So, you want to learn graphic design, or simply want to get your foot in the door with a bit of free software. You’ve heard about Photoshop – it’s a household name, right? But what other graphic design software can you use?
Here are easy to use, even easier to learn graphic design software for beginners:
Best for Mockups: Placeit
Buy on Placeit.netWhat We Like
- Template system speeds up and simplifies the process.
- Offers unlimited monthly and annual subscriptions.
What We Don’t Like
- Curated template sections may limit flexibility.
- Charges to download hi-res designs you create.
Placeit focuses on creating realistic design mockups for all kinds of products, including T-shirts. It’s one of the easiest and best-looking online shirt design tools we’ve come across, with hundreds of attractive templates to get you started.
Rather than having a gallery of thousands of unrelated clip-art images to search through, Placeit offers a curated selection of graphics for each section of the template. While you lose some flexibility with this approach, it speeds up the design process and often leads to a better end result.
Backgrounds, fonts, and colors are also customizable, and as you make changes to your design, it’s reflected in a variety of lifestyle mockups. Clicking on any of the modeled images yields a larger version, along with several similar alternatives to choose from.
You can also upload an existing design if all you need is the mockup images themselves. Any designs and mockups can be downloaded for a few dollars each, or as part of an unlimited monthly subscription.
Best for Free Mockups: Printful
Buy on Printful.comWhat We Like
- Doesn’t charge to download hi-res designs you create.
- Allows sleeve text design.
What We Don’t Like
- Interface isn’t quite as refined as others.
- Some complaints that fulfillment times were longer than promised.
Unlike Placeit, Printful doesn’t charge you to download high-resolution mockups of the designs created with its tools. Usable for all kinds of clothing, along with accessories, posters, and more, it’s not as slick as Placeit’s tool, but is more flexible.
After choosing your shirt style and color, you can upload your own design or create your own using the company’s basic clipart and font options. Somewhat unusually, though, you’re not limited to designing just the front and back of your shirts—both sleeves can have text added, along with an outside label.
Once you’ve got your shirt looking how you’d like it, you can send the shirt for printing or download the mockup files to use how you wish. Printful also acts as a marketplace for you to sell your design, or act as a print-on-demand service if you sell your T-shirts elsewhere.https://49a7639f6add46056fdf8efb63b8ec3d.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
Best for Professionals: Adobe Illustrator
What We Like
- Top quality professional design software.
- Powerful and versatile.
What We Don’t Like
- Expensive.
- Complex program with significant learning curve.
While we’d never suggest forking out for Adobe’s high-end graphics software just to design the occasional T-shirt, Illustrator is the ideal tool for creating professional-level shirt designs if you’re already paying for it.
The software’s focus on vector images ensures that logos and text can be easily scaled up or down to fit on any T-shirt size without a loss of quality. Your design will look just as good on a business card as a billboard, or anything in between, and if you plan on screenprinting your T-shirt design, Illustrator makes it easy to create the layered, spot-colored file your print shop requires.
As with any professional software, there’s a steep learning curve that comes with Illustrator, although Adobe does at least publish tutorials complete with sample files to get you started. Dozens of sites also offer templates, free or otherwise, that can be imported directly into the software.
Conclusion
GIMP
Best open source
The Gnu Image Manipulation Project, or GIMP, is a well-known alternative to Photoshop for people with limited funds. The product contains a lot of similar features, such as the ability to work with professional layers and fine-tune snap functionality.
Key Features:
- Customizable interface: There’s a full photo editing interface available which you can customize to suit your needs. There are tons of plugins out there from the GIMP community that allow you to add new functions too.
- Photo enhancement: You can fix perspective distortion, experiment with filters, and use various corrective tools in an intuitive environment.
- Digital retouching: There are tons of ways to digitally retouch your images through things like clone and healing tools.
- Multiple file formats: Export and import images in a range of file formats ranging from PNG to TIFF and GIF.
What we like:
- Regular updates: Because the GIMP environment is powered by a community of developers, you can expect a lot of regular updates and new features.
- Tons of flexibility: Aside from offering a range of file formats, GIMP also supports a host of platforms, including GNU, Linux, Microsoft, Mac, and more.
- Community: Community support is excellent, with plenty of brushes, texture packs, and extra features to download online.
What we dislike:
- The adjustment layers are difficult to work with at times, and can be quite buggy
- The interface isn’t well-suited to mac users.
Pricing: Open source and free to use.
2. Inkscape
Best free vector software
Vector software can be pretty expensive, depending on the features you need. Inkscape offers an alternative to pricey software packages, by delivering a free, highly accessible tool full of fantastic features. There’s a community gallery where you can get inspiration for your work and tons of learning resources to get you started.
Key features:
- Object creation and manipulation: Inkscape is an impressive vector creation tool with free-hand drawing options, a text tool, embedded bitmaps, shape creation and clones. You can transform objects whoever you choose, group objects, and even work in layers.
- Regularly updating capabilities: The robust community behind Inkscape is part of what makes it so impressive. The service is constantly updating, with new features and functionality appearing all the time.
- Open-source code: If you have a little developer knowledge yourself, you can access the open-source code in Inkscape to make your own changes.
- Various editing functions: From fill and stroke capabilities to text support and rendering, the Inkscape feature list contains many of the tools you would expect from expensive products like Adobe illustrator.
What we like:
- User experience: Open-source software can be complicated and clunky, but that’s not the case with Inkscape. The streamlined interface combined with knowledge articles and guidance makes it easier to pick up as a beginner.
- Lots of customization: As mentioned above, this is an open-source software. If you have the know-how, you can easily make your own changes and set up integrations.
- Convenient bonus features: Users can leverage various presets, filters, and more to simplify their work. There are even Bezier handles for easier node movement.
What we dislike:
- The mac version tends to have a lot of bugs and functionality issues
- Processing is a little slow compared to other solutions
Pricing: Completely free.
3. Gravit Designer
Best HTML-based app
Gravit Designer, sometimes simply referred to as Designer.io, is a full-featured vector design app designed to work on every platform. Notably, it’s only the basic version of this app that’s available for free, but this still comes with a full color space, PDF export functionality, and 500mb of cloud storage.
Features:
- Multi-platform design app: Work on your projects wherever you like. Gravit Designer works on Mac, Linux, Chrome OS, and Windows. You can even work from your internet browser.
- Top web technology backend: Gravit Designer is built on technologies like HTML and JavaScript. The auto-update mechanism ensures you’ll always have the latest version too.
- Touch interface: You can edit and experiment with designs on touch devices – ideal if you’re using drawing screens or tablets.
- Quick start functionality: Gravit Designer makes it easy to get started fast with a host of templates and pre-set canvas designers, as well as pre-made fonts, design assets, and files.
- Cloud integration: You’ll be able to automatically save all of your content to the cloud, so you never lose valuable work.
What we like:
- Reliability: You can access Gravit Designer from anywhere, so it’s easy to keep working wherever you are. We love the automatic save function and the fully-featured cloud storage solution too.
- Adaptable interface: You can customize various parts of the interface, including accessing a “dark mode” that’s easier on your eyes.
- Simplicity: It’s really easy to get started with this product. Premade templates, fonts, shapes, and filters will get you to work in no time.
What we dislike:
- You will need to upgrade to the premium version for more storage
- No real-time collaboration feature, despite the cloud service
Pricing: There’s a free version available, or a professional option starting at $100 per year.
Conclusion
The design software market is constantly changing as new programs are added and more innovative features are created. In order to maintain the highest level of quality, it is essential to have easy graphic design software for current design trends, especially for those that have just started out or those that want to develop their skills. Many programs offer free entry-level packages and tools.