Graphics software for developers

It also has features for drawing and creating your own illustrations. Buildbox founder, Trey Smith, created the artwork for his hit game Phases using Pixelmator.

He also recently posted a step-by-step Pixelmator tutorial on how to use it to make hyper-casual game art. Pixelmator was built exclusively for Mac, and it shows with its sleek interface. GIMP also has a wide variety of features.

You can tweak and edit photos and easily turn lackluster images into masterpieces. The drawing tools and customizable brushes allow you to make illustrations as well. It also supports many third-party plugins and programming languages.

Advanced users can download additional plugins to add new features, editing and customization options to GIMP. Another free graphic design software worth considering is Inkscape. Inkscape allows you to create vector-based images and edit them easily. With Inkscape, you can do most of the things that you could with the more expensive paid design applications.

This software features flexible drawing tools, shapes, filters, text, and other advanced editing options. Users have the opportunity to export any saved project to vector-based formats as well.

Image scaling is also a breeze in Inkscape. You can easily resize any icon, logo, or graphic. This graphic design software is part of a creative suite for grid-based painting, animation and design. The built-in geometric canvas grid makes it easy for a beginner designer or professional artist to create pixel style art.

It features extensive drawing tools and an animation timeline to bring your creativity to life. Gravit Designer is a cloud-based vector editor with loads of potential for game developers. You can use this tool on-the-go whenever an idea strikes you. It also features templates to help you get started with your designs which is a huge plus for anyone new to design. With Gravit Designer, you can design screens, high-quality icons, illustrations, apps and more.

It features a sleek, intuitive interface that can be personalized. The only drawback to this design application is there are no prototyping or animation features possible yet. However, they do have plans to add both soon. This free vector graphic tool is worth trying out.

Sumo Paint is a browser-based graphics editor. It is the most widely used program on the market. This is due to the fact that it comes with a full collection of tools for producing and editing drawings, 3D graphics, and photos. It can also build online and mobile apps, as well as reproduce real-life artwork and edit movies. In essence, this software is utilized to bring any concept to life. Price: Free 7 day Trial. Try Adobe Photoshop for Free Here. Canva is drag-and-drop graphic design software that allows even non-designers to simply and rapidly create designs.

It is your greatest buddy if you have no prior expertise with design or are just getting started and want something that is highly beginner-friendly. It has a large collection of templates that can be used to make invitations, book covers, presentations, marketing materials, and more. Price: Free to use version available. Advanced paid plans have 2 types — Pro and Enterprise. Includes a day free trial. Try Canva for Free Here.

Adobe Illustrator is a graphics design software that is used to create advanced logos, images, and icons. Experts use this for online and mobile graphics, building animations, book illustrations, logo designing, packaging, and more. The Adobe Creative Cloud offers an excellent collaborative option. Because it is vector-based, it can be used to generate visuals for everything from mobile phones to huge billboards.

Price: 7 Day Trial available, followed by 3 types of monthly payment options. Try Adobe Illustrator for Free Here. There are platform-specific variants of this drawing software. It allows for a smooth transition between desktop and online applications. As a result, no matter what device you choose to create with, the application will always perform to its maximum capacity. There are a plethora of functionality and customization options and only people with prior experience should choose this.

Price: Available in two options: 1. One Time payment 2. The product allows for faster design creation owing to its built-in design presets and templates, which can be easily accessed. Its integration with Adobe Creative Cloud makes sharing of projects by individuals easy. Sharp segments and clear lines can be produced as the solution can create paths that automatically align to the nearest pixel grid.

Its Snap to Pixel feature can be customized to align an artwork with precise pixel boundaries. A photo, image, and graphic design editing solution, Adobe Photoshop CC is targeted at professional graphic designers, artists, and photographers.

It enables users to design websites, posters, icons, mobile apps, and banners using easy-to-use tools and built-in templates. For photographers, the app has tools that aid in picture creation and enhancement, making excellent works of art out of photographs. Using the software, you can create and enhance illustrations, 3D artworks, and paintings. Unique patterns and effects, along with brushes, aid in the creation and customization of digital works.

Other key features include brush smoke smoothing, brush management, access to Lightroom photos, paint symmetry, and luminance masking controls, among many others.

A page design and layout solution, Adobe InDesign CC is used predominantly in the creation, preflighting, and publication of documents for both print and digital media. It is a desktop publishing software that can be used to design posters, brochures, stationery, flyers, annual reports, and magazines, among many other projects.

You can also create eBooks, interactive PDFs, and digital magazines using the platform. Adobe InDesign CC has tools that can help you collaborate with writers and editors, which will enable you to come up with and design documents a lot faster. It can share text, colors, graphics, and shapes as it gives users access to its Creative Cloud Libraries. Other notable features include paragraph borders, object height and width, endnotes, fonts, and PDF accessibility enhancements.

Canva is a cloud-based platform that lets you easily create professional-quality graphic designs. It gives you a robust and intuitive drag-and-drop editor and access to over a million graphics, images, and fonts for quickly making any type of content.

It can be used by beginners and professionals looking to produce marketing materials, corporate brochures, flyers, invitations, visual charts, book covers, presentations, and more. A vast library of templates is available to help you start your design project for whatever purpose. The graphic design solution allows you to configure templates and documents as well as to edit your designs. You can also publish your designs on the web or download and print them.

Canva is free for teams with up to 10 members and comes with 1GB of storage and access to more than 8, templates. There is also a low-cost plan for work and a quote-based enterprise plan which unlocks more features, unlimited storage, and advanced tools.

A free and open-source image editing software, GIMP has a ton of features that can give the most popular software in its category a run for its money. This feature-laden tool is capable of easily fine-tuning images and creating remarkable works of art from simple photographs.

Its notable functionalities include noise reduction, image enhancement tools, customizable brushes, and color adjustment tools. GIMP also has features that can greatly benefit advanced users such as Bezier curves, filters, layer masks, and an animation package. The platform supports pre-installed or downloadable plugins, a handy feature. Its user interface is simple and can be used with ease, requiring no training at all. Albeit the product may not have the comprehensive functionalities of commercial editing tools, it has all the editing features that you need.

Customization options, meanwhile, let users enhance productivity. The software also supports third-party plugins. Pixlr is a suite of web-based image editing apps that can run on any browser and operating system. The software offers all essential photo editing tools for basic and professional-level enhancements, multi-image format templates, and over two million filters, overlays, and effects.

While it has an array of tools for sophisticated editing, it also provides tools for quick image fixes and tweaks without sacrificing professional quality. This makes it a handy tool for swift touch-ups and, with native mobile apps, for editing on the go. The first three are free while the last one comes in an affordable subscription-based plan. The software is a lightweight app and consumes little memory even on mobile devices. Pixlr has a solid and large community of fans.

To date, it has racked up more than million total users and 10 billion total images edited using its applications. A feature-rich and open-source graphic design software, Inkscape is known for its ability to easily create vectors.

It has a wide array of vector editing tools that are very handy for graphic designers. These tools can be used to manipulate graphic aspects such as shapes, paths, text, clones, gradients, and transparency effects, among many others. Creative Commons metadata, node editing, path operations, circumfluent object text, and node editing, among many other operations, are likewise supported. The solution is so robust that it is comparable with expensive tools of its kind.

With Inkspace, users can play with image shapes, apply filters, and fill them with gradients. Autodesk SketchBook is an on-premise sketching app for artists, designers, and creative professionals.

It offers easy to use but powerful drawing and painting tools for creating artworks, visual designs, and stunning illustrations on desktop and tablets. It comes with an intuitive interface and a rich toolset that includes customizable brushes, gradient fills, color library, advanced layers, blending modes, perspective guides, stroke stabilizers, and layers, among others.

Image editing software PaintShop Pro is an easy-to-use tool that has a myriad of features, which include image drawing, editing, and correction, among many others. Its high-grade tools give you the ability to edit images easily, create graphic designs, and improve your photos using restore, quick fixes, effects, and retouch features. The software is not only inexpensive, but it also comes with several user-requested improvements.

Also, it does not only allow for photo editing but lets you manage your photos using its built-in organizer and even view EXIF data and geotags, conduct face searches and image ratings. Piktochart is a cloud-hosted graphic design software built to help you create quality presentations and professional-looking infographics.

It allows you to produce your content quickly and tell your visual stories with impact, be they in the form of infographics, reports, printable posters, or slide presentations. The process is made quick and simple with a drag-and-drop editor — just choose from a selection of pre-built templates, add interactive elements like charts and images, tweak fonts and colors, and print it or share it online. Crafting visual messages and stories for marketing, corporate, or educational use can be done in minutes.

Piktochart is equipped with design flexibility and HTML publishing capability to let you come up with web publisher-ready designs and presentations.