Top 15 Best Graphic Design Tools and Software To Try In 2021 (Pros and Cons Included)

Graphics Design Software: 15 Best Tools to Try (Pros and Cons Included)

Best Graphic Design Tools
Photographer: Kerde Severin | Source: Unsplash

INTRODUCTION

Graphic design software – You can take pictures using a good digital point and shoot on a DSLR camera and get good quality photos, but if you want to turn the image into an art form, it is important enough to make it a completely new image, by using image editing software it becomes mandatory.

Image editing software is an important part of every graphic designer and photographer’s life. In this era of social networking and online marketing, businesses worldwide are trying hard to leverage online media to build and reinforce brands that assist in generating new avenues for lead generation and monetary benefits.

Photos and images give a boost to the content matter, whether they are part of a message, web page, or Facebook post. The kind of photos and pictures used in promotion or marketing give a clue to the kind of organization or person involved. Hence, the quality of photos cannot be compromised. The true potential of a photo can be brought to the fore through image enhancement, image clipping, and photo manipulation tools found in most image editing software tools.

1. Canva Software

Best Graphic Design Tools

Canva is a graphic design platform, used to create social media graphics, presentations, posters, documents, and other visual content, the app also includes templates for users. Available for iPhones, iPads and Android phones and tablets, laptops, desktops the application allows you to create professional-looking designs within seconds and it makes it even easier to send your designs directly to your social media platforms and also share with friends and colleagues for long-lasting connectivity among users and firms.

Pros of Canva Software:

  • Attractive portfolio of templates and content.
  • Themes, borders, text designs, music, and more are included in this tool which will help you create the best posts.

Cons of Canva Software:

  • Its autosave feature lost important data.
  • It slows in performance when putting the design together.

2. Glorify App

Best Graphic Design Tools

Glorify is used to explore the new avenues of the image of any suitable product. It is also used for the glorification of icons, template design, and initiating the content for social media posts, etc. It is a very good platform for entrepreneurs as well. Individuals who like to perform remotely are also encouraged to use this tool for earning and learning point of view. Modern-day users are connected with such kinds of tools for polishing their skills.

Pros of Glorify App:

  • BG Remover removes Backgrounds.
  • Team Collaboration works together.
  • Resize your designs to any format quickly. Shadows & Reflections Give objects dimension.

Cons of Glorify App:

  • Its autosave feature lost important data.
  • It slows in performance when putting design together.
Best Graphic Design Tools

3. DesignBold

Best Graphic Design Tools

DesignBold is ideal for making pictures more expressive in every manner. This software is also used for making professional and simple designs that make designs that include presentations, templates, posters, and flyers, etc. DesignBold is loaded with over 4,700 easy-to-use features and functionalities that empower anyone to create a variety of engaging content that gets shared. There are 50 plus materials that users can create which include social media ads, presentations, banners, posters, invitations, and so many more.

Pros of DesignBold Software:

  • User friendly and easily understood for beginners also.
  • Huge space is available for accommodating photos stock.

Cons of DesignBold Software:

  • The quality of downloaded images is distorted.
  • The pixels are sometimes unable to synchronize with the printer that causes hindrance in image result.

4. Pixelied

Best Graphic Design Tools

This awesome service provides a user-friendly design solution that allows users to create stunning ready-made designs from twenty-five more formats, access to millions of stock photos, icons, and illustrations. It provides a full suite of design editing tools, like background remover and product mockups, for the most common uses, tailored for businesses. Invite, collaborate and share your designs with your team on multiple brand workspaces. Connectivity is a key ingredient in such kinds of tools. Modern-day people are using it in an expeditious manner to learn.

Pros of Pixelied Software:

  • It will help you to speed up your digital banners, flyers, and a lot more designs.
  • Pure and simple with awesome templates and changeable brand colors on cool designs and impressed with its speed.

Cons of Pixelied Software:

  • Lack of color picker to match the background image.
  • Some small bugs to be ironed out. Background removal tool on hardest images can fail and has no settings to fine-tune the results.

5. Stencil

Best Graphic Design Tools

Stencil is a tremendously easy-to-use online graphic design tool and image editor built for business owners, social media marketers, and bloggers. It is a cloud-based graphics creation tool that offers the fastest way to craft and share visual content. The program enables small businesses, social media marketers, and bloggers to beautify images to generate stunning social media posts, content marketing visuals, ad graphics, email images, and much more. A great variety of graded color effects can be obtained from one stencil by blending different colors or different parts of oil the stencil with one stroke of the brush; suction effects cannot be obtained by other methods.

Pros of Stencil Software:

  • The method is simple to operate and does not require elaborate or expensive equipment; the cost of production is low.

Cons of Stencil Software:

  • Complete rings or circles, as well as unbroken lines, cannot be obtained by this method; the designer’s freedom is, therefore, limited.
  • The method is not suitable for large-scale production.

6. Pixlr

Best Graphic Design Tools

Pixlr was introduced to enable everyone to create, edit and share images online with ease. Users and Subscribers can access intelligent editing tools and unlimited design assets, taking creative Photo and Image Editing to a whole new level. It is a cloud-based photo editor that offers a wide range of image tools and utilities for editing purposes. Users can access the image editing suite regardless of device type and operating system. However, it has no online integration for photo storage and the user cannot paste pictures.

Pros of Pixlr Software:

  • The main advantage of Pixlr is its rich features, eases of use and is free for all users.

Cons of Pixlr Software:

  • It does not support TIFF and BMP images.

7. Crello

Best Graphic Design Tools

Crello is an online tool for easily creating videos and graphic designs, for social media, print, or any other web-based graphics by using a huge collection of already designed templates and video/photo content. Start with one of 25,050 pre-loaded modern templates,

Pros of Crello Software:

  • It is easy to use and learn. It has a big selection of photos and objects to use.
  • Once you have bought photos, you can reuse them.

Cons of Crello Software:

  • It could do with a section for storing your brand elements, but that is not essential.
  • It has a limited variety of new images and needs evolution.

8. Fotor

Best Graphic Design Tools

Powerful, user-friendly, and globally accessible software, It is an online photo editing suite, utilizing exclusive technology to bring an unprecedented level of editing control to anyone and everyone. It is a cross-platform editor and designer, available on every major mobile device, desktop computer, and online. It encourages users to do more with their images, which allows them to let their creative sides go wild. One of the things I didn’t like about the app is the lack of a photo library that can be used in design to facilitate the search for photos on designers

Pros of Fotor Software:

  • They will find editing an image is easier with the tools and ready designs.

Cons of Fotor Software:

  • There are no ready-to-design templates that designers can use in their various designs that they may use in their social media posts.

9. Figma

Best Graphic Design Tools

Figma is a browser-based UI and UX design application, with excellent design, prototyping, and code-generation tools. Currently, the industry is a leading interface design tool, with robust features which support teams working on every phase of the design process.

Pros of Figma Software:

  • Sharing Is Uncomplicated and Flexible.
  • Embedded Figma Files Provide Real-time Updating.

Cons of Figma Software:

  • I think the user experience for a viewer should be different from that of an editor.
  • The prototype function is not as user-friendly and streamlined as other apps.

10. Artboard Studio

Artboard is an application that is suitable for Design, animate, collaborate and present your projects with an extensive library of assets and templates right in the browser.

Pros of Artboard Studio Software:

  • High-quality mockups and attention to detail.
  • Beautiful pre-made templates.

Cons of Artboard Studio Software:

  • Lack of backgrounds / studio backdrops / stage options.
  • Export quality not suitable for high-resolution print work.

11. Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Windows and macOS. Photoshop can edit and compose raster images in multiple layers and supports masks, alpha compositing, and several color models including RGB, CMYK, CIELAB, spot color, and duotone. Any PSD file, Photos, and videos can be easily and quickly imported into the software using Adobe Photoshop. However, Progress monitoring facilities are not present in fewer tools.

Pros of Adobe Photoshop Software:

  • Quick and Time-saving prove to be helpful for users.

Cons of Adobe Photoshop Software:

  • New input features may not have an appeal for everyone.

12. Adobe Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator is a professional vector-based design and drawing program. Used as part of a larger design workflow, Illustrator allows for the creation of everything from single design elements to entire compositions. Designers use Illustrator to create posters, symbols, logos, patterns, icons, etc.

Pros of Adobe Illustrator Software:

  • It allows for in-panel editing.
  • It is completely scalable.

Cons of Adobe Illustrator Software:

  • It has pricing limitations on the Teams edition.
  • It offers limited support for raster graphics.

13. Affinity Designer

Affinity Designer is full of tools that are meticulously developed for achieving high productivity, Comprehensive vector toolset for executing any kind of designing project. For one thing, Affinity Designer is a big help to professional designers who want to create vector graphics, illustrations, and projects with accuracy because its zoom as large as you can do so. However, the multiple strokes and fills option works for only one object at a time and not on text or groups of objects.

Pros of Affinity Designer Software:

  • The main benefit of Affinity Designer is its advanced creative tools.

Cons of Affinity Designer Software:

  • You can’t export files like AI, which some clients are insistent on having.

14. Coreldraw

CorelDraw is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Corel Corporation. It is also the name of the Corel graphics suite, which includes the bitmap-image editor Corel Photo-Paint as well as other graphics-related programs. The main benefits of CorelDraw are its robust feature set, customizations, and reliability. One more disadvantage is that even the smallest of errors in the drawings are visible when you enlarge images to an extent.

Pros of CorelDraw Software:

  • User-friendly for the novice as well as for beginners.

Cons of CorelDraw Software:

  • If the volume of data is high, it slows down image rendering even if the files are small in size.

15. Gravit Designer

Gravit Designer is a full-featured, vector graphic design solution for product designers, graphic designers, and web designers. The program provides a set of powerful tools that help the user to unleash true creativity in designing beautiful and detailed vector imagery. The main benefits of Gravit Designer are its free software, advanced and intuitive dashboard, customizable interface, drag-and-drop functionality, and advanced editing tools.

Pros of Gravit Designer Software:

  • User-friendly for the neophyte and also for full-fledged users.

Cons of Gravit Designer Software:

  • Very little information about designing tools as compared to other software.
  • No integration into the system.

How to choose the best graphic design tool?

Best Graphic Design Tools – With the prices of digital cameras nose-diving and camera feature getting richer by the year, the use of images, especially in the online world arena, has witnessed a steady increase over the years. It is not hard to guess why pictures have become an integral part of social media and business. You can choose the best graphic design tool by analyzing every aspect of software likewise; Accuracy, speed, accessibility, versatility, cost-benefit analysis, licensing issues, etc.

Budget Analysis:

Best Graphic Design Tools can be selected by understanding the budgetary analysis likewise; License issue, Software subscription charges that is (Monthly, Quarterly, Semi-annually and annually).

Testing of Tools:

  • Tools must be checked and verified by a competent authority/Individual so that the selection will be free from error and perform long-lastingly.
  • Individuals must be trained enough in order for the proper handling can be made effective.

Checking of Premiums:

  • Subscribe to the plan according to the budget.
  • Get benefits from free-trials and deals for connectivity between user and company.
  • Selection of premium must be made by way of more options that will be provided by the company.
  • Academic discount premium is very beneficial for students to explore their graphic designing abilities.
  • Seasonal Premiums often give surprising benefits to their users.
  • Non-profit discounts are handy and advantageous for foundation and need-based individuals.

Conclusion:

Best Graphic Design Tools – Last but not least, all the above discussed graphic design tools have different specifications and multifarious options that attract its user. Users must understand the budgetary constraints, limitations of little software which create hindrances in their way when operating. Speed, accuracy, and precision of software are also to be analyzed when opting for any software for the long-term. In the end, every graphic design tool has its own advantages that attract its users, in order to achieve optimum output from any tool make a detailed roadmap for selecting tools for any kind of operation.

Best Graphic Design Tools
Best Graphic Design Tools

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Parker Casio Patty
I am a Digital Marketer and Growth Specialist who helps small and mid-sized enterprises grow their brand and build an audience online. I enjoy reading when I’m not working on my projects.
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