There is a lot of graphic design software that you can download for free. With these programs you can create logos, banners and other custom graphics for your projects. You can also benefit from some of the best free graphic design software if you are learning graphic design. Keep reading to find out more.
Here we are listing top best graphics design software for Windows. These graphics software will serve all your needs of graphic designing and you can use them as professional graphic designing tools in your field.
DesignWizard
Platform: Windows
DesignWizard ranks among the best free graphic design software for beginners. The tool offers a large database of images along with a host of free templates (over 10,000), plus a simple, easy-to-use interface. While you can also quickly create custom templates, DesignWizard excels as a front-line, free graphic design tool for beginners.
Despite an easy-to-use interface and no upfront costs, it’s worth noting that most of the more powerful options in DesignWizard are only available in its for-pay version.
Setka Editor
Platforms: Windows, Mac
Setka bills itself as “everything you need to create content that converts.” This graphic design software is primarily focused on delivering enhanced content branding across your website, ad campaigns, and social media posts — and works from within your current CMS or in the cloud.
The caveat? Although the Setka Editor is free to try for two weeks, companies will need to select a plan — Starter, Pro, or Enterprise — to unlock the full feature set and keep using Setka.
Canva
Platforms: Windows, Mac, Android, iOS
Whether you’re looking to create an ebook, infographic, business card, or email header, Canva has a template to simplify your process. The free web design tool, developed by non-designers, offers professional, easy-to-customize templates for just about any design need you can think of.
The drawback? You might need to invest in the paid version or try one of the more advanced free graphic design softwares as you skill up. While Canva’s free version is great for new designers working with templates, you can access more complex tools and features — such as team sharing — in the paid version.
Adobe Spark
Platforms: Windows, Mac, Android, iOS
Adobe Spark is a free alternative to the company’s popular, for-pay Adobe Illustrator. While it’s not nearly as full-featured, it does support integration with other Adobe products. It’s easy to use and it comes with a host of free templates. If you’re looking to quickly create posters or videos for ad campaigns, Spark is a great choice.
The potential drawback? A limited feature set makes this a great starting point for beginners but less useful for more in-depth projects or experienced designers. The good news is that Spark is available for both web and mobile, meaning you can design anywhere, anytime.
Krita
Platforms: Windows, Mac, Android, Linux
Krita is a free, open-source painting program made by artists, for artists. Ongoing development of this tool depends on donations and is driven by the needs of the designer community at large. It’s no surprise, then, that Krita includes a customizable user interface, feature-rich toolset, and a comprehensive resource manager.
For businesses looking to boost their graphic design impact, Krita is a great tool — if they have the help of an experienced designer. For companies in need of simple, streamlined solutions, other software on this list offers a better fit for beginners.
Gravit
Platforms: PC, Mac, Chrome OS, Linux
Gravit is a vector design application created by the makers of Corel Draw. With a host of tools for creating vector art and a self-adjusting interface, Gravit earns its place among the best free graphic design software for Mac and Windows — the tool is also available for ChromeOS and Linux.
Worth noting? When you sign up for a free trial of Gravit you automatically get access to “Pro” features, including the ability to work offline and see version history. However, you lose these features when your trial is up unless you’re willing to pay for a subscription.
Blender
Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux
Blender is an open-source, 3D creation suite that makes it possible for graphic designers to create everything from rigging to animation to rendering and motion tracking. It also provides support for 2D animation and has an active community of users committed to helping Blender improve.
While Blender is a powerful tool, it’s not ideal for beginners — complex menus and a massive amount of design options mean you need to know your way around graphic design basics to make the best use of this tool.
Inkscape
Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux
Its tagline is “draw freely” and Inkscape lives up to that mantra — there’s no cost for this graphic design tool and it packs a host of features for both beginners and experienced marketers.
In addition to cross-platform support and an active community, Inkscape is known for superior vector art options and wide format compatibility. One drawback is that the sluggish controls can frustrate some users if they’re looking to quickly create and publish designs.
SketchUp
Platforms: Windows, Mac
SketchUp offers both free and paid design plans, with its no-cost version still offering substantial advantages for designers. A robust modeling platform, it’s a great tool for creating 2D or 3D designs for furniture or other complex objects.
With an easy-to-use interface and great support, SketchUp is a great tool if you’re looking to create product pages that feature in-depth images and dimensions. Potential drawbacks include limited storage space for free plans and no mobile support.
Gimp
Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux
One of the most popular open-source design tools, Gimp is often compared to its closest for-pay competitor, Photoshop, with users on both sides making passionate arguments for one platform over the other.
Gimp gets high praise as a free design tool for its support of all file formats, ease of digital retouching, and ability to quickly create new designs from scratch. In addition, Gimp features a customizable interface that allows more experienced designers to make use of the tool’s capabilities. Worth noting? Gimp does not support any Photoshop plugins.
Genially
Platform: Windows
Genially makes design easy with a user-friendly interface and robust options that allow designers to create their own artwork from scratch. With this software, you can leverage pre-built templates or add interactive features such as buttons, layers, and hidden text. The free version of Genially has no limits on the number of projects you can create and there are now more than 12,000,000 users worldwide designing with Genially and supporting the community.
There is a caveat, however. While the free version is substantive, some features — such as offline viewing and brand personalization — are reserved for paid plans only.
Paint 3D
Platform: Windows
The classic Microsoft design tool is back, free, and updated to deliver more functionality. While it can’t compete with some of the more robust design tools on our list, Paint 3D comes with realistic textures, 2D cutout creation, and a host of 3D tools and effects.
If you’re a beginner looking for an easy bar to entry for straightforward graphic design, Paint 3D is a great place to start. There’s virtually no learning curve and since it’s made by Microsoft, the tool naturally works well on all Windows 10 devices.
CorelDRAW
Not just in this list of graphic design software to break up appearances of Adobe’s name, CorelDRAW is a design industry classic – and one which continues to be an influential and in-demand option today. See here for the latest CorelDRAW discounts.
Covering both bitmap and vector design, CorelDRAW does what Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator do so well separately in one combined package.
Key features:
Content Exchange: It is an online digital library with thousands of high-resolution pictures and digital images. It also includes templates, fonts, professionally created templates, interactive frames, gradients, vector, and bitmap fills.
Customizable UI: You get a configurable UI environment for the desktop, including icon resizing, options for how your documents open, and the color scheme for the window border.
Pricing:
- Annual Subscription – US $249
- One-Time Purchase – US $599
| Pros | Cons |
| ➕ Supports 48 different file types (HTML, TIFF, AutoCAD, JPG, PNG, etc.) | ➖ Complex, not a beginner-friendly software |
| ➕ Surface Pen works flawlessly with no lag | ➖ No complimentary mobile applications |
| ➕ You can take advantage of touch functionality, with smooth transition from desktop to tablet mode |
Affinity
Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer are relatively new competitors in the world of graphic design software. As you might expect, Affinity Photo is focused on photo editing, while Affinity Designer is vector graphic design software great for branding work, concept art, print projects, icons, and web mockups. Affinity software is designed to be fast regardless of the size or complexity of your work. It’s also highly customizable, with an intuitive, modern interface, advanced layer controls, the ability to undo up to 8,000 steps, and standard file format compatibility. This software is available on Windows or Mac at the reasonable price of $50 each.
Sketch
While it’s only available for Mac users, the vector editor software Sketch is quickly becoming a favorite for many in the design industry, especially those focused on web, app, user experience, or interface design. Priced at $100, this graphic design software is comparable in many ways to Illustrator and, in some aspects, Photoshop as well. Features include support for multiple pages and artboards, symbols and styles that can be easily repeated and updated across a design, and the ability to edit and merge vectors without destroying their original shapes. Sketch however is not a photo editing tool or ideal for print work, so you’ll have to rely on something else for that.
Conclusion
There are plenty of options out there when it comes to graphic design software, each with its own unique characteristics. However, the industry has clearly allowed for many of the programs on our list to accomplish their own thing in their own way. It’s not a bad idea to have a few different programs on hand in case you can’t find what you’re looking for (or you want to expand your graphics abilities).