The Best Graphic Design Software for 2024 (2024)

A graphic designer who works with raster images and need compositing layers will have a hard time doing their jobs without Photoshop. It's the industry standard, so any clients or vendors you deal with will accept files from Adobe's class-leading image software. There are other options that support its formats, but sometimes you don't get 100% compatibility, and those tools lack Photoshop's slick interface and cutting-edge image-manipulation tools.

Photoshop is for professional designers, as well as photographers who want to make detailed pixel-level edits and apply advanced features to their work. Serious amateurs can greatly benefit from learning to use Photoshop, too, and the program includes multifarious help and tutorial resources. It's not, however, for anyone unwilling to pay a recurring subscription.

Adobe's painting, sketching, and watercolor app makes creating art on the iPad feel more natural than ever. Adobe Fresco is a stunningly polished app that replicates the feeling of drawing and painting in a digital environment. The app is free, though you get significant benefits, such as additional brushes and shapes, with a subscription, starting at $9.99 per year.

To use Adobe Fresco, you must have an iPad, iPhone, or Microsoft Surface. You also need a stylus, such as an Apple Pencil. If you meet those two requirements, download the free version and give it a try—it's worth it.

Illustrator is the premier vector editing and drawing application bar none. Yes, you can edit vector graphics in some other products included here, particularly CorelDraw, and that app can even pull off some effects that are harder to do in Illustrator. But most graphics designers are best served by the industry-standard Adobe Illustrator. With it you also get impressive type support and companion tablet apps for creating digital drawings.

Illustrator is undeniably for any professional illustrator or graphics editor, but hobbyists who like to create visual art also can benefit from it, too. Those who are unwilling to pay a recurring subscription fee, however, should look to one of the other products included here, like Affinity Designer or CorelDraw.

InDesign is another Adobe product that has become the industry standard, in this case for publication layout software. It pushed QuarkXpress out of that spot years ago. As with its other Creative Cloud stablemates, Adobe continues to enhance InDesign with tools for the ever-changing publishing landscape, as well as adding creativity and ease-of-use features. You also get unmatched typography tools with Adobe Fonts and stock media from Adobe Stock.

InDesign is squarely aimed at publishing layout design professionals. Marketers and those who need to produce publications can also benefit from it. As with all the professional design software from Adobe, it requires a recurring subscription fee, so it's not for you if you balk at that prospect.

Adobe XD is one case of a product from Adobe that's not actually the industry standard. In the field it inhabits (interface design and prototyping) the product to reckon with is Sketch, which now faces competition from Figma, which Adobe acquired in 2022 for $20 billion. Despite coming a little later to the field, though, XD offers great responsive-design tools, strong team features, and the familiarity of Adobe tools.

Designers of app and website interfaces need to take a look at XD. With it, you get Adobe's top-notch technology innovations that just keep coming, along with strong collaboration options. Unlike Sketch, Adobe XD is cross-platform, running happily on both macOS and Windows. It does require a subscription fee, however.

Appealing modern design templates for social media, presentations, and printing are standouts in Canva. The web, mobile, and desktop app can be had for free, although for an annual fee, you get access to a wealth of extra templates and stock content. The Canvas for Teams subscription adds strong collaboration features.

Canva targets nondesigners who need to create promotional, marketing, and social media content. But professionals will certainly appreciate the ease it brings to creating compelling designs.

Procreate is a premium quality yet low-cost iPad app for artists of every kind, from professionals to hobbyists. With abundant customizable features, expandability, and an attractive and intuitive user experience, anyone can create 2D and 3D paintings, drawings, hand lettering, and animations.

Procreate is for artists of any level who work on an iPad and who specifically sketch, paint, or illustrate. The app's low cost makes it friendly to practically everyone with an artistic inclination.

Like Adobe Illustrator, Corel is for drawing and editing vector illustrations, but it brings along some capabilities that would require add-ins in the Adobe app, and it's both easier to use and less expensive.

If you want an easy, more affordable entrée into the world of vector graphics design, CorelDraw is worth a look. It also can serve professionals who want some of its special effects tools. And if you don't want to pay a subscription, Corel lets you buy to own for a one-time price.

PaintShop Pro is a longtime Photoshop competitor, and while it offers a great many of the tools found in Adobe's market-leading application, it costs a lot less. As a plus, you can work with vector images as well as raster.

For those who don't need to collaborate with other Adobe Creative Cloud users and don't want to pay the high ongoing subscription fees, PaintShop Pro is a good choice. It gets you most of the effects, layer tools and image manipulation found in Photoshop, but without the super-slick interface and whizbang new AI tools.

"No subscription" sums up the main reason to go with Affinity Designer. More than that, though, for its low one-time price, you do get a good helping of vector drawing tools, as well as generous font support and its unique Contour tool for joining shapes organically.

As alluded to above, Affinity Designer is primarily for those who don't want to pay the Adobe monthly tribute. So it's a good option for design amateurs, but pros will appreciate some of its capabilities as well.

Creative Cloud Express is a relatively new offering from Adobe that goes directly against the highly successful Canva. That is, it's a template-based graphic design tool for nonprofessionals who need to create marketing materials or social media posts. The software brings with it Adobe's vast depth of imaging smarts and lets you create something good-looking without a lot of fussing and tinkering with details. A free version will suit many, but the paid version gets you more stock content and lets you store, manage, and share multiple brands’ basic assets, like logos, color palettes, and typefaces. It works with both video and still images and lets you output in formats suited to all the popular social networks or to PDF.

Express is for those who don't want to invest hundreds of hours learning how to use Adobe's professional design applications, yet need to quickly create compelling materials for marketing or social network posts. The free version will appeal to hobbyists, while the paid Premium subscription costs less than Creative Cloud but adds features useful for professionals.