Graphic design software isn't cheap, and for students or those just setting up on their own, it can seem unaffordable. But that doesn't mean that those who can't afford pricey one-off payments or monthly subscriptions have to go without – there is some fantastic free graphic design software out there with features to rival the big name packages. And even if you can afford paid-for creative apps like Adobe's suite – which we highly recommend you get if you can – you may still find these free tools useful, depending on what you're trying to achieve. • Here are our best free graphic design tools – divided into sections for creating vector art, editing images, creating data visualisations and other useful tools we think you might like – use the menu above to navigate to the section you want. Free vector art software 01. Gravit Designer delivers a full vector toolkit for free • Platform: Browser, Windows, macOS, Linux, ChromeOS Gravit Designer is a full-featured vector design app suitable for all manner of jobs, from screen and icon designs through to presentations, illustration and animation. With a clean and intuitive interface that adjusts itself as you need it, this free graphic design software packs a wealth of tools for creating detailed and beautiful vector imagery, including non-destructive booleans, a knife tool and path graphs, plus multiple fills and blending modes, and a powerful text engine.

It'll export as PDF, SVG or bitmap, and if you need to access a project on the go there's the Gravit Cloud service that enables you to get to your work wherever you are. Vectr's online options make it great for live collaboration • Platform: Browser, Windows, Linux, Chrome OS Available both as a browser-based web app and as a stand-alone desktop app, Vectr is a free editor for creating 2D vector graphics. With all the vector features you'd hope for, plus plenty of options for using filters, shadows and fonts, it's versatile enough for day-to-day design tasks.

This saves me a ton of time! Wait, actually they no longer work in Outlook. The somewhat good news is that the Office apps themselves have their own text replacement database as part of the feature. Thanks to a relatively recent update to, the programs in that suite (like Outlook, Word, and Excel) no longer respect the shortcuts you’ve added in System Preferences > Keyboard > Text, which is kind of a bummer if you depend on those for emailing folks quickly. And these shortcuts work all around the Mac: in Mail, in Pages, in Outlook.

Whether you're attracted to open source software for its philosophy or its low price tag, you can find a capable and free image editor for doing everything from retouching digital photos to creating original sketches and vector illustrations.

Particularly useful are its live collaboration and synchronisation options, which enable you to hook up with anyone, anywhere, to create in tandem. A genuine alternative to.

• Platform: Browser If you're looking to quickly output SVG or edit an existing SVG file, there are a few online editors that will do the job just as well as Adobe Illustrator. (scalable vector graphics) is an open format that allows you to reproduce your Vector drawings programmatically, and one of the nicest projects is SVG-Edit. This is built entirely on HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript without requiring any server-side processing.

So not only can you use it to create and edit documents, but as it's open source you can also download and modify the code – making your own version if you want. The standard – albeit basic – toolset of every vector-image editor is here, and although it's limited to the SVG format, it's surprisingly capable. Free graphic design software Inkscape has very good SVG integration • Platform: Windows, Mac OS, Linux As with many of the free options available, Inkscape focuses on the SVG format as its primary file format. This highly capable editor has a very good SVG integration, supporting many of the more advanced features that aren't always available in other apps – such as alpha blending, cloned objects and markers. Full support for different colour modes means this is a viable alternative to Illustrator for both print and web design, and although the interface is somewhat simpler than Illustrator, it's still possible to achieve extremely sophisticated artwork. Of particular note is the ability to trace bitmap images, support for variable width strokes and native import of Illustrator files.

Image editing software 05. Edit images, create colour palettes, match font pairs and more with Canva • Platform: Browser, iOS, Android It seems harsh to place Canva under the 'Image Editing Software' heading because it does so much more. Canva is a photo editor, colour palette tool, font combination picker, learning resource, and, and it even features a dedicated with hundreds of free design elements and fonts at your fingertips.

• It's really more of a full graphic design suite than a photo editor, and while it comes some way short of offering the breadth of abilities of Adobe Creative Cloud, its simplicity, variety of useful tools, and inspirational learning assets make Canva a hit. You can use Canva in the browser for the full experience, but most tools are available for both Android and iOS. Need to fix your photos? Photo Pos Pro can do that and more • Platform: Windows If you're on a Windows PC and need a decent set of image editing tools without Photoshop's price tag or GIMP's immense toolset, Photo Pos Pro should hit the spot. Built with image enhancement and editing in mind, it's perfect for typical photo editing tasks such as fixing contrast, lighting and saturation, but it'll also stretch to more advanced techniques.