Top Free Mac Apps For Graphic Designers

  1. Top 15 Free Mac Apps For Graphic Designers
  2. Best Graphic Design Software Mac
  3. Free Apps To Create Graphics

The majority of graphic designers simply don't need this amount of power in a machine – and the cost is high. But there's a reason why Apple powered up the iMac Pro - because some people need it. The iMac Pro slots in underneath the main Mac Pro and both are workstation-level machines for high-end work. 1 day ago  Best desktops for design, graphics, video and photography in 2020: iMac Pro, Surface Studio 2, and more. As Apple's desktop Macs enter a period of uncertainty, PC manufacturers offer attractive. The best Mac for interface design is again the 27in iMac 5K. Interface design can of course encompass web design, but with this option we're thinking more in terms of apps. Best Graphic Design Software. Popular in windows Graphic Design Software. Adobe Illustrator. Adobe Photoshop. CorelDraw Graphics Suite. These top 10 iPad apps for graphic designers and drawing I put together today will be useful for graphic designers, illustrators, artists and other creatives. They would give you an ability to sketch, paint, prototype, and annotate photos. You may use stylus or just your fingers to play around with all these iPad apps. So, let the fun begin!

Not all designers have the money to kit themselves out with the most expensive design software, particularly when embarking on a new career in graphic design or starting a new business. With millions of newspapers, magazines and trade papers striving for designer’s attention, exclusive graphic design, layout, and content are important to achieve uniqueness, and the ultimate design software should have powerful tools and features that can render the most difficult tasks simple. Fortunately, there are lots of free graphic design software that you can choose to do the job well. We have compiled a list of the 7 best design applications and their features:

#1 Lunacy

ADVERTISMENT:
The Best Deals For Digital Design Assets - InkyDeals.com. Learn More>>

Icons8 Lunacy is a free graphic design software for Windows.
This app works offline and supports all .sketch files. Original idea was to build Sketch for Windows. To help developers and designers who use different operating systems to work together.

It is a full-fledged graphic editor with built-in design resources: icons, illustrations, and photos. Lunacy makes software and content work together.

One of the latest updates is a project shadow copy: your design is safe even if your computer suddenly shuts down.

#2 SVG-Edit

SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) is a graphics design format in which XML is used to detail the shapes. Once this is done, an SVG viewer is used to render the XML. Moreover, modern web browsers are just as capable of displaying SVG in much the same way they display GIF, PNG, and JPG. SVG-Edit is totally built into HTML5, JavaScript and CSS3, without the need for any server-side processing. The software is available over on Github and you can find the download link here, or you can try it live here.

Apart from using SVG-Edit to create documents from scratch and edit them, you can also download and modify the code. The software was designed for 2-dimensional vector graphics, and you would have to look up X3D for 3-dimensional formats. For a brief guide on the capabilities of this software, you can read more here.

#3 Serif DrawPlus Starter Edition

While DrawPlus may not initially come across as a design App that professional graphics designers can use, it is actually surprisingly capable, and it is packaged in a free version that has muscled itself into the list of the top free graphics design applications. The software is intuitive to use and features an array of tools that mirror the functionality of Adobe Illustrator.

Moreover, it features a few extra features implemented in a more user-friendly manner than Adobe’s design software, with 3D-rendering being the chief example. For example, you can quickly make a 3D object via extrusion and apply a plethora of 3D styles that will be instantly applied to your created object. Similarly, the app features a collection of pre-defined templates and brushes to get you started quickly

DrawPlus works well in CMYK and allows you to output print-ready artwork easily in addition to being able to work with Pantone color profiles.

#4 Easel.ly

Easel.ly is a free graphic design application developed to create infographics. While you may notice a few rough edges when you first begin using this software, it lives to its creators’ promise of being easy to use. Simply select a theme, objects and shape then drop some text in and you will end up with an acceptable infographic within no time.

Free

Top 15 Free Mac Apps For Graphic Designers

The software allows you to select from a wide range of color-coordinated themes that are fully developed and can be edited to match your information requirements. In most cases, the result would be a comprehensive and visually pleasing infographic that has a professional look, and at virtually no cost at all.

#5 Daz Studio

Daz Studio is a 3D figure animation, customization, and posing tool that allows users to create remarkable illustrations and digital animations. Its is among the best free tools available to design unique artworks and create animations using environments, animals, virtual props, vehicles, accessories and more. You simply have to select your subject and or settings, set up the lighting, and then arrange your accessories to start creating eye-catching images.

With this graphic design freeware it is easy to produce illustrations for books and book covers, create custom 3D characters and avatars and other graphic design elements.

#6 GIMP

GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program and it is an open-source free graphics design software that debuted on Linux and other UNIX-based platforms. Today versions of the software are available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

GIMP offers functionality that is almost similar to Photoshop, but its interface differs slightly. However, a version of the program that mimics Adobe’s feel and look is available and this makes migration easier for those ditching Photoshop. It offers the full suite of tools you will find in Photoshop; virtually everything that you are accustomed to, and this includes color correction, painting tools, selection, cloning, and enhancement.

The team that is in charge of GIMP’s development has put in much effort to ensure compatibility, so you don’t have to worry about problems manipulating images in popular file formats without any trouble at all. Moreover, GIMP comes with an inbuilt file manager that functions along the same lines as Adobe Photoshop’s Bridge.

One of the best uses of GIMP is by web designers and web developer for editing of high-resolution images and photography to create a web-friendly version. Typically, photographers and other creatives would send large, high-resolution images, several megabytes in size, which would not work on the web, due to website speed issues. GIMP is a great alternative to photoshop because it allows you to tweak such high-resolution imagery to create web-safe versions. With such software it would then be easy to create photography or portfolio sites with high-quality images, but which are small in size. Click here to learn more about how to use this to create the best WordPress themes for photographers.

#7 Sumopaint

This is one of the most capable web browser-based image editors. It offers most of the standard tools you will find on desktop based graphics design application (you can opt to install a PC-based version of the software if you like, by purchasing the Pro version for just $19).

Best Graphic Design Software Mac

To use this tool, you will need to have the latest version of Adobe Flash player installed, so this rules out using it on your Android tablet or Apple iPad. With that in mind, it is light and loads quickly. You will find the standard range of adjustments and tools. These include pencils, Brushes, shapes, cloning, gradients, etc that can all be accessed with ease from the Photoshop-esque floating toolbar. The browser-based tool can also open saved documents from your PC’s hard disk, making it a nifty choice for editing and re-editing.

Which one of these graphic design software would you try? Tell us in the comment section below.

You May Also Like

In this post we have gathered 28 free Mac apps for graphic and web designers. Here they are:

GIMP

GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a freely distributed piece of software suitable for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition, and image authoring. It is a powerful piece of software with capabilities not found in any other free software product. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert-quality photo-retouching program, an online batch-processing system, a mass production image renderer, or an image-format converter. GIMP is modular, expandable, and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image-manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.
Overview and Download:GIMP Homepage.

Scribus

Scribus is an open-source program that brings award-winning professional page layout to Linux/Unix, MacOS X, OS/2 and Windows desktops with a combination of “press-ready” output and new approaches to page layout.Underneath the modern and user friendly interface, Scribus supports professional publishing features, such as CMYK color, separations, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation.
Overview:Scribus Homepage.
Download:Scribus Download Page.

JAlbum

JAlbum allows you to create nice-looking photo galleries for the Web. You simply select or drag and drop folders containing images or movie files onto JAlbum, and it creates thumbnails and HTML pages to publish your images as a gallery or as a picture slide show. The galleries are based on various templates, and their appearance can be further customized by advanced users. The application’s additional features include support for IPTC/EXIF data, style sheets, lossless image manipulation, pluggable image filters, and a built-in FTP/SFTP client.
Overview:JAlbum Homepage.
Download:JAlbum Download Page.

Paparazzi

Paparazzi! is a small utility for Mac OS X that makes screenshots of webpages.It’s written in Objective-C using the Cocoa API and the WebKit framework.
Overview:Paparazzi Homepage.
Download: Paparazzi Download Page.

Free Apps To Create Graphics

Google SketchUp

Developed for the conceptual stages of design, SketchUp is powerful yet easy-to-learn 3D software. We think of it as “the pencil of digital design”. This award-winning product combines a simple yet robust tool set that streamlines and simplifies 3D design. SketchUp is used by professionals and consumers alike. It contains a unique interface that allows 3D forms to be created, viewed, and modified quickly and easily. The core of its simplicity is that you draw the edges of the desired model in 3D space, just as you would using a pencil and paper. SketchUp infers your design intent and automatically determines the nature of the lines and fill shapes to create 3D geometry.
Overview:Google SketchUp Homepage.
Download:Google SketchUp Download Page.

Linotype Explorer

Linotype Explorer is a great font management application for the Mac. You can use it to both install, manage and “test” fonts.
Overview:Linotype Explorer Homepage.
Download:Linotype Explorer Download Page.

FotoFlexer

FotoFlexer is the world’s most advanced online image editor. Completely free access to hundreds of fun and powerful features. Includes photo effects, graphics, shapes, seam carving, morphing and collages. Integrates with Facebook, MySpace, Photobucket, Flickr, and Google.
Overview: FotoFlexer Homepage.

Seashore

Based on Gimp, but doesn’t require X11.
Overview:Seashore Explorer Homepage.

Xee

Fast image viewer and image browser.
Download:XEE Download Page.

Lego Digital Designer

Lego Digital Designer, also known as LDD. With the free Digital Designer software you can build absolutely anything with virtual Lego bricks right on your computer. Then you can buy the real bricks to build your creation online in Lego Factory, or you can print out an inventory of bricks and take it to any Legoland theme park or LEGO Store. The latest version of LDD is 1.5 This version has increased stability and fixes a number of small bugs from version 1.4.
New in Version 2: Improved building experience, quicker brick selection, easier to connect bricks when building, new brick palette tool, more bricks, partly built models for easy start, new backgrounds, new UI, and more.
Overview: Lego Digital Designer Homepage.
Download: Lego Digital Designer Download Page.

Colorate

Colorate is a utility for creation of harmonized color palettes and color schemes, aimed from hobbyist to professional designers.Colorate fully automatizes the palette generation from a particular color swatch, selected from the standard Color Panel, dragged from other application or obtained from an image through the integrated Image Analyze feature.Once the palette has been generated, it is possible to add the new palette to the Library. Colorate can save and open as many Libraries as needed. Colorate also lets save the selected palettes as standard “.clr” system palette files. This feature allows use any of the generated palettes from hundreds of application that uses the Mac OS X standard Color Panel for color selection.
Overview: Colorate Homepage.
Download: Colorate Designer Download Page.

Front End Digital Media WorkShop

Front End Digital Media Workshop harnesses the power of QuickTime to bring you powerful batch based conversion of sound, video, and image files. Resize, resample, join, split, trim, basic edits, selective conversions via marked I/O points are some of the tools. All in an environment that provides powerful play back features including variable speed, slow motion, full screen playback and video to image frame capture. Batch lists can be saved and also used as play lists. Some of the dozens of supported formats include: MP4, MOV, AIFF, 3GP, 3GP2, WAV, AU, AVI (basic codecs), JPEG, PICT, PNG, PSD, BMP, and TIFF. QuickTime video filters and effects are also available.
Overview:Front End Digital Media WorkShop Homepage.
Download:Front End Digital Media WorkShop Download Page.

Autodesk Maya

Maya Personal Learning Edition (PLE) is a special version of Autodesk Maya software, which provides free access to Maya for non-commercial use. It gives 3D graphics and animation students, industry professionals, and those interested in breaking into the world of computer graphics an opportunity to explore most aspects of the Autodesk Maya Complete software in a non-commercial capacity.
Overview: Autodesk Maya Homepage.
Download: Autodesk Maya Download Page.

Graphisoft ArchiCAD

Graphisoft’s ArchiCAD 11 delivers new and enriched capabilities designed to help architects develop their concepts, compete for business more effectively and boost business efficiency. The enhancements reinforce ArchiCAD as an extraordinarily powerful design tool for architectural practices – large and small – worldwide.
Overview:Graphisoft ArchiCAD Homepage.
Download: Graphisoft ArchiCAD Download Page.

Simple CSS

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a way to specify the styles of fonts and other page elements on your sites. It makes it easier for you to update styles too, because when done right, you only need to make a single change to update the styles on multiple pages and elements. Another bonus is that your visitor’s browser needs to load less data per page, helping you reduce your data transfer usage while serving the same information. That means you’ll be able to accommodate more site visitors without having to spend more on data transfer. Your pages will also load faster. To help you work with CSS, we’ve created a tool called Simple CSS, which runs on Macs, Windows and Linux. Simple CSS allows you to create cascading style sheets from scratch, and/or modify existing ones, using a familiar point-and-click interface.
Overview:Simple CSS Homepage.
Download:Simple CSS Download Page.

Software

Blender

Blender is the open-source software for 3D modeling, animation, rendering, post-production, interactive creation and playback. It is available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License. Version 2.44 offers numerous bug fixes. Version 2.46 includes cloth and fur simulation, physics caching and baking, shading, glossy reflection and refraction, raytraced soft shadows, improved rendering features, and more.
Overview:Blender Homepage.
Download:Blender Download Page.

HyperEngine-AV

HyperEngine-AV is a true multimedia editor that lets you combine seamlessly video, photos, sounds and text to create slide shows, family movies, business presentations, or your own feature films quickly and easily, with full DV quality.Media clips can be dragged and dropped, imported or captured in real time from a FireWire DV camera, then freely arranged in the workspace to make movies. Real-time, editable transitions are automatically created when video clips are dragged on top of each other and over a dozen video effects are available and can be applied to any video clip.Audio clips can be edited, arranged, stacked, and processed to generate stunning soundtracks. There is no track limit because . . . there are no tracks! With HyperEngine-AV there is simply no learning curve, you learn as you go, and you can get all the fun of creating any multimedia pieces without the hassle of dealing with tedious and counter-intuitive software interface.
Overview and Download:HyperEngine-AV Homepage.

POV-Ray

POV-Ray is a three-dimensional ray-tracing engine. It takes information you supply and simulates the way light interacts with the objects you’ve defined, creating stunning 3D pictures and animation
Overview:POV-Ray Homepage.
Download:POV-Ray Download Page.

Gnuplot

Gnuplot is a portable command-line driven interactive data and function plotting utility for UNIX, IBM OS/2, MS Windows, DOS, Macintosh, VMS, Atari and many other platforms. It was originally intended as to allow scientists and students to visualize mathematical functions and data. It does this job pretty well, but has grown to support many non-interactive uses, including web scripting and integration as a plotting engine for third-party applications like Octave. Gnuplot supports many different types of terminals: interactive screen terminals (with mouse and hotkey functionality), pen plotters (like hpgl), printers (including postscript and many color devices), and printings to output file as vectorial pseudo-devices like LaTeX, metafont, pdf, svg, or bitmap png. Gnuplot is easily extensible to include new devices.
Overview:Gnuplot Homepage.
Download:Gnuplot Download Page.

DAZ Studio

DAZ Studio is a feature rich 3D figure posing and animation tool that enables users of any skill level to easily create stunning digital imagery. Whether youre a 3D newbie or an avid 3D artist, you’ll find DAZ Studio is the perfect tool for designing unique digital art and animation with virtual people, animals, props, vehicles, backgrounds and more. Experience total creative freedom with DAZ Studio and express yourself in 3D like never before. Version 2.2.2.20 may include unspecified updates, enhancements, or bug fixes.
Overview:DAZ Studio Homepage.
Download: DAZ Studio Download Page.

Bryce

Create breathtaking realistic 3D landscapes and animations with DAZ 3D Bryce 5.5. The easy user interface simplifies the design process for a novice or the seasoned professional. Start out building or importing a landscape as impressive as the Grand Canyon. Populate it with buildings, people or any other object you create or from the extensive DAZ 3D library. The Light Lab provides you robust control over your sunsets, moonlight nights or high-noon ambiance. Tree Lab allows you to plant your landscape like the gardens of Versailles. You’ll have to register your copy of Bryce 5.5 on the publishers web-site to gain access to your free Bryce serial number.
Overview and Download:Bryce Homepage.

Goldberg

Goldberg is a freeware image and movie viewer with image-editing capabilities and support for applying QuickTime and other effects.and its new version affering rotation capabilities, free zooming, and undo support.
Overview and Download:Goldberg Homepage.

Image Tricks

Image Tricks is an image editing application that allows you to easily edit and apply various effects and filters to your photos and images. This program allows modification of around 50 core image effects and filters, import over 20 image formats (TIFF, JPEG, GIF, PDF, EPS among them), export to TIFF, JPEG, PNG, and GIF formats, resize images, and iPhoto integration.
Overview and Download: Image Tricks Homepage.

Inkscape

Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw, or Xara X using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format. Supported SVG features include shapes, paths, text, markers, clones, alpha blending, transforms, gradients, patterns, and grouping. Inkscape also supports Creative Commons meta-data, node editing, layers, complex path operations, bitmap tracing, text-on-path, flowed text, direct XML editing, and more. It imports formats such as JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and others and exports PNG as well as multiple vector-based formats. Inkscape’s main goal is to create a powerful and convenient drawing tool fully compliant with XML, SVG, and CSS standards. We also aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development process, and by making sure Inkcape is easy to learn, to use, and to extend.
Overview:Inkscape Homepage.
Download:Inkscape Download Page.

NIH Image

NIH Image can acquire, display, edit, enhance, analyze, and animate images. It reads and writes TIFF, PICT, PICS, and MacPaint files, providing compatibility with many applications, including programs for scanning, processing, editing, publishing, and analyzing images. NIH Image supports many standard image-processing functions, such as contrast enhancement, density profiling, smoothing, sharpening, edge detection, median filtering, and spatial convolution with user-defined kernels. NIH Image can be used to measure area, mean, centroid, and perimeter. It also performs automated particle analysis and provides tools for measuring path lengths and angles. Spatial calibration is supported to provide real-world area and length measurements. Version 1.62 fixes bugs and improves compatibility with PowerPC machines.
Overview:NIH Image Homepage.
Download:NIH Image Download Page.

Comipro Plus

Comipro Plus is a cartoon production software. You can produce the cartoon work with the kind of feeling which compiles the document with the word processor as the material using the picture and the photograph. Version 4.0.20 may include unspecified updates, enhancements, or bug fixes.
Overview:Comipro Plus Homepage.

Scratch

Designed for children, this freeware multimedia programming tool makes creating animated stories, video games and interactive artwork a snap. Scratch uses a simple graphical interface that lets users put together multimedia programs without any programming knowledge.
Overview:Scratch Homepage.
Download:Scratch Download Page.

iPhoto

Whether you have twenty or twenty thousand digital photos, iPhoto 4 keeps track of them all, automatically organizing them so you can find them fast. Lightning fast. Easy to use, iPhoto puts you in charge of your photographs-helping you import them, organize them into albums, enhance their appearance, as well as, share them in print, via email, over the web and in stunning coffee-table books.
This update addresses several issues with using multiple text rules in Smart Albums and it also eliminates some problems with creating iPhoto books in the German and Dutch languages. Additionally, 4.0.3 keeps users informed about new version of iPhoto that have become available.
Overview and Download:iPhoto Homepage.

Well thats it, I hope I haven’t missed any. (Let me know if I have).

This article was written by the editors of laptopical.com, an excellent site that reviews and give a very fair opinion on everything laptop related.
Thanks to them, and good luck to all the new born babies and of course there fathers.
So, if you are thinking of buying a laptop, or in need of a good read, visit laptopical.com and enjoy.

Related Posts