Great graphic design software is an important mix in social media marketing game. It is essential to create compelling and engaging graphics to present your content in the best possible light. Let’s face it. Social Media is a busy place to be, and you need graphics that grab viewers attention. 

So we’ve compiled a list of both paid and free software tools that can help you create your next stunning graphic design!

The list is:

1. Adobe Photoshop
2. Canva
3. Sketch
4. Adobe Illustrator
5. Inkscape
6. Gravit Designer
7. GIMP
8. Visme
9. Adobe InDesign
10. Pixlr

Adobe Photoshop is arguably the most popular software for graphic design and is used by millions of artists around the world. Whether you are looking to create graphics for social media posts, profile banners, landing pages, websites, logos and more — this software can do it all! 

Along with creating graphics for your social media it is also an image editing software, and if you are into illustration you can even draw or paint anything in the platform. You can define the size of your canvas, isolate elements from backgrounds, create custom brushes, work in 3D, and do so much more. 

From small edits to sophisticated designs, Adobe Photoshop has tools for every level. 

Pricing:
$9.99 per month

Pros and cons:
Beginners may find the interface difficult to take in one’s stride. Raw updates or untested beta versions are sometimes released. Progress monitoring facility is not present in fewer tools.

New input features may not have an appeal for everyone. Less support for vector graphics.

Monthly subscriptions: 85% of first month

Yearly subscriptions (monthly payment): 85% of first month

Yearly subscriptions (one-time payment): 8.33% of first year

Website:
Click below to get Adobe Photoshop
https://www.adobe.com

If you are just starting out and have no experience in graphic design and you are looking for something easy and cost effective, then Canva may be for you. Canva has exponentially grown in the last few years, as it has helped entrepreneurs on a tight budget create great graphics using templates as a starting point.

This free online graphic design software allows you to create designs easily and quickly. There are a ton of templates, fonts, images, many of which are free to use. Canva works on the drag and drop concept, where you only need to select the elements and drag it to your work area and customize it. 

This program does not provide you with advanced features like Photoshop. It, however, solves a beginner’s design need who doesn’t want to get into the process of learning and purchasing premium software. 

Canva is available as a graphic design app that can be used in Apple and Android devices. The basic features in Canva are free; you will, however, be charged if you want to use more features in it. 

Pricing:
$9.95 per month.

Pros and cons:
There’s no need to subscribe to or pay for Canva. If you are using Canva for personal use, free version is enough. It has almost all formats available, and if there’s not a template, it is easy to make another one. It stores all your personally created designs. Because Tiktok is very popular now, Canva has created templates suitable for this platform alone.  Canva has a phone app that has all the same features that Canva on the web does.

Website:
https://www.canva.com

Sketch is a Mac-only graphic design program that focuses mainly on digital design. These digital designs are used to create websites, apps, and interfaces. Unlike Photoshop, Sketch isn’t built for photo editing or print work. With Sketch, you can create a prototype by collaborating with other designers on the platform itself. The program has a smart layout feature in which the component will automatically resize based on the content. There are hundreds of plugins in the software which will let you do vector editing and other design work with precision down to the pixel. Digital icons are another thing that can be created through this software. Sketch, on the downside, is not great for print design or illustrations

Pricing:
$99 per year

Pros and cons:
Easy to learn and use. Lots of good tutorials available. Creating reusable global components for web designs. No cloud file storage integrated.

Website:
www.sketch.com

Adobe Illustrator is a design software that is centered around vector design. You can create artwork, icons, posters, etc.  and the designs created in Adobe Illustrator can be used in business cards or billboards and from smartphones to 8k screens. You can use this software to draw, mix, and refine designs to create something spectacular. Adobe has made a mobile version called Adobe Illustrator Draw, which is one of the best graphic design apps out there. 

To draw, you can use the shaper tool and create vector shapes. Geometric shapes can be added to other outlines and can be moved, reshaped, and scaled. Even the fonts in the software can be manipulated according to your needs by adjusting their weight, slant, or width. For beginners, Adobe provides professionally designed templates to save time. The user interface of the program is helpful, but there is a steep learning curve to get good at illustrator. 

Pricing:
$19.99

Pros and cons:
It provides a helpful user interface. It allows for in-panel editing. It creates files in manageable sizes.  It creates print graphics and web graphics. || For those familiar with vector-based graphics, Adobe Illustrator will feel like an intuitive program that is ready to meet your needs. For everyone else, there must be a time window granted to train on the various features the platform offers. Adobe Illustrator is an exception product for those who are working with vector graphics. If you’re using bitmap images with the dot-matrix data structures of pixels, then you’ll find that this platform offers very little in the way of support. You are able to vectorize your raster images to make use of the toolbox offered by Illustrator, though that loses some of the information of the graphics and may create undesired results. If you’re using a lower resolution display, then you’ll find that the updated user interface for Adobe Illustrator will take up a lot of space. At the same time, the image tracing it uses is still heavily reliant on a confusing set of settings, which makes it difficult for some users to get up and running right away.

Monthly subscriptions: US$72

Yearly subscriptions: (monthly payment): US$72

Single Purchase: (one-time payment): 8.33%

3 standard assets a month (monthly payment): 85% of first month 

Website:
Click below to get Adobe Photoshop
https://www.adobe.com

Inkscape is a professional tool ideal for vector art lovers and graphic designers who use SVG file format. The tool is perfect for Windows, Linux, OS, and Mac as well. It doesn’t matter whether you are a professional or just a person who wants to create vector images for a personal blog. In terms of sketching, coloring or making illustrations Inkscape is very easy to use. With the Ghostscript extension .eps files are easily readable.

Pricing:
Free

Pros and cons:
Pros: Absolutely free. Endless Filters. New effect tools as a bonus.
Cons: Extremely slow.

This is another free graphic design software that can be used to create vector-based designs. You can create logos, edit photos, and create animations and illustrations in this program. Gravit does not have an offline version in the free plan. The software is fully customizable according to the user’s needs. The pro version of Gravit is paid and has more advanced features like advanced export options, offline version, more color space, etc.

Gravit Designer is a free full-featured vector graphic design app that works on ALL platforms. Unlock the full power of your creativity with fast and flexible tools tailored to professional designers

Pricing:
There’s free trial and there’s paid version that costs $50

Pros and cons:
Simple to understand and use. Very friendly interface. Cross-platform. It offers total portability to almost any platform. Modern UI. Friendly keyboard shortcut.. If you have used vector illustration software for 10 years or more, you may find Gravit Designer too simple and confusing. Official sources do not provide a lot of information about the program. It uses its own theme and icons. 

Website:
https://www.designer.io/en/

GIMP is a free graphic design software that works on many platforms like Windows, Linux, and Mac OS. GIMP is an open-source program that allows you to change its source code and distribute the program. There are many customization programs and 3rd party plugins that can be used in GIMP to improve your productivity and create better designs. GIMP can also be used to retouch images, wherein you can even make creative composites. Interface components and mockups can also be designed, along with print designs such as icons and logos.

Pricing:
Free

Pros and cons:
The main benefits of GIMP are its rich image editing feature set, customizations, and it is free. It is a powerful application that can help you create professional-looking images. Here are the specifics: GIMP is a powerful but free image editing application. GIMP cannot handle anything other than 8bit RGB, grayscale as well as indexed images. It contains limited third-party plugins compare to photoshop. GIMP does not perform well if you need to edit big images with lots of layers. Creating good looking arc shape in GIMP software may be difficult.

Website:
https://www.gimp.org

Free graphics software, Vectr can be used to create vector graphics. These vectors created won’t lose their quality when scaled. Vectr doesn’t use pixels to create the design; it uses mathematical equations. This free graphic design software is available both online and for desktop. Vectr provides you with an easy to use platform which you can use to create any 2D graphics. It can be business cards, logos, posters, brochures, etc. 

Pricing: Free

Pros and cons:   It looks very simple, but at the same time works with a great path alteration method that allows users to modify shapes and colors to a great capacity. The file then can be exported as png, svg or jpg, and the result will be a Vector that will lose very little if any quality when resized in other apps. It has great functionality tools, like changing the corners of a path from square to rounded, or applying different layers on the image, which gives the user a great amount of freedom. Overall, it is really simple to use and learn, but has extensive uses and can be used to great value.

It has a very limited resource of shapes and icons.   It doesn’t appear to be able to create anything more advanced than what an experienced Canva user could do in half the time. Signing up is necessary in order to save file and there are ads that pop up which are common for free software.

Website:
https://vectr.com

Visme is an online design tool that goes above and beyond basic design capabilities, without requiring you to learn any complex software. It has an easy drag-and-drop editor, which lets both businesses and individuals create stunning and interactive visual content. There are hundreds of templates to choose from across 40+ categories, from presentation and infographics to press releases, reports and social media images. With a free Visme account, you can use some of these templates, but you get full access to millions of stock photos, videos, icons, animated graphics, fonts and graphs to customize these templates as much as you want.  If you want to access premium templates and features like the brand kit, you need to upgrade to a paid account. There are multiple download formats available in Visme, from image to offline web. You can also publish your projects online and share them with a live URL. The uniqe with advanced animation and interactivity features. For example, you can create a custom animated character, or add links, hover effects and pop-ups to your designs.

Visme is already used by millions of users worldwide, that’s why your audience will definitely find it useful. Don’t hesitate! Join Indoleads right now and start promoting Visme!

Pricing:
Basic – $0 per month, Standard $14.00per moue thing about Visme is you can bring your content to lifnth, Complete $25.00per month

Pros and cons:
Visme is incredibly easy to use and even people who don’t know much about design can create stunning graphics with it. Even when you don’t have an idea to start with, you will end up with something nice.There are some tiny glitches on occasion, but nothing serious.

Website:
https://www.visme.co/

Adobe InDesign is a must-have software tool if you are in the business of publishing. It offers excellent capabilities to design stunning magazines, info sheets, and brochures while easily exporting them to PDF or HTML

Pricing:  InDesign is available only by subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud, either as a single app, for $20.99 per month, or as part of the entire design suite, for $52.99 per month

Pros and cons: Graphic designers can efficiently combine graphics and texts for easier streamlining and optimizations of files. It allows users to add tags to indexes, keywords, anchor text frames, footnotes, table of contents, and captions with hyperlinks. It supports HTML exporting that enables web developers to export clean and simple codes during the implementation of the website’s layout designs. This works great for WordPress sites.

It is an industry-standard for desktop publishing. The less intuitive user interface can make things overwhelming for new users.

InDesign is not positioned for general users. Suitable for enterprise use only. Relatively expensive than other similar software available in the market.

Website:
Click below to get Adobe Photoshop
https://www.adobe.com

Pixlr offers plenty of useful features for editing, creating, and sharing creative images — while it’s less advanced in function than Illustrator, it’s cloud-based and supported on mobile, desktop, or the web. If your position requires you to work from different devices to create images, give Pixlr a try.

Pricing:  Free

Pros and cons:: The Pixlr Marketplace is an excellent resource for content planning and creation and offers beautiful inspiration to our design team.

Canva offers a much larger array of templates than in Pixlr.  

Affiliate Program:https://blog.pixlr.com/a-pixlr-affiliate-program/

25% commission on annual membership

100% commission on monthly membership

Social Media:
https://www.facebook.com/pixlr/

Pro Tip:

If you need professional graphic design and digital marketing for your business and are ready to move to the next level of marketing for your company, please contact us here.

For professional printing for your design work, please contact us here. Or you can can see a list of the Top Print Design Companies.

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For professional  logo design work in Canada, please contact us here. Or you can can see a list of the top Logo Design Canada.

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