Top 7 Easy To Use Graphic Design Software For Beginners – The Urban Guide

7 min read

We all can agree that a little designing is a must on your skill set! A little designing here and there can fix a lot of issues in a jiffy. Whether it’s online or print media, designing business cards or logos, pamphlets, packaging design, websites and much more graphic design holds the top notch need everywhere. As a new comer learning how to use graphic design software can be a bit overwhelming. The more intuitive and easy-to-use the software is, the faster you will learn and be able to put forward creative designs.

If you’re just getting into graphic design, or think you want to be a graphic designer then today we are going to list the best graphic design software for all the beginners who aspire to have big name in the design world. As a graphic designer it is your primary responsibility to have a good hand on the following tools.

Photoshop

Who says at beginner stage you can’t create creative design projects? With Photoshop even beginners can create crystal-clear graphics without any professional knowledge or course. This is the most preferred design software that every graphic designer and freelance artist has in his or her arsenal. It is a paint program that can be used with almost every software including Maya and zBrush, to name a few. You can easily remove unwanted objects from the image, combine the image, clone stamp tool, auto fix removes blemishes and much more. It is the best-known and recommended program for photo editing work. We advise the beginners to try their hand in Photoshop Elements as it’s a bit more entry-level, meaning it’s quite easy to use its tools to carry out most desired tasks. You can use CS6 version at a bit later stage as it’s more advanced. You can easily perform basic design functions with Photoshop. Learn it and love it!

Adobe Illustrator

Illustrator is not only good as a vector drawing tool but it is also a fantastic tool for logo design, creating complex illustrations for videos or mobile and playing with illustrated typography design. This software comes with its own plugins that helps in changing a blank surface into a brilliant looking web page. Adobe’s Illustrator can be called the graphic designer’s right-hand. From using various Illustrator tools like paint for curves, strokes and fills you can always add more natural look to your vector artwork through this software. Even when the graphic designer responsibilities are not static in today’s world Illustrator can help him complete his varied role by offering a complete package within itself. It’s not at all difficult to use Illustrator and with little effort you can be a master from a beginner.

GIMP

You can use GIMP to produce professional looking, high quality graphics on a budget. GMP expands to GNU Image Manipulation Program and is a good alternative to Photoshop and the set of professional tools make it suitable not just for graphic designers but for other technological fields like camera, production as well. The best thing about GIMP is that if you have even slight knowledge of Photoshop, you can bring your illustrations from Photoshop and enhance it. For beginners, this can be the most easily available trial hand as it’s absolutely free and powerful open-source graphics manipulation tool that can be used for everything from digital painting to photo manipulation and clean up. It is sometimes called the free Photoshop. It might not have all the extensive features still for a beginner it will be a great experience. You won’t take time to learn its functions, and there are a lot of extra tools you can use to learn better step by step.

CorelDraw

Are you a beginner in the design world looking for good graphics editor that gives you the ability to paint your ideas into reality without any restrictions? If so, you must check out CorelDraw, a vector graphics editor, that can be the simplest graphics software for every beginner. CorelDraw has some cool tools and functions and such an ease of use that within days you can hone your editing skills. Even professionals swear by this software and it’s very similar to Photoshop in execution of tasks. Recently, CorelDRAW has also included extrusion features that enable to apply depth to an object and rotate it interactively. These additional features can make the learning process for beginners even more fun.

Adobe Indesign

This software can give you the confidence to craft and edit print-ready documents like a pro. InDesign is the most preferred software for beginner use and helps you creating clean layouts for desktop and mobile devices alike. The varied feature that comes with InDesign can make every designer’s work fun. If you are a beginner still trying to learn the basic design skills then this software is ideal to use as it’s packed with unbelievable features. Whether you want to create simple cards, create pocket folders, make an impressive brochure, create layout fast, bind books, create a pamphlet, make a nice calendar or make powerful business cards Indesign can be a one stop solution for all your needs. Every beginner should give it a try before diving into the ocean of professional graphic designing.

Inkscape

Inkscape is a vector drawing program which is very user-friendly and has a gallery of artwork showcased for viewer enjoyment. The best thing about this software is that it is free, and is a great alternative application to illustrator. Its native file format is SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) and can be easily used by a beginner for creating high quality vector graphics. If you have used Adobe Illustrator earlier you can easily use Inkscape as a lot of similar features are also implemented into this software. It doesn’t have difficult tools and features and working onto this software can be quite easy and fun.

Though there are many graphic design software available in the market all of them don’t cater to all groups of people. It is extremely important for a beginner to pick the correct one out so that he could easily turn his creative ideas into reality. If the learning phase would be fun and understandable in no time you would rule the graphic design world standing out as one of the best professionals.

[Also Read: Beginners Guide to Graphic Designing Templates]