Kristine Mae D.

Reloba 11STEM 10P

1. Adobe Photoshop.

Adobe Photoshop is synonymous with photo editing for graphic designers. It is one of the most
popular photo editing software tools in the market in a robust package that offers excellent graphic
design capabilities.

Key Features:
 Design Tools: Offers a lot of design tools for both mobile apps and web
 Creative Cloud: Its active synchronization with Adobe Creative Cloud offers a lot of unique
features, including Content-Aware Crop, Face-Aware Liquify, Artboards, the Design Space
view, synced libraries, a glyph panel, Cloud Documents, touch, and stylus input support,
among others.
 User Interface: Adobe is continuously working on delivering a more customizable user
interface. It offers several targeted workspace layouts, including Graphic and Web, Motion,
 3D, Painting, and Photography, Designer can also create your own custom layout of panels
and windows.
 Open-Source GIMP Software: If you don’t want to pay a dime, then you can download and
install this software for free. Consider installing it on a powerful machine to avoid lag and
other performance issues.

Pros:
 It offers a complimentary mobile application
 Its slick user interface offers a lot of assistance for easy use
 Got a rich set of typography and drawing tools
 Comes loaded with 3D design capabilities
 Offers a library and photo management with Adobe Creative Cloud
 Efficient file transfer between different programs
 Multiple design tools come with responsive graphics
 Ability to edit animation and video layers
 Users can define the size of the canvas, create custom brushes, work in 3D, isolate elements
from backgrounds, among others.

Cons:
 Adobe now offers Photoshop along with the subscription of Creative Cloud. The recurring
payment turns out to be more costly, and people who want to buy software forever don’t
have the option to buy a perpetual license
 A plethora of features might overwhelm a new user
 Offers lessor support for raster and vector images like SVG files

Pricing Plans:
Adobe offers Photoshop at a subscription price of US$33.99 per month per license.

Get started with Adobe Photoshop today.

Try Adobe Photoshop

2. Adobe InDesign.
Adobe InDesign is a must-have software tool if you are in the business of publishing. It offers
excellent capabilities to design stunning magazines, info sheets, and brochures while easily
exporting them to PDF or HTML.

Key Features:
 Easy To Use: Unlike PhotShop, InDesign requires a low learning curve. That means new
users can quickly learn how to combine text and graphics to achieve the best results.
 Adjust Layout: The ‘Adjust Layout’ feature empowers the designer just to change the text of
the template, and design gets adjusted automatically, which is great for infographics.
 Sensei Technology: Adobe’s AI-powered Sensei technology ensures automatic resizing and
arrangement of images.
 Adobe InCopy: Designers can leverage InCopy to work with other members of the team by
sharing text, colors, and graphics.

Pros:
  Graphic designers can efficiently combine graphics and texts for easier streamlining and
optimizations of files.
 It allows users to add tags to indexes, keywords, anchor text frames, footnotes, table of
contents, and captions with hyperlinks.
 It supports HTML exporting that enables web developers to export clean and simple codes
during the implementation of the website’s layout designs. This works great for WordPress
sites.
 It can help you eliminate redundant div tags in HTML files along with insignificant content
grouping.
 Has the capability of resizing multiple objects and change the width and height at the same
time.
 Designers can leverage its Eyedropper tool to apply position or size instantly to another
object within the document.
 It is an industry-standard for desktop publishing.

Cons:
 The less intuitive user interface can make things overwhelming for new users.
 Not positioned for general users. Suitable for enterprise use only.
 Relatively expensive than other similar software available in the market.
 PDF comment integration needs perfection

Pricing Plans:
Adobe offers InDesign at a monthly subscription of $20.99. The full Creative Cloud costs $52.99
per month.

Get started with Adobe InDesign today.

Try Adobe InDesign

3. CorelDraw Graphics Suite.

Key Features:
 Content Exchange: It is Corel’s online digital library through which registered users can get
access to thousands of high-resolution photographs and digital images. It also offers over
2000 vehicle templates, 1000 fonts, 350 professionally designed templates, more than 500
interactive frames, over 600 gradients, vector, and bitmap fills.
 Flexible Payment: Corel offers three payment programs through which users can buy the
software along with nominal charges for regular upgrades. It also offers an upgrade program
for existing users.
 Customizable UI: You get a customizable UI environment for the desktop, icon sizing,
toolboxes, options for how your documents open, and window border color scheme. Users
can also visit Corel’s developer community website to design macros that suit their
workflow.
 New Pointilizer: Corel’s new pointilizer offers a lot of variable parameters that are not just
limited to regular dots.
Pros:
 It offers app-wide workflow and under-the-hood innovation and performance enhancements
to boost productivity
 Works perfectly without any lag with Surface Pen
 Users get the option to choose GPU acceleration over the default CPU while working with
system-intensive sophisticated vector graphics
 Smooth transition from desktop to tablet mode to leverage touch features
 It offers better EPS and third-party PDF importing capabilities and leverages with their GPL
Ghostscript feature
 It is capable of exporting files in up to 48 file types, including AutoCAD, JPG, PNG, SVG,
AutoCAD, JPG, and TIFF. It can also open 35 file types, including EPS, HTML, AutoCAD,
PDF, PowerPoint, SVG, and even old FreeHand files

Cons:
 Unlike Adobe, there are no complimentary mobile applications offered by Corel
 Two many payment options might confuse the user
 Not easy to operate for beginners

Pricing Plans::

CorelDraw is available for a 15-day free trial. Its full version is available for $474 with a 30-days
money-back guarantee. You can also pay for an annual subscription for $198, or just $16.50/month.

Get started with CorelDraw Graphics Suite.

Try CorelDRAW

4. Inkscape.
Inkscape is a capable free graphic design software that can help designers create scalable graphic
designs that won’t stretch or blur during resizing. It’s a user-friendly option for hobbyists or
beginners interested in vector drawing.

Key Features:
 User Experience: For free vector software, the user experience is quite impressive. Designers
who are familiar with Adobe tools can efficiently operate Inkscape.
 Regular Updates: Inscape has a robust community of developers that enables it to provide
updates and new features regularly. Its latest update has got mesh gradients, a checkerboard
background to view transparency more comfortably, improved spray, and measurement
tools.
 Free of Cost: It is one of the most robust and capable alternatives to Adobe Illustrator that is
available as a free tool.
 Manual Improvement: Users can leverage the open-source code to change the lines of code
and enhance or personalize the software as per the requirement.
Pros:
 Users can easily make individual text lines without frames along with the paragraph type.
 It supports multiple gradients and comes with a separate tool to create complex
combinations.
 It comes equipped with Bezier handles to ensure more effortless movement of nodes.
 Inkscape offers several well-designed and full-featured tools to create, edit, and convert
vectors.
 It is also capable of downloading or creating ready-made plugins.
 Users can leverage different preset categories of filters to save time and effort.

Cons:
 Inkscapes’ streaming text needs to be converted into plain text, for instance, before export.
 The Mac version is not error-free.
 Processing is a bit slower than other graphics software.
 Compatibility with Illustrator is not bulletproof.

Pricing Plans:
Inkscape is an open-source platform that is available for free.

5. Sketch.
The sketch is a vector-based graphic design tool that is best suited for app, web, and interface
design. It is best suited for creating interactive prototypes for UI/UX purposes.

Key Features:
 Low Cost: Sketch offers a yearly subscription that is significantly lower than other
subscriptions
 Great For Mobile and Web: It leverages grids, snap to grid functionality, and snap to pixel
functionality to avoid half-pixel renders or imperfect alignment. These perfections are
critical to ensure perfect responsive design/multiple screen sizes and resolutions.
 Screen Templates: It offers a library of artboard templates for iOS devices and responsive
web design layouts. Designers just need to select an artboard and the device.
 Custom Plugins: Designers can easily find custom plugins for specific tasks through robust
community support

Pros:
 It allows easy sharing and collaboration through the cloud. Designers can share the entire
interface in the cloud through a simple file sharing process
  Users can mirror designs on larger devices for team viewing to identify how the design
would exactly look in a particular device
 Users can export any layer or group as a PNG file
 Sketch autosaves all the changes in the design step by step to avoid any loss of design.
Significant relief for designers, indeed!
 Users can leverage libraries with standard Android icons, iOS icons, and Mac icons
 It requires a low learning curve

Cons:
 Being a new design tool, it is not entirely polished and requires a lot of enhancement
 It offers limited illustration capabilities that can hamper intricate illustration work
 Screens don’t render in high resolution while accessing from the cloud
 Available only for Mac users
 Absence of automatic layout flowing option

Pricing Plans:
The yearly subscription costs $99 per year.