2D ideas and bring them to life with Tinkercad, an effortlessly simple online graphic design toolkit for creating innovative 3D designs and coding. Catering to designers and creatives of all levels, Tinkercad is absolutely free. You can get started immediately—nothing to download, no lengthy installation process.
With an irresistible gallery of designs conceived by a community of creators to spark your inspiration, you’ll be itching to start learning 3D design. Tinkercad’s motto? “No experience preferred.” Get started with Tinkercad’s learning resources and you’ll never look back.
Tinkercad at a glance:
- 100% free
- Innovative collection of graphic design software tools for 3D design
- Educational resources are an ideal introduction to Autodesk, the leading 3D design and engineering software
- A community creators gallery fuels inspiration
9. Gravit Designer
You might already be familiar with this free graphic design software under its previous name, Gravit. Billed as a “cross-platform design tool for the 21st century,” Gravit Designer delivers the goods.
Whether you use it online or download it as an app, Gravit Design is an incredible resource for vector design and comes with a seriously robust toolkit. Icon designs, logo presentations, illustration work, animation, text integration? You’re covered.
Designed for simplicity and ease of use, the platform is still granular enough for a wide variety of projects. A serious perk for busy designers is the Gravit Cloud service that will let you design-on-the-go from any device, anywhere with internet access. Talk about a productivity boost!
Gravit Designer at a glance:
- 100% free
- Choice of using online or via downloadable app
- Cross-platform functionality
- Robust toolkit for vector design
- Can export files as PDF, SVG, or bitmap
- Gravit Cloud services facilitates on-the-go design work
10. Vectr
Vectr is a free graphic design software for creating beautiful vector graphics that is both elegant and easy to use. Simple and streamlined, designers at any level can jump right into their work without any pesky learning curve.
Another great cross-platform option, Vectr will synch your projects in real-time so you can begin designing at home on your desktop web browser and continue later on your iPad. It’s a completely seamless experience. What’s more, you can grant collaborators access to your document so that they can watch you create and edit as it happens.
Whether you’re working on website design mockups, brand logos, presentations, brochures, posters, and more, your designs will look crisp and clear—no matter the size. The sky’s the limit!
Vectr at a glance:
- 100% free
- Intuitive and easy to use
- Seamless cross-platform capabilities
- Share and edit documents with collaborators in real time
- High quality designs at any size or scale
- Free user guide and tutorials
Free Online Graphic Design Software For Macs
More budget-friendly online resources for creatives:
11 Extremely Helpful (And Free!) Online Graphic Design Courses
The Best Online Illustration Classes for Artists
Best Free Online Courses and Tutorials for Photographers
11 Extremely Helpful (And Free!) Online Graphic Design Courses
The Best Online Illustration Classes for Artists
Best Free Online Courses and Tutorials for Photographers
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Anyone wanting to get started in graphic design, digital illustration or photo editing has a vast range of options and software to work with. The Adobe suite is undoubtedly an excellent choice if you want to do a professional job. Whether it’s Photoshop for photo editing and digital design, Illustrator for vector graphics or Lightroom for post-production, the Adobe package is one of the most popular paid options used by graphic designers, illustrators and photographers.
But not everyone can afford a monthly subscription to one or more of the programs in Adobe Creative Cloud, especially if they’re a beginner, they want to practise for a new career in design or just need a free tool for one-off projects. On the web you can find a vast range of free graphics programs, but you undoubtedly need to choose the right free resources, otherwise you risk wasting time that could be better spent learning and practising, which is essential if you want to do things properly.
So here’s a selection of five free graphics programs for your projects. Next to each program name you’ll find a download link and the platforms it supports.
1 – Gravit Designer – Download or use online
Free Home Design Software Mac
Platforms: Online (browser), Windows PC, Mac PC, Linux, Chrome OS
Previously known as Gravit, Gravit Designer is an extremely comprehensive vector design package suitable for various types of work, from icon design to presentations, illustrations and animations. As soon as you open the program, you can set the size of the work area as well as that of standard formats like Blog Cover, Facebook Cover or the graphics designed to perfectly fill the screen of an iPhone X. The software is really bang up to date.
The interface is very simple and intuitive, and features a useful set of tools for building complex, non-destructive vector images, including diagrams. It includes pen, crop and cut tools. You can also create simple shapes – there’s even a system that automatically completes them – as well as compound vector shapes made from different objects.
Graphic Design Software Free
It’s one of the most versatile online graphics programs around, perfect for both beginners and more experienced designers. Files can be exported to PDF, SVG or bitmap format and there’s even the Gravit Cloud service which allows you to access all our work wherever you are.
Free Online Graphic Design Software For Mac
2 – Inkscape – Download
Platforms: PC Windows, Linux, Mac
Inkscape is another highly versatile and powerful vector graphics program, considered as one of the best free open-source alternatives to Illustrator. It focuses on SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) formats, but many other formats can be imported. Inkscape offers maximum compatibility with numerous proprietary formats (particularly AI, EPS, PDF, JPEG, GIF and PNG).
Although it doesn’t have the myriad functionalities of Illustrator (like external plug-ins and filters), Inkscape still does the job: from basic operations like creating and editing complex shapes to working with layers, editing text, importing raster images or creating GIFs. The developers as well as the large Inkscape community have also provided various tutorials for the program.
The biggest drawback of Inkscape is that you can’t work in CMYK (essential for creating artwork for printing) but in RGB only (usually employed for web-based work). Support for CMYK will probably come with the next updates. In the meantime, you can work in Inkscape and, when finished, import the project into Scribus (another free program that supports CMYK) following this tutorial. A little laborious, but that’s the price you pay for getting everything for free.
3 – Krita – Download
Platforms: Mac, Windows, Linux
Krita is a highly versatile digital design program which has been around since 1999 and is aimed at artists working in concept art, textures and matte painting, as well as illustrators and cartoonists. It comes with a series of brushes for different types and styles of work, but there are also lots of plug-ins available for adding advanced filters and advanced perspective guides, to make life easier for artists.
More features offered by this program include a brush stabiliser, so that even people with shaky hands can draw smooth lines, the easy creation of patterns and textures and a pop-up colour palette for quickly choosing the right colour. And yes, Krita supports CMYK (as well as RGB of course) and also has advanced functions that are hard to find in other free online graphics programs, like HDR design.
4 – Pixlr – Download for iOS – Download for Android
Platforms: Android, iOS
![Free Online Graphic Design Software For Mac Free Online Graphic Design Software For Mac](/uploads/1/2/6/4/126466220/336460173.jpg)
Pixlr is a photo editing app for Android and Apple smartphones. It’s free (but includes ads) and has over 600 filters that can be applied to photos and images. You can also add borders and stickers, create photo collages for sharing and also use real-time filters on images framed by the smartphone’s camera. It’s very simple to use: once opened, you can choose whether you want to take a photo (for editing later), edit an existing photo or create a collage. It’s not an advanced graphics program, but it is a handy tool for editing photos and images on your phone.
5 – GIMP – Download
Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux
Any list of free graphics programs wouldn’t be complete without GIMP, a popular alternative to Photoshop. GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program and it initially started life on Unix. The GIMP interface differs from Photoshop in various ways, although there is a version that looks like the Adobe program. It offers a huge range of tools for drawing, colouring and improving photos and images, which are compatible with different formats, in addition to a very useful file manager similar to Adobe Bridge.
Online graphics programs: other free alternatives
There are, of course, more than just five free graphics programs on the web, and which one is best sometimes comes down to personal preference: as they are free, it’s worth trying out as many as you can until you find the one best suited to your needs. Other well-designed software available online includes vector graphics programs Vectr and SVG Edit, which basically give you free vector images. For editing images there’s also Photo Pos Pro, while for mobile phone photo editing there’s VSCO.
There are, of course, more than just five free graphics programs on the web, and which one is best sometimes comes down to personal preference: as they are free, it’s worth trying out as many as you can until you find the one best suited to your needs. Other well-designed software available online includes vector graphics programs Vectr and SVG Edit, which basically give you free vector images. For editing images there’s also Photo Pos Pro, while for mobile phone photo editing there’s VSCO.