Top 10 Graphics Design Software in 2017

Graphics Design

We have seen in the previous post: Significance of Graphics Design for Businesses and Professionals in-depth. Now, we may have some practical hints and details regarding its software/tools in the current post, which can help graphics designers to accomplish their goals rapidly and with quality outputs.

Criteria for Selection of Graphics Design Software

It true that without setting the selection criteria, we cannot make a wise decision anyway so let’s first set the required criteria: The general perception of graphics designer community regarding the designing software that those can divide into two major categories:

1. Illustrators: Have capabilities and features to developed highly complex illustrations, animations, and designs.
2. Photo Editors: Capable of editing images and design effect in photos.

Practically, selecting any category and spending money and time may not be an intelligent choice. Therefore, it is better we select the graphics design software based on pre-defined criteria such as:

• Intuitive & Easy-to-Use: It help to make learning quick and comprehensive
• Robust Tools & Features: To foster innovation and creativity in design as well as designers who use it
• Standard & Trendy Tools: Graphics design industry used to set the standards for common techniques and practices. Therefore, software must have essential tools to address requirements and guidelines
• Creative Control: Designer can add special effects on UI elements to make display alluring. Adding texts with effects enhance the design. Adjusting size and optimization can make loading performance better
• Compatibility: Designers should have tools to export the design in any format that end-users can see in their viewers, or other designers can edit the output with other designing and animation software. In due course, supports various file formats, particularly which are trendy at present is vital
• Usability: Software must have designer-friendly user interface, onboarding, and follow conventions for layouts
• Printing or Publishing Abilities: The printing and publishing the finished design is critical for any designer, so software must have standard color pellets or swatches to support printing on the paper (CMYK) or on the web (RGB) as well as compression features or extension to make output web or other media compatible
• Extensive Help or Supports: Extensive documentations, real-time tips through effective onboarding techniques, and manual support team to help out the needy designers

Now, with this background information and hints, let’s have a look at the top 10 graphics design software to help the graphics designer community in 2017.  

No.1: Adobe Photoshop

Photoshop has earned a big prestige in digital photo editing and painting industries. It is believed that there are very few things that we cannot do with Photoshop when digital imaging task are in question. Photoshop has both kinds of capabilities: photo editing and illustrating. Therefore, it is the most powerful graphics design software that can provide resources to edit and create beautiful work of arts. Those features are:

• Layers and filters to build images and create depth
• Moving, resizing, and manipulating tools
• Art software like pen tools and set of brushes
• Can generate the most compatible file types to save and export the images
• The state-of-art animation and effects generating tools
• Floating toolbars and tool customization abilities to give highly personalized experiences to the developers
• Setting shortcut keys and other operating technologies make it an evergreen choice for seasoned designers

 

No.2: Adobe Illustrator

It is a leading graphics design software for vector graphics and capable of managing the most intricate artwork with speed and stability. It has some distinguish features that attract graphics designers and digital artists to be loyal users and those are:

• File formats are industry standards
• Integrated with other Adobe Solutions
• The latest exporting options with previews
• Resolution-independent effects and live effects
• Highly customizable and efficient interface
• It lets you organize and view 100+ art boards
• Complete mobile support for vectors and texts
• Workspaces with enough rooms
• Dock-able tools
• Flexible color panels
• Highly sophisticated vector drawing tools
• It lets you design intuitively and with required precisions

 

No.3: CorelDraw Graphics Suite

Since long, CorelDraw is enjoying a top place in graphics design software niche particularly for vector graphics and some image editing. Therefore, since a decade graphics, designers are learning CorelDraw first and then Photoshop for advanced image editing at the beginning of their career.

• It is maintaining user-friendliness and ease of use with clean interface
• Tools are clearly labeled to make access easy
• Out-of-box pen tool and style brushes
• Numerous filters to bring innovative effects including 2D and 3D
• Customizable typography
• Allows to add depth and precision manually
• It is well documented and with extensive support system

 

No.4: Corel Paint Shop Pro

Unlike CorelDraw, it is an ideal graphics design software for photo editing and designing.

• Allows selection out of the 88 photo filters for various effect creation
• Options to create HDR images and panoramas
• It has a number of tools to improve usability
• Tab approaches ease file management, adjusting color and effects, and provide editing tools for illustration
• Range of swatches available for colors
• You can bring precision in design by using grids, guides, and snap tools
• Various corrections like color, noise, and lens are easy with tools
• Scaling tools allow easy scaling of images and artwork

 

No.5: Corel Photo-Paint

Unlike CorelDraw, Corel Photo-Paint is raster graphics editing software developed by Corel in 1992. It is chiefly a drawing, painting, and printmaking software to complete the Adobe Photoshop in the market.

• It currently supports Windows platform
• Provide multiple on-screen color palettes with the latest updates
• Uniform fill dialogue box
• Let you embed ICC profiles in various file formats
• Exceptional features for publishing to PDF
• EPS export dialogue box
• Variety of printing features
• Performance & Productivity features
• Ease of use enhancement features
• UI augmented features
• Compatibility and integration features
• Image enhancement features
• Masking, Multimedia, and Precision features
• Object editing features
• Artistic effects, brushes, and painting features

 

No.6: Serif DrawPlus

It is graphics design software stacked with illustration tools to create logos, posters, and animations.

• It allows freedom to create unique design with customizable workspace and tools
• It comes with a wide assortment of illustration tool
• Variety of brushes available as painting toolset
• It provides 48 photo filters to create awesome photo effects
• A number of layout templates easing several tasks
• Making tools to cover up and detail editing

 

No.7: Xara

The following features make its choice for graphic designers of all levels.

• It has revolutionary photo handling tools such as fast & non-destructive photo manipulation tools
• The integrated and advanced photo tools
• Photo panorama and smart scaling tools
• Creative tools like for drawing, advanced text handling, 3D extrude, blends, transparency & feathering tools
• Shadows, Bevels, and contours tools
• It comes with high productivity and usability advantages such as speed, drag-n-drop, solid object editing, zoom, and high quality screen display
• Compatibility with industry standards like import-export, PSD, and PDF support

 

No.8: GIMP

It is the best free option for graphic design online and offline.

• Customizable user interface
• Photo enhancement tools
• Retouching module
• Input and output hardware support
• Support for a range of file formats
• Toggle between multi to single-window modes
• Multi-column dock
• On-canvas text editing
• Cairo graphics library
• Painting, system, and advanced manipulation tools

 

No.9: Inkscape

It is online vector drawing software with native file format being SVG. With the advent of HTML 5 technologies, now it is easy to embed SVG into web pages.

• Supports modern UI design
• Live perspective and envelope editing like extension tools
• Lattice deformation features
• CMYK supports

 

No.10: Sumo Paint

It is versatile online photo editor and painting software for graphics designers. It is free and features rich graphics design software to try. It has 4 million unique visitors across the 200 countries around the globe.

• It has user interface similar to Photoshop including main menu, sidebars, and tasks bar
• It has several filters including fun filters to add funny effects
• It is incredibly simple to use various features, and it is within one click
• Paid desktop version for offline work at throwaway price tag
• Extensively documented and with help system including community help by forum
• Enables designers to sell their artwork

 

Conclusion:

Based on the above reviews of graphics design software highly used in the market, we can say that Adobe products like Photoshop and Illustrator are more trendy in many respect and Corel suits are following the trends. It is true that once you have a powerful set of designing tools, you need the second thing is skills to operate and bring outstanding results to the table. Fortunately, it is a team of graphics designers at Addon Solutions that can help you to provide graphics design talents as well as a set of tools and other infrastructural facilities to foster creativity and deliver you innovative results for your projects whether it is web development or mobile development.