Top 5 free alternatives for Adobe graphic design software
Creating designs for your print on demand business or any other design materials for your online business needs the right software. Bellow you will have a list of 5 free alternatives to the Adobe Graphic design software.
Top 5 free alternatives for Adobe graphic design software
Most probably you know Photoshop and Illustrator, since they’ve been the market leading image editors for a long time. They are mature, easy to use, and offer a lot of features and are updated frequently.
However, in order to use those capabilities from adobe you need to subscribe to their paid monthly service, Creative Cloud.
Each of the bellow alternative programs can do basic tasks like image editing, and creating simple designs for your products and social media. However some of them may be better structured and have more useful features than others.
Krita
It’s a free open-source image editing software with its users consisting mainly of digital painters and illustrators. It’s available for Windows, Mac and Linux.
Krita is a good raster graphics program with a lot of features. You can create your own custom designs, draw texture and matte painters with its highly customizable brush tool, edit photos and more.
It is the only free raster graphics program in this list suited for creating easily all-over print patterns. Which you will duplicate and merge your main layer together and reflects all the changes made to the master layer.
Krita provides a lot of options so it could be a bit difficult to start with, but when you get used to the tools that you need, you’ll be able to create a great design.
Photopea
It’s a free, browser based program and a Photoshop clone. Since it is a browser based it runs perfectly on Windows and Mac. Photopea can be used to edit photos and create designs for various business needs. Moreover, its interface and tools look very similar to Photoshop. The same applied for the keyboard shortcuts for the tools. If you are experienced with Photoshop,then working in Photopea should be simple.
With Its pre-sized templates Photopea makes it easy to create graphics for social media. While on the other hand there are few cons like a small delay in the brush tool, and its ruler tool only measures in pixels, which might need some getting used to if you’ve been using different measurement units in other applications. Also, Photopea doesn’t include some of the common fonts like Verdana,Georgia and Arial.
Inkscape
A program designed specifically for vector editing.
Vector graphics are especially used for creating designs meant for printing on several different types of products. When creating a vector graphic, the print file will not lose quality when it is exported in different sizes. Also Inkscape allows you to set a custom dots per inch for it which is the number of dots in a printed inch.
As the number of dots increases the quality of the print will increase, allowing us to have more sharpness and detail. Inkscape allows you to create complex text graphic designs by choosing any font styles available on your computer and adding various effects to the lettering.
Another useful tool is the Measurement tool, as it gives you accurate distance value between the elements of the design.
Inkscape has a learning curve and takes some time to get used to, especially if you’re used for another software.
GIMP
A free and open-source raster graphics editor that runs on Windows, Linux and Mac. this program can complete the same task as Photoshop. Also you can add more functionality to GIMP by installing plugins created by the community. And as you know, don’t install a plugin from an untrusted source.
The first look at GIMP’s user interface can seem confusing with the tools, shortcuts and workflow, since it is completely different from Adobe.
For example, removing a background from your design needs to be highlighted with the FUZZY SELECT TOOL, then add an Alpha Channel and only now you`ll be able to remove it. Also, the Fuzzy Select Tool needs some extra adjustment.
Also the brush tool might not work smoothly sometimes, while drawing your designs.
Canva
it is not fair to compare it with Photoshop. But it’s a useful platform for designers. It can be installed on iOS and Android and can be used in browsers as well. Their free toolkit is quite extensive, however, you`re able to enjoy the full features without subscribing to Canva’s paid plans. Some simple features such as setting the background to transparent before downloading the design is not available in the free version.
Canva is perfect for creating designs, canvas printing, and designing promotional material for your online store. It is a simple tool that you can understand and start using it without effort.
Before creating your designs in Canva make sure you are aware about the limitations of their free version.
Conclusion
I hope you found this content space interesting and useful.
And now I’d like to hear from you:
In which design software are you using? Or maybe you have a question.
Feel free to leave a comment below.
Originally published at https://tadcoaching.com on March 15, 2021.
