Design is an important part of branding, no matter what type of business you have. It speaks to the audience and is one of the factors that can attract an audience and turn them into customers. Therefore, you will need great graphic design software to make sure you can create a stunning design that will make people turn their heads.

Most of the time, people will refer to Adobe Photoshop for image editing, and it has become the biggest and most popular graphic design software. However, plenty of design software is available today to help you with specific needs and cater to certain preferences.

In this article, we will talk about 11 graphic design software that you need to check out for 2022.

• Adobe Photoshop

Let’s start with Adobe Photoshop, one of graphic designers’ most famous photo editing software. It has excellent capabilities with robust features that make many designers unable to move past this awesome software. Whether you design on mobile apps or websites, Adobe Photoshop provides plenty of design tools, 

It has a great user interface as Adobe continuously develops its software to provide more customizable user interfaces. The paid version provides you with many features and will be valuable if you work full-time as a designer. However, the free version is also a good alternative if you need basic editing capability. 

This software offers a lot of typography sets and drawing tools for you to use. Not only images, but you can also edit animation and video layers. However, these rich features might overwhelm new users, so you might need time to get used to them.

• Adobe InDesign

If you are trying to start a publishing business, Adobe InDesign is the right tool. With this tool, you can create various publishing materials such as brochures, magazines, info sheets, etc. You can even export them into PDF or HTML seamlessly.

Adobe InDesign is quite easy to learn, so it is perfect for beginners. They will quickly learn how to operate it and come up with the best design for their publishing project.

It provides a lot of templates that you can explore easily. The ‘Adjust Layout’ feature is beneficial as designers can change the text on the template, and the design will be automatically adjusted. With Sensei Technology, Adobe’s AI-powered Sensei, resizing and arranging images is also made easy. 

With this tool, you can combine graphics and texts easily to create a great publishing design. You can also add keywords, indexes, footnotes, tables of contents, and even captions with hyperlinks. Then, you can export it into HTML for easier use on your website. Therefore, it is also a perfect tool for you who wants to create an online magazine.

However, note that the user interface is less intuitive, so that it might overwhelm beginners. But with a few practices, you should be able to operate this software seamlessly.

• Sketch

If you are going to design a vector-based graphic, then Sketch is one of the best tools to use. This one is perfect for UI/UX design since it provides useful features such as grids, snap to grid, and snap to pixel. This function allows you to create perfect responsive graphics for various screen sizes and resolutions.

You can link your work to the cloud for easier sharing and collaboration. It also allows you to share the entire interface with a few simple steps. Sketch also provides a mirror design feature on larger devices so that your team can see the design and assess how it looks on a certain device.

This software has an autosave feature that will save every change in the design so that designers won’t lose their design in a bad scenario such as sudden electrical blackout or device malfunction. 

However, there are a few things you need to note down when using this tool. Sketch is not entirely polished since it is still considered a new tool. It will need a lot of enhancements to be a perfect graphic design tool. It also has limited illustration capabilities, so it may be difficult to design detailed and intricate graphics using this tool.

• CorelDraw Graphics Suite

This tool is perfect for more advanced designers since it has great features and a highly accessible interface. One of the great things about this tool is that you will have access to its online digital library that contains thousands of high-resolution photos and digital images. Additionally, it also has thousands of vehicle templates, fonts, hundreds of professionally designed templates, frames, gradients, and so on.

CorelDraw also provides a customizable UI environment so you can adjust it to suit your workflow. You can also design macros that will help you design faster. These innovations will help designers increase their productivity combined with performance enhancements. 

It also provides you with the option to work on the GPU acceleration if you want to design intricate vector graphics that may slow down the default CPU system. It also works well with Surface Pen to design better without lagging. CorelDraw also provides a great transition from desktop mode to tablet mode for smooth touch features. 

Designers will have various options to save their designs. This tool can export files to 48 file types, including TIFF, JPG, PNG, SVG, JPG, and AutoCAD. Despite the great features, this tool is not easy to operate for beginners. If you’re completely new to graphic design, you may need a longer time to familiarize yourself with CorelDraw.

• Adobe Illustrator

Another great option for vector creation is Adobe Illustrator. This graphic design software is highly customizable. It is also highly compatible with various devices that do not share the same configuration as Mac and Windows. It has a friendly user interface that is also highly customizable. You can change the viewing and use the space-saving features to adjust the tool with your workflow.

Printed graphics designed using this tool tend to have sharp and crisp lines. This tool generates graphics based on mathematical equations instead of stored pixels. The file sizes of the graphics are also relatively small, so you can easily share them with your co-worker. 

When you use this software, you will access Adobe Stock, which contains more than 90 million graphics, images, videos, and templates. It will help you start your design easily without browsing for stock photos from other websites. 

Since Adobe also provides this tool, it provides close integration with other Adobe products. Therefore, a professional graphic designer will benefit greatly from this vector designing tool. However, please note that this tool requires a lot of space on a machine, so you will need a strong computer or laptop to operate it seamlessly.

• Inkscape

Hobbyists and beginners need to check and try this awesome graphic design software. This tool is free but has great enough capability to help designers draw scalable graphic designs. The resulting images also won’t blur or stretch when you resize them.

Despite being free, Inkscape provides an impressive user experience. If you are already familiar with software design tools from Adobe, you will most likely be able to operate Inkspace properly and efficiently.

If you decide to try Inkscape, you should join their robust developers’ community. Their forum regularly provides updates to help other designers work with Inkscape seamlessly. 

This software has quite comprehensive tools to create, edit and convert vectors despite being free. You can create multiple gradients with this tool and even edit them separately so that you can draw more intricate and complex combinations. 

You can download or create ready-made plugins for easier working and faster workflow. Also, there are various filters with various preset categories to design a graphic faster and without too much effort.

However, since it is free software, there are bound to be a few drawbacks. For example, the streaming text you create in Inkspace needs to be converted into plain text before exporting them. With this tool, the processing time is also slower, so you must be patient.

• GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program)

GIMP is often known as a photo editor, despite having the capabilities of more than that. It has plenty of Photoshop features for free and great functions that will help you fine-tune photos or graphic designing from scratch. It is also really flexible to install plugins for greater graphic designing features.

The GIMP community is also active and provides regular updates and new features. Therefore, although being free, designers will still be able to use this software with many features that help them design. Another great thing about GIMP is that it is compatible with macOS, Linux, Windows, Solaris, and BDS.

GIMP has a clean and easy user interface, which makes it the best choice for beginners in graphic designing or image editing. It also doesn’t take too much space not to slow down your device when working with this graphic design software.

However, Mac users will not enjoy the great features of this software fully. Another drawback is that the developer community sometimes updates this software at a slower pace, so you might have to wait for longer to receive new updates.

• Affinity Designer

Affinity Designer is a paid graphic designing software that costs cheaper than Adobe Illustrator. However, it already provides great features that make it worth trying if you’re not ready to invest in Adobe Illustrator.

This software offers Grid System so that you can control the gutters, angels, spacing, and subdivisions when designing to create a precise and clean design layout. It also has an awesome feature to lock and position elements or objects. 

If you often design pixel art and vector art simultaneously, this tool is a more practical investment. That is because it has a dual environment feature that will allow you to work on both vector art and pixel art environments without opening other applications. 

It is also a great tool to create sharp and precise designs because its zoom feature can increase to 1,000,000 percent. The rope and window stabilizers will also help designers draw smooth and accurate curves. This way, you will be able to create a beautiful. And sharp vector illustration. The software also provides a wide array of colors to design great color combinations.

Despite these great features, Affinity Designer cannot export files in AI. It also doesn’t have a natural perspective grid or vector eraser. 

• Xara Designer Pro X

Last is Xara Designer Pro X, graphic design software that comes with advanced features and tools. This software is for you if you are working on a web and print design project. It is great for creating illustrations, photo editing, and designing a web page.

This software provides direct action tools that consist of great features with stable functionalities. It also has fast performance, so designers will not have a hard time working with this software and easily implement their creativity. Xara also has robust editing options which allow designers to scale, drag, and rotate objects well to create the best results.

You can save the design you create in Dropbox and Google Drive, so you don’t have to worry about lost design files. You can also save it in various formats such as BMP, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, GIF, PSD, etc.

There is plenty of graphic design software available, but these nine are some of the greatest that you should try using for 2022. The robust features and great user interface will help your design career take off next year.