Whether you're an experienced designer or just starting out, it's important to find the right tool for your specific needs. This can be challenging because the design world is crowded with different programs. Some, like Photoshop, are used widely in the industry while others — such as Illustrator — are considered by many to be more advanced and versatile.
Adobe Illustrator is the industry-standard vector drawing and editing program that's been a staple in the graphic design world for years. It's regularly updated to add new features and tools and continues to hold its place as the best option for designers who want to make use of vector images and pixel-based art in their designs.
It's an excellent tool for creating logos, icons, business cards, billboards and other promotional materials that are used in print or digital media. And, because it uses vectors, these graphics designing can be sized to any size without compromising their quality.
This is the most popular and most comprehensive software for creating artwork, icons, and other designs that can be used in both print and digital media. It's also an excellent program for designing infographics, as it has a huge selection of tools that can be used to translate drawings into clean digital form.
In addition, it is optimized for GPU acceleration on rendering tasks, meaning you'll benefit from high-end graphics cards if your design workflow involves a lot of graphics manipulation and rendering.
Illustrator's pen tool can zoom-in to a precise pixel location and adjust the colors and shapes of an image, making it easier for designers to create a pixel-perfect work of art. It also has support for touch-enabled devices, so you can build beautiful 3D animations with the click of a button.
Another great vector tool is the free and open source GIMP. This is a lightweight alternative to Adobe Photoshop that can handle a wide variety of graphic creation and editing tasks. It's compatible with all major operating systems and has a strong community.
Affinity Designer is another budget-friendly option that has a similar set of tools and features to Illustrator. It's a good choice for beginners and has an interface that is friendly and user-friendly.
Krita is another free and open-source digital art software that works well for a wide range of projects. It's not quite as advanced as some of the other alternatives to Adobe Illustrator, but it can handle a large number of different file formats and is compatible with all major operating systems.
PixTeller is a graphic editor that allows users to create personalized visuals in a short amount of time, mainly for personal or business purposes. The online tool comes with a robust drag-and-drop editor and access to a library of premade templates for all types of graphics and visuals.
Mega Creator is an online DIY graphics editor that lets users create catchy graphics from scratch or by customizing any of its pre-made templates. It is ideal for web and mobile app developers, social media marketers, bloggers, copywriters and other content creators who need pro-looking pictures in a hurry.