12 Best Graphic Design Software For 2023 (Free and Paid)

Graphic design software is an excellent way to create any kind of design. Graphic designers use these programs to create logos, websites, posters, and more.

This software can help you save time and money by enabling you to create your designs quickly and easily. You can also use these tools to create custom illustrations for clients or other projects.

This article will examine the top 10 graphic design software options available today. We’ll cover each software’s features and pricing so that you can determine which one best fits your needs.

Let’s start with a quick overview:

10 Best Graphic Design Software: In A Nutshell (2023)

Sr. No.	Graphic Design Software	Best For
1.	Adobe Illustrator	Vector-based graphics software
2.	Adobe Photoshop	Best photo and design software
3.	CorelDRAW Graphics	Professional design toolkit
4.	Sketch	All-in-one platform for digital design software
5.	Canva	Beginner-friendly graphics design software
6.	Autodesk Maya	Professional 3D graphics design software
7.	Cinema 4D	Best 3D software suite
8.	Crello	Easiest design tool for non-designers
9.	Adobe InDesign	industry-leading graphic design software
10.	Stencil	Easy-to-use online graphic design software

Here we have explained all software in detail.

1. Adobe Illustrator 

Adobe Illustrator is an outstanding vector editor with many advanced features. With this software, you can design stunning illustrations, business logos, website mockups, page layouts, and anything else you want. The interface of Adobe Illustrator is clear and well-designed, and the tools are flexible, robust, and reliable.

Adobe Illustrator is ideal for experienced designers who want to create creative designs with cutting-edge features. 

Features of Adobe Illustrator 

• Without any 3D knowledge, it is pretty easy to create 3D effects using Illustrator’s 3D window, including rotating, extruding, and applying dynamic light sources.
• Illustrator offers a variety of choices for repeating patterns, including radial rotation tools, mirrored pictures, and hexagonal grids.
• Using its Color Theme Picker, you can pick a colour scheme from another piece of art or image and apply it immediately to your creations.

Pricing of Adobe Illustrator 

Adobe Illustrator offers a free trial for seven days, and its paid plan starts at $20.99 monthly.

2. Adobe Photoshop

Another professional software is Adobe Photoshop which is widely used for creating web designs, logos, banners, and other graphics. It is also popular among digital artists starting from scratch with their projects.

Furthermore, Adobe Photoshop has many excellent tools that any designer should have. You can make use of paintbrushes,  selection, stamps, and healing tools.

Features of Adobe Photoshop

• You can define your artistic style with the use of its text customization tools by designing unique fonts or putting a watermark on your work.
• You can individually create or draw different document pieces in layers with its Layers palette, then stack them according to the order of presentation.
• The tool lets you transform your design with hundreds of filters and effects, including blurring, distortions, painting effects, textures, stylized text, and more.

Pricing of Adobe Photoshop 

Adobe Photoshop pricing plans start from $20.99/month.

3. CorelDRAW Graphics

The CorelDRAW Graphics Suite has all the features a professional graphic designer might require for vector editing, page layout, and illustrations. Photo editors and visual designers may work to their full potential using its widely-recognized functionalities.

It boasts a community of over 10 million members and an active interactive forum that can be accessed via the software to receive useful tips.

Features of CorelDRAW Graphics

• You can batch export your project as many file formats using CorelDRAW Graphics Suite.
• The software lets you use its easy Corel Font Manager to manage and organize your font library and use your favorite fonts without installing them.
• A cloud-based collaboration workflow can help you speed up the creative process by providing a superior means of communicating with colleagues and customers on projects in real-time.

Pricing of CorelDRAW Graphics

CorelDRAW Graphics offers a free trial for 15 days. Its annual plan costs $269.00 /year.

4. Sketch

The next graphics design software on our list is Sketch which allows you to create beautiful icons, retouch pictures, site designs, and vector illustrations.

You will have the opportunity to design, prototype, and collaborate. It enables you to turn your great ideas into appealing designs, which you can then share with your employees and clients.

Moreover, you can start your creation from scratch with basic shapes or add graphic elements using its  Vector tool or Pencil.

Features of Sketch

• A Sketch Workspace allows you to save files, share ideas, get comments, manage your team, distribute Libraries, and explore your Design System.
• Invite colleagues to your projects, and then provide and receive feedback on any operating system and in any browser.
• Sketch allows you to apply sRGB or P3 color profiles to all your elements and documents.

Pricing of Sketch

You will get a 60-day free trial on Sketch yearly billing plan. It’s paid plan start from $10

5. Canva

Canva is the sole leader in photo editing, logo, banner, and gif design. This web-based platform allows you to express your creativity through social media graphics, posters, and other mediums.

This free design tool includes excellent team collaboration features. It is suitable for businesses that require customizable presentation slides, printouts, and graphs.

Canva offers thousands of professional-looking templates to choose from. You can select any of its templates or design from scratch.

Features of Canva

• You can use its free picture enhancer tool to fix fuzzy, dark, and oversaturated images.
• You convert your PPTX, DOCX, JPG formats, and more to PDF for easy sharing and download with its PDF converter.
• With its free online video cutter and trimmer, you can cut, split, splice, and edit your videos.

Pricing of Canva

Canva is a freemium tool; you can find its free version with limited features. Its premium plan starts from $12.99 per month.

6. Autodesk Maya

Autodesk Maya is a 3D graphics software that provides an extensive set of tools for 3D creation tasks such as modeling, animation, and so on. Developers can create and edit 3D models in various formats, then animate them using the animation tools included in Maya’s package. 

Autodesk Maya allows for the quick rendering of photorealistic pictures and animated visual effects based on animated 3D scenarios.

Features of Autodesk Maya

• Maya has a complete set of APIs that may be used to increase its power and capabilities. Additionally, it offers a Python-based API for those who want to use it.
• Maya includes an extensive tool collection that may help you produce beautifully realistic 3D models using polygon meshes, symmetrical modelling, or intuitive modelling.
• It provides impressive features like motion paths, constraints, and shape keys to help your animation run smoothly.

Pricing of Autodesk Maya

The pricing of Autodesk Maya starts at $235 per month.

7. Cinema 4D

Maxon’s Cinema 4D is a 3D modeling, animation, VFX, visualization, and rendering application. Many industries use Cinema 4D for various purposes, from marketing to commercial animation creation and promotion.

Cinema 4D, like Maya, has motion graphics capabilities and may be used to animate objects or create visual effects.

Features of Cinema 4D

• Artists can make any last-minute modification a client may want with the help of its extensive parametric modeling tools.
• You can add vector graphics to your 3D models by importing them from Adobe Illustrator, PDF, and SVG files.
• With its fully integrated Sculpt tool, you can effortlessly add more detail to any model and object natural surfaces.

Pricing of Cinema 4D

Cinema 4D offers a free trial for 14 days. It has different paid plans starting from $94 per month.

8. Crello (Now VistaCreate)

Crello is another popular graphic design tool that has grown in popularity in recent years.

They say that Crello makes it simple to create one-of-a-kind and professional-looking graphics in a number of formats, anywhere and at any time.

Furthermore, you can access 50 million royalty-free design files with Crello’s fully integrated design library. In addition, you can easily design professional-looking blog covers, advertisements, social media posts, marketing materials, flyers, ebooks, storyboards, magazines, and much more.

Features of Crello

• More than 12,000 static and over 3,000 animated designs in 40 different formats are available on Crello. 
• You can quickly add animated elements to any static photo using its animation tool.
• This software has built-in picture editing features, including cropping, filters, layers, transparency, and blur.
• Crello lets you pick from 29 different styles of music, including ambient, calm, disco, pop, sad, scary, classical, and more.

Pricing of Crello

Crello gives a 7-day free trial to explore its features, and its premium plan will cost you $10 per month.

9. Adobe InDesign

Adobe InDesign is another excellent graphic design software used to make brochures, magazines, posters, and ebooks.

InDesign integrates seamlessly with the other applications in the Creative Cloud application suite, enabling you to produce interactive digital magazines and print-based texts.

Features of Adobe InDesign

• You can move elements in your projects as you like with its Align and Distribute Object functionality.
• Its toolbox allows you to easily modify documents, photos, and text by using transformation, selection, Modification, and navigation.
• The transparency effect of Adobe InDesign draws attention to overlapping pictures.  

Pricing of Adobe InDesign

Adobe InDesign offers a free trial, and its paid plan starts at 20.99/month.

10. Stencil

Stencil claims that it allows you to make social images faster than ever before. You can create a diptych, collage, or image with text in less than two minutes.

This graphic design tool is ideal for Bloggers, SMM Specialists, and Content Managers. This tool is for you if you are not an experienced graphic designer but want your designs to seem professional.

Features of Stencil

• Stencil is integrated with Buffer so you can schedule your posts in advance to save time.
• You can save your image as a template for future use. Further, you may download it in several formats and share it directly on different social media platforms.
• Using the eyedropper tool of Stencil, you can pick any colors from anywhere.
• Stencil allows you to see the preview of your created artwork in seconds.

Pricing of Stencil

Stencil has both free and paid versions. You can save up to 10 images per month in its free version. Its premium plan starts at $9 per month.

11. Inkscape

Inkscape is a vector graphic editor that is primarily used to create vector images, charts, logos, diagrams etc., in scalable vector graphic format.

It can be accessed on Linux, Mac OS X and on windows desktops. Inkscape is the most preferred software tool, especially for beginners, because of the flexibility offered by the software. 

It offers a diverse range of completely featured and well-designed tools to allow you to create, edit and transform vectors. 

Features of Inkscape 

• Inkscape allows you to use drawing tools, shape tools, text tools and embedded bitmaps to create various objects. 

• It allows object manipulation, such as transformations, Z-order operations, grouping objects, alignment and distribution commands etc.

• It Provides access to fill and stroke options, including a colour picker tool, colour selector, pattern fills, dashed stroke, etc. 

Pricing of Inkscape.

You can access Inkscape for free. 

12. Adobe After Effects

Adobe After Effects is one of the most creative tools used by a large number of video designers, compositors and animators. This app can be used to create motion graphics for web films and videos. It can also be accessed to create visual effects. 

Recently Adobe After Effects launched its new tool that allows users to make interactive animations with data files and motion graphics. 

Moreover, users can also take advantage of its virtual reality effects that allow adding VVR effects to their 360/VR videos.

Features of Adobe After Effects

• With Adobe After Effects, you can easily do any visual effects, which improves the post-production quality of the video.

• This platform allows you to work seamlessly by using 3D Modeling and Video Editing.

• It provides a wide range of collaboration tools along with the content library. 

• You can easily create virtual reality environments using the “Create VR Environment” tool.

Pricing of Adobe After Effects.

Along with the free trial, Adobe After Effects provides a creative cloud app plan for $54.99/month.

How to choose the best Graphic Design Software?

Choosing the right graphic design software can be a daunting task. You have to decide what your budget is, what you need, and how much experience you have with graphic design programs.

No matter what kind of graphic design work you do, there’s a good chance you’ll want to learn more about the tools available. Graphic designers are always looking for new ways to make their work easier, and with this in mind, here are some tips on choosing the best graphic design software:

1. Consider your budget. 

If you don’t have much money, don’t worry! There are many affordable options available that will still give you all of the features you need to get started in this exciting field.

2. Look at the types of projects you want to work on. 

Is it mostly printing materials like business cards or flyers? Or do you need something more advanced, like a website design? This will affect your choice of software and the features available in each software- if a tool doesn’t have something that would be useful for your needs, then consider another tool that has that feature available.

3. Reviews

Look at other people’s reviews on different software and see what others think about them – this can help narrow down your choices.

4. Free Trials

Some software offers free trials to try their features out before purchasing, while others come with only premium packages. Consider choosing the tool that comes with free trials.

Related Read

• Best Canva alternatives
• Best AI Copywriting Software
• Canva For Education: Easy to learn

Wrapping Up! Graphic Design Software

Graphic design software is a must for any designer. Many types of graphic design software are available, but we have shared our top 12 best graphic design software for you to consider.

We hope you’ve found this helpful. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact us.

FAQs