Free Basic Graphic Design Software – From vector designs to photo editing and 3D graphics, graphic design tools can be very expensive. For beginners and other artists on a budget, there are many tools out there that are more than you need and are very affordable when it comes to price.
Fortunately, there are tons of free graphic design tools and they are plentiful. Below, we highlight the best free graphic design tools for different use cases.
Free Basic Graphic Design Software
The tools below are simplified, simplified, and stripped down versions of design software. Between products and user-friendly design, they are suitable for first-time artists and designers.
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Canva is one of the easiest, simplest options for graphic design. It’s especially good for beginners because Canva offers a collection of design templates for every project from social media graphics and graphics to logos and print marketing materials.
You can tackle almost any task in Canva completely free, although some templates and graphic elements require a Pro account to download.
Just create a free account, click ‘Create a design’ and select the type of project you want to design. From there, you can browse all the different templates available and customize the color scheme, text, and more.
Adobe Spark is a lightweight, free version of the most powerful graphic design tool offered by Adobe. While you won’t get detailed, professional features, you can create images from scratch, build web page layouts, and even do brilliant video editing with Spark.
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Additionally, we love the option to upload global “brand families” such as your logo, colors, and font that make creating designs quick and easy.
Once you create a free account, just one click will start working on common designs such as social media articles and stories, blogs, and even custom designs. Most products on Spark are free to use, but some require payment.
While you won’t be doing actual graphic design work in Coolers, the site makes it easy for beginners to find color schemes and palettes that coordinate well together.
Choose from a wide variety of pop-up palettes, presets or start with a selected color and fill the palette that works with it.
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This means you can make sure your website, brand colors, and other design elements look good with colors that work well together—even if you have no design experience.
To further design and edit, there are many vector design tools that you can use instead of expensive software like Adobe Illustrator and InDesign. The tools below offer similar features and editing experience without the hefty price tag.
Gravit Designer is a complete graphic design tool that works across a bunch of different platforms. As a web application, you can also download Gravit Designer for macOS, Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS.
The app includes many of the fun features you’d expect from an expensive tool like Photoshop, including layer base editing, space management, and photo effects. Additionally, you can draw shapes, icons, emojis and more from the app’s libraries.
Graphic Design & Illustration Software
For many designers, the free version of Gravit Designer is more affordable. However, features like version history, large PDFs, and advanced export options require the paid version.
Vectr is considered a free alternative to Illustrator, with a web version and desktop applications for Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS.
On top of all the basic vector tools you’d expect, Vectr also makes it easy to collaborate on designs, with features for direct collaboration and sync with simple URL sharing.
While Vectr has many limitations on development, the app is completely free – meaning there are no hidden features or templates behind a paywall.
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Vecteezy offers free vector art, images and videos, which means you can combine a library of creative resources with the editor to get your graphic design work done quickly. You can also recreate designs – all in your browser (Chrome, Chromium, and Opera).
The UI is simple and intuitive – very focused like Canva. While the Vecteezy Editor contains more advanced features than Canva, free users miss out on features like booleans, the knife tool, and the blending mode.
When you need to make professional-level edits to photos without the cost of Photoshop, the tools below are right up your alley. Both allow advanced image editing and a Photoshop-like UI – meaning it’s familiar and won’t leave you with a steep learning curve.
Sumopaint photo editing software is completely web-based – so no downloads are required. Still, Photoshop’s UI includes all the features you’d expect from a full-featured design and photo editor.
Best Free Tools For Graphic Design
Graphic designers can choose from a variety of shapes, textures, brushes, gradients, layers and effects. In addition, Sumo has also built dedicated tools for all design projects, including Sumo3D, Sumopixel, and Sumophoto.
Pixlr is a photo editing application that allows designers to quickly create professional photo edits or edits, including additions, background cuts, and artistic effects. Offering both Pixlr X—designed for one-click editing—and the advanced Pixlr E, the app is a great choice for both beginners and professional photographers.
However, Pixlr is one of the more limited freebies on our list. You need to purchase a paid subscription to access the full package, including customization features, AI features, and a large library of assets, plugins, and templates.
3D design software can get very expensive, very quickly. But you don’t need Creo or Autodesk to build 3D models. The following tools provide everything you need to create in 3D without expensive CAD software.
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Daz 3D is one of the best tools for building 3D models quickly. With a large library of people, animals, objects and animations, anyone can start creating 3D models in no time.
The software is available as a free download for Mac and Windows users and handles everything from manipulation and morphing to animation, rendering, and physics.
The main thing to note when comparing Daz to paid software is the inability to edit and design – in addition, some assets in the Daz library are required for purchase.
Blender is a great choice for designers, illustrators, animators and more. It includes features for rendering, modeling/sculpting/UV, VFX, animation and graphics, and 2D and 3D story technology.
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The application is completely open source and 100 percent free to create, share and even sell your own designs.
With a large number of options and an emphasis on building from scratch, Blender is best suited for professional 3D designers. This is the most advanced and potentially bug-free and cost-effective 3D modeling software.
Storage is an easily overlooked cost for graphic designers – but it’s often an important one. If you’ve already paid for a graphic design service like Adobe, storage may be built into your payment, so be sure to check that.
In addition, the following solutions offer free storage, with reasonable prices to improve your space when needed.
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The free version of Google Drive offers the largest storage capacity, with 15 gigabytes available for free. It’s important to note, though, that if you’re also using Gmail, your email storage will consume 15 GB. But, if you go beyond the free tier, Google’s paid storage makes a lot of sense at just $1.99 a month for 100GB.
With easy uploads and plenty of organization options, and tons of software integrations, Google Drive is a great choice for storage. But some designers have shown that it is not the best or the best way to share work with customers.
PCloud offers up to 10 gigabytes of cloud storage for free, which includes access from any device and connection and folder sharing.
Some graphic designers suggest that pCloud is the best option for client sharing – because the app includes more options when it comes to file preview.
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Space, subscription plans start at just $4.99 a month for 500GB. Additionally, pCloud desktop apps make it easy to work across devices without worrying about backups or syncing.
Dropbox is one of the most popular file storage solutions on the market, and the graphic design industry is no exception. While Dropbox is famous for its ease of use and fast uploads, the free version (Dropbox Basic) is very limited, offering only 2GB of storage before needing to upgrade to a subscription.
No matter what style of writing you’re looking for, there are tons of free options online. The following websites will help you find what you need quickly and easily.
Monotype’s MyFonts tool is basically a search engine for fonts and font combinations. Filter options make it easy to find what you’re looking for and narrow down the results to only free text types.
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Especially WhatTheFont! the tool allows designers to load any PNG or JPG image into the browser and the tool will match fonts used from the extensive Monotype library. It is one click from there to download the font.
With Google Fonts, you can search for specific font families or search and filter by type, language, and features. Opening a font family shows you available styles, glyphs, and recommended font combinations. Alternatively, you can write your own