10 Incredible Tools For Graphic Designers

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The expression of art is one of the main goals of graphic design. It also helps increase the appeal of products and services, as well as it plays a significant role on all platforms. It acts as a bridge that helps businesses reach their customers and vice versa. 

As a graphic designer, you’re the one who helps companies in their sales and promotions. Your creativity makes the advertisement of products more appealing. Utilizing your full potential while doing your work will highlight the quality of media you’ll be making.

For graphic designers, it’s essential to use the right tools every time. You can find a lot of different software online that’ll help you maximize your potential. It’s also necessary to check for innovative tools that may help improve your overall creativity. After all, one of graphic design’s goals is to help businesses make their brand attractive for customers.

To make things easier, here’s a list of the top ten tools for graphic designers:

1. Gency.io

Gency.io is a workflow management tool designed specifically for freelance designers. It is a platform that helps designers manage their projects, communicate with clients, and streamline their workflow. Gency.io offers a range of features that can help designers to simplify their work processes and stay organized, from project proposals to invoicing and everything in between.

One of the key benefits of Gency.io is that it allows designers to automate many of the time-consuming administrative tasks that can take away from their creative work. For example, Gency.io can automatically send project proposals and contracts to clients, saving designers the hassle of drafting and sending these documents manually. Additionally, Gency.io can automate the briefing process, ensuring that designers have all the information they need to get started on a project.

Another key feature of Gency.io is its ability to keep all communication, feedback, and designs in one place. This can help to avoid miscommunication and ensure that everyone involved in a project is on the same page. Additionally, Gency.io provides designers with a single dashboard that displays all of their ongoing projects, making it easy to track progress and manage their workload.

Overall, Gency.io is an invaluable tool for freelance designers looking to streamline their workflow and focus on their creative work. With its range of features and user-friendly interface, Gency.io can help designers to manage their projects more efficiently and effectively, freeing up time to focus on what they do best – designing.

2. Adobe Photoshop

If you’re doing graphic design, you’ve probably heard about this software. It’s one of the oldest editing software available online, and its functions will tell you why it has stayed on the market up until now. The software has evolved drastically to fit the needs of modern designers, but its goal as a tool for maximizing creativity hasn’t changed. You can download Photoshop for free. There’s a seven-day trial to explore the full version, but you’d have to pay for the subscription after that.

Many people prefer Adobe Photoshop because it’s easy to use. Its great variety of drawing and typography tools allow for more options when designing. The software is also capable of 3D design, which is a rising trend in digital marketing. Video layers and animations can also be edited using Photoshop. There’s even an option for isolating some elements from the background, custom brushes, editing canvas size, and many more.

Although the software is very convenient, it’s not recommended for new users because they might be overwhelmed by the excessive number of features.

3. Adobe InDesign

This software tool is usually used in publishing. Most people use it to create info sheets, brochures, magazines, and many more. Many people believe that it’s easier to use than Photoshop. You’ll even learn how to combine graphics and texts so you’ll have the best outcome.

Adobe InDesign even comes with an AI that helps you arrange and resize your images. You’ll also be able to change the template’s text, and everything else will also be adjusted afterward. You can even export your work to HTML or PDF later, so it’s very convenient for users.

4. Adobe Illustrator

This graphic design tool is perfect for making page layouts, business logos, website prototypes, artworks, and many more. It’s one of the most popular vector creation software available online. With Adobe Illustrator, you can use Adobe Stock to search for millions of graphics, pictures, videos, and templates.

The convenience of using this software doesn’t stop there. Graphic files created on the tool are smaller in size so you’ll be able to attach them to your email. Mathematical equations are also used to make sure that the graphics are sharp and crisp, so you’ll be able to use any dimension for printing.

You can integrate Illustrator with the other Adobe Software, so it’s convenient. Thousands of fonts are also available so that you’ll be able to choose the perfect one for your final product.

5. Inkscape

The best thing about Inkscape is it’s free. It’s an open-source software that can help beginners and experts create images that won’t stretch or blur when enlarged. It’s straightforward to use and is preferred by many people in creating graphics, so the quality stays the same no matter where it’s placed. It even has a variety of tools for editing and vector conversion, and it’s able to create or download other plugins for ease of use.

6. PhotoScape

For people who don’t want to pay for subscriptions, one free software available online is PhotoScape. It has many editing features that you can use for your work, and it’s suitable for beginners since its user interface is straightforward. It’s multilingual, so you can download more than 30 other language modules for those who don’t use English as their first language.

Besides basic features like resizing, there are also other functions like backlight, gamma, brightness, resolution, and many other graphic adjustments. The software even has drawing, design, and text tools, so many people recommend it because of its wide range of features. 

7. Affinity Designer

Most people believe that Affinity Designer is the cheaper and easier-to-use version of Adobe Illustrator. Although it lacks some available tools and doesn’t support exporting files in AI, it has its own perks.

Affinity Designer allows people to put their work in one project to other artboards they have. It has an iPad app that can be compared to its desktop application. It has a large variety of colors that can help enhance the design. It even allows you to make accurate curves through window and rope stabilizers, allowing you to make creative vector illustrations. There are many other tools and functions available, so it’s beneficial considering its price.

8. Gravit Designer

It’s a vector graphic design software available on all platforms. The best part is it has many features and it’s completely free. It’s tailor-fitted for expert designers, so it’s recommended if you’re doing full-time design. It’s HTML-based, and its dashboard is very intuitive and user-friendly. 

9. Xara Designer Pro X

It’s a design software that’s usually made for print and web designs. It allows you to create advanced design elements for illustrations, web page design, and image editing. It has a drag and drop intuitive feature and it saves time. You can even zoom up to 25,000 times, so it’s convenient for large-scale edits.

Xara has one of the most advanced engines among vector rendering software available online. It’s efficient in delivering complex graphic designs, and it has a fast performance that’ll allow you to use your creativity to the fullest.

For best results when editing images, Xara Designer Pro is recommended. It has options for scaling, rotating, and dragging objects to help you maximize the impact of your pictures. It has a cloud capability to edit, view, and update everything using a web browser, and you can even synchronize your files to Google Drive and Dropbox. It supports exporting to Adobe PSD files and involves alpha channel, layer support, and CMYK conversions.

10. Sketch

It’s one of the cheapest software available on the market, but its low price doesn’t mean it doesn’t provide great functions. It’s available on iOS, so it’s great for people who prefer Apple products. It has a vast selection of templates for your artboard and has a very responsive design layout. It’s excellent for creating media for different devices, so it’s preferred if you work on social media platforms as it has a snap to pixel functionality that avoids misalignments and half-pixel renderings. It even has a large community of support, so you’ll be able to download a wide variety of custom plugins.

Sketch is easy to use and has an autosave feature that’ll help you keep every detail of your design. Its adaptive software allows you to try out the final product on different media types through mirroring, so it’s very convenient for both new and expert designers. You can even save your files with your workmates and colleagues through the cloud.

Takeaway

The benefits of using graphic design tools in creating amazing images and illustrations are too many to count. It’s very flexible as most of the software available can work across multiple platforms. Subscriptions on these tools are worth it, but if you’re not willing to pay for them, there are many open-source versions for you to download.

There are many tools available online, and it’s up to you what you prefer to use, but these ten tools may help you bring out your best work. It’s still the artist’s creativity that matters at the end of the day, and these software tools are available so that you can do things faster and better. Consider the ideas mentioned here as you look for the best platform for your next project.