The Best Graphic Design Software We’ve Tested for 2025

If you work with raster images and need compositing layers, Photoshop is hard to beat. Adobe’s software is the industry standard, so any clients or vendors you deal with likely want files from it. Other apps support its formats but don’t guarantee full compatibility and lack Photoshop’s slick interface and cutting-edge image manipulation tools. It’s also the top choice for detailed photo correcting, editing, and enhancing.

Photoshop is for professional designers and photographers who want to make detailed pixel-level edits and apply advanced features. Serious amateurs can greatly benefit from learning to use Photoshop, and the program includes multifarious help and tutorial resources. It’s not ideal, however, if you aren’t willing to pay a recurring subscription fee.

Adobe’s painting, sketching, and watercolor app makes creating art feel incredibly natural. It also includes effective animation tools and excellent help resources. The app is now entirely free, meaning you get all the once-premium brushes and shapes at no cost. Adobe provides 5GB of cloud storage for your creations.

You must have an iPad, iPhone, or Windows device (such as the Microsoft Surface) to use Adobe Fresco. You also need a stylus like an Apple Pencil or Surface Slim Pen. If you meet those requirements, simply download the app and start creating.

Illustrator is the premier vector editing and drawing application. Yes, you can edit vector graphics and pull off some effects a bit easier in some other apps (namely CorelDraw). But most graphics designers are still better off learning and creating with the industry standard Illustrator. With it, you also get companion tablet apps for creating digital drawings and impressive type support. The app now has AI capabilities, such as the ability to create or expand vector images based on your text prompts.

Illustrator is for any professional graphics editor or illustrator, as well as hobbyists who like to create visual art. If you need to create images or logos that scale cleanly for posters and other large-scale projects, you simply won’t find a better app. If you aren’t willing to pay a recurring subscription fee, however, look to either Affinity Designer or CorelDraw.

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

InDesign is squarely for 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. If you balk at that prospect, look elsewhere.

Appealing modern design templates for presentations, printing, and social media are the highlights of Canva. The desktop, mobile, and web apps are free, though you can access a wealth of extra templates and stock content for an annual fee. Canva now lets you use AI to generate images and even videos based on text prompts. The Canva Teams subscription adds strong collaboration features, too.

Canva is a great option if you don’t have a ton of design experience but still need to create marketing, promotional, and social media content. That said, professionals will certainly appreciate how it eases the process of making compelling designs. A free plan offers a lot, but for the full feature set you need to pay an annual subscription.

Figma is the preeminent platform for collaborative interface prototyping, whether you’re trying to design anything from a desktop app to a website. The core Figma Design component provides a superb set of tools, including deep font options, extensive design kits, and useful templates. If you work on a team of designers, you will benefit from branded design systems, convenient coworking features, and robust version control. You can even hand off important aspects of your design to your developer team to vet before they start coding. The whole experience is extremely intuitive, and Figma provides lots of help resources and tutorials to help you out.

If you frequently need to collaborate with others for your design prototyping work, Figma is by far the best platform we’ve tested. It’s a complete solution that’s accessible no matter your level of experience. Just keep in mind that you need a consistent internet connection to take advantage of all its features.

Procreate is a premium, low-cost iPad app for artists of every kind, from professionals to hobbyists. With abundant customization features and an intuitive user experience, it helps anyone create 2D and 3D paintings, animations, drawings, hand lettering, and more.

Procreate is primarily for artists who work on an iPad and illustrate, paint, or sketch. However, the app’s low, one-time cost makes it friendly to everyone with an artistic inclination.

One reason to choose Affinity Designer is its one-time cost. The app also provides a good helping of vector drawing tools and generous font support. Its unique Contour tool for joining shapes organically is excellent, too.

If you don’t want to pay the monthly fee for Adobe Illustrator, you should get Affinity Designer. Otherwise, it has several standout features and is very accessible.

Adobe Express competes directly with Canva. It’s a template-based graphic design tool for nonprofessionals who need to create marketing materials or social media posts. It integrates Adobe’s vast depth of imaging smarts and lets you create something attractive without much fuss. You might be able to get by with the free version, but the paid tier gets you more stock content and the ability to store, manage, and share multiple brands’ assets (such as logos, color palettes, and typefaces). It works with both images and videos and lets you output your creations in formats suitable for all the popular social networks or as a PDF. AI features for generating font styles, images, and videos are available.

Adobe Express is ideal if you need to quickly create compelling materials for marketing or social network posts without in-depth knowledge of Adobe’s design applications. The free version is fine for hobbyists, though a paid Premium subscription is worth it for professionals who can’t justify the cost of the full Creative Cloud suite.

Like Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw is for drawing and editing vector illustrations. However, it offers some capabilities that would require add-ins in the Adobe app, is easier to use, and costs less.

CorelDraw is worth a look if you are looking for an intuitive, relatively affordable entrée into the world of vector graphics design. It also serves professionals who want some of its special effects tools. Best of all, Corel doesn’t make you pay a subscription fee.