Whether you are a professional graphic designer or just want to dive into high-end design, this the graphic design software you need to master. From the digital arts community about Adobe's.
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When it comes to the best digital art software, there are many options to choose from. In this post, we've rounded up and reviewed the best digital art and illustration programs available right now.
There are plenty of tools that aim to help you create unique pieces of digital art or mimic traditional effects. For a long time, a few tools dominated this space. But as competition grows, many of the best digital software creators are upping their game by adding new features and capabilities. As a result, the market is looking stronger than ever.
Rather than just featuring premium programs in our guide, we've also got plenty of affordable options here, as well as some free tools. There's software for Windows and macOS, and we've a few Linux tools too.
If you need more design-focused tools, don't miss our round-up of the best free graphic design software. Alternatively, for art on the go, take a look at our pick of the best drawing apps for iPad.
01. Photoshop
Platforms: Windows, macOS
£49.94
£9.98
£19.97
De-facto standard
Subscription-based
For a long time, Photoshop was king of the digital art tools, but increasingly competitors' offerings have been challenging its crown. However, the latest update has brought with it a host of new features and much-needed improvements to the existing tools, and Photoshop remains a hugely capable and powerful tool.
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Because it's part of the Adobe Creative Cloud suite, you can easily share your data and access all of your assets – including brushes, images, colours and styles – across all of your devices. There's also an impressive library of Photoshop plugins available to add extra functionality to the program. Find out more in our Photoshop CC 2019 review.
- Subscribe to Photoshop as part of Adobe Creative Cloud
02. Affinity Designer
A precise vector graphic design tool
Platforms: Windows, macOS
Vector support
Companion iPad app
Affinity Designer has everything you need to create custom designs and illustrations. With Affinity Designer, you have precise control over curves, brush stabilisation options, advanced blend modes, and best of all: one million+ per cent zoom (no, really – this might just be our favourite feature).
Not only that, the v1.7 upgrade saw Affinity add support for the Apple Pro Display XDR monitor, and tweaking the program to run faster than ever on new Macs. While this is a dedicated vector tool, you can switch to a pixel environment if you wish. There's a companion app for designing on the go, too: read our Affinity Designer for iPad review.
03. Procreate
A powerful iPad drawing tool
Platforms: iPad (iOS 11.1+) | Cost: $9.99/£9.99
Impressive capabilities
iPad-only
This isn't digital art software as we know it – Procreate is for iPad only. However, it's such an impressive tool that we're starting to see more and more digital artists integrating it into their workflows, which is why we've included it in our list. This app packs in most of the capabilities you'd find in a desktop tool, including precise colour picker tools, the ability to work with hundreds of layers, and industry-standard tools such as masks, Blend Modes and groups.
Choose from over 130 Procreate brushes (or make your own using the brush engine), to mimic different traditional art effects easily and effectively. There's also full PSD support. Procreate has also now added a text tool, making it an even stronger option for digital artists.
04. Clip Studio Paint
This drawing and painting tool is aimed at manga and comic artists
Platforms: Windows, macOS | Cost: $49.99/£38 (Pro); $219/£168 (Ex)
Cross-platform
Confusing interface
Clip Studio Paint is quickly becoming the go-to tool for manga art and comic creation. If you're looking for a natural and traditional feel that's wrapped up in a digital drawing and painting app, this is it. Clip Studio Paint uses advanced pen pressure detection for natural, realistic-looking pen strokes.
This tool comes in Pro and Ex versions – the latter offers more advanced features, and is considerably more expensive. You can try either for free for 30 days, to see if you get on with it. Check out the best Clip Studio Paint tutorials to get you started.
05. Artweaver 6
Platform: Windows | Cost: Free (basic); $41/€39 (Plus)
Customisable interface
Free version available
Loaded with a large selection of preconfigured brushes, Artweaver will have you creating your masterpiece in no time. You can either use the brushes as they are, or customise and save them to your liking. Its easy-to-use interface is also highly customisable, although out of the box, it's set up quite nicely.
Artweaver 6 is a full-featured digital art tool available in two flavours: Artweaver Free and Artweaver Plus. Take a look at the comparison chart to help you decide which is right for you.
06. ArtRage
A cross-platform digital painting with realistic tools
Platforms: Windows, macOS | Cost: $79
Great for digital painters
Glee season 1 episode 6. ArtRage has always been a favourite among digital painters and illustrators. It offers a level of realism for traditional paint texture and colour that not only looks incredible but is also a lot of fun to play with.
Although ArtRage is primarily focused on natural media and painting, it's flexible enough that digital artists who are used to Photoshop will find it useful too. With ArtRage 6, you can do everything you'd expect from a digital art tool: customise brushes, record your own actions, customise the look of your canvas and more.
07. Krita
A free and open source painting program
Platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux | Cost: Free
Customisable
Krita seems to be one of the most underrated free and open source painting apps on the market, despite the fact that it's been publicly available since 2004. Krita has an intuitive and customisable interface, where the dockers and panels can be set up to maximise your workflow.
The tool offers nine unique brush engines, including a Color Smudge engine, Shape engine and Particle engine. You can also import brushes and texture packs or create and share your own. As an added bonus, you can use a brush stabiliser to help you get perfectly smooth lines.
08. CorelDRAW
Corel has added a native Mac version to its offering
Platform: Windows, Mac | Cost: £599.99
PowerTRACE turns bitmaps into vectors
CorelDRAW graphics suite has been around a while, but for a long time it's been Windows-only (save for a brief Mac effort a few years ago that's best forgotten). With its 2019 release, Corel announced the native Mac app we'd all been waiting for was finally coming (with Touch Bar support) – as well as a slimmed down browser-based CorelDRAW.app, for creating on the go.
Elsewhere, the CorelDRAW suite offers tools for a wide range of creative needs, from vector design to photo editing, web or print. There's also an AI-powered LiveSketch feature. All this will cost you, though. See our review of Corel Painter 2019 for more info.
09. TwistedBrush Pro Studio
More custom brushes than you'll ever need
Platform: Windows | Cost: $99 (version licence); $189 (perpetual licence)
Windows only
TwistedBrush Pro Studio comes packed with more than 9,000 brushes. Yes, you read that correctly – 9,000 brushes. But don't worry, you can still create your own brushes too. Like other digital art tools, TwistedBrush has everything you'd expect: layers, transparency, masks, extensive options for import and export, image filters, and more. It also has drawing tablet support with high precision sampling and pressure sensitivity.
However, this tool will set you back $99 for a version-specific license, or $189 for a perpetual licence. For that price, it might be worth considering one of the bigger names.
10. MediBang Paint Pro
A free tool with everything you need to illustrate comics
Platform: Windows, macOS | Cost: Free
Great for manga artists
If comics or manga art are your thing and you don't want to shell out for Clip Studio Paint, have a look at Paint Pro from Japanese company MediBang.
This free, lightweight digital drawing tool comes loaded with 800 free pre-made tones and backgrounds, more than 50 brushes, easy comic panel creation tools and a huge selection of free fonts.
11. Black Ink
Explore your creativity with controller-based brushes
Platform: Windows | Cost: $59.99
Controller-based brush system
Brush tools a little confusing
It's all about realistic brushes, right? Not always! Black Ink has a different approach when it comes to brushes. Instead of trying to mimic traditional physical art tools, Black Ink embraces its digital strengths and uses a Controller system that opens a whole new world of possibilities in brush creation and customisation. Using a simple node-based language, you'll be able to create any type of brush imaginable, which you can then save and share with the community.
12. Paintstorm Studio
A powerful digital painting tool for professional artists
Platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux, iPad | Cost: $19 (desktop); $12.99 (iPad)
Cross-platform
Digital Design Software Adobe Installer
Paintstorm Studio is another easy-to-use digital art tool that's worth a look. Some of the major benefits of Paintstorm Studio are its brush selection and customisation options (these include spacing jitter, texture, angle, and more). It also supports stroke post correction, which is a handy feature when you're doing linework.
The interface is easy to navigate and laid out exactly how you'd expect (and the default colour scheme is fantastic). However, if you're not a fan, it's completely customisable.
Read more:
Developer(s) | Adobe Systems |
---|---|
Initial release | August 31, 1999 |
Stable release | CC 2019 (14.0.2) / April 2019; 5 months ago |
Written in | C++[1] |
Operating system | Windows, macOS |
Available in | 24 languages[2] |
English, Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Zulu | |
Type | Desktop publishing |
License | Trialware |
Website | adobe.com/products/indesign/ |
Adobe InDesign is a desktop publishing and typesetting software application produced by Adobe Systems. It can be used to create works such as posters, flyers, brochures, magazines, newspapers, presentations, books and ebooks. InDesign can also publish content suitable for tablet devices in conjunction with Adobe Digital Publishing Suite. Graphic designers and production artists are the principal users, creating and laying out periodical publications, posters, and print media. It also supports export to EPUB and SWF formats to create e-books and digital publications, including digital magazines, and content suitable for consumption on tablet computers. In addition, InDesign supports XML, style sheets, and other coding markup, making it suitable for exporting tagged text content for use in other digital and online formats. The Adobe InCopy word processor uses the same formatting engine as InDesign.
- 1History
History[edit]
InDesign is the successor to Adobe PageMaker, which was acquired by Adobe with the purchase of Aldus in late 1994. (Freehand, a competitor to Adobe Illustrator and also made by Aldus, was sold to Altsys, the maker of Fontographer.) By 1998 PageMaker had lost almost the entire professional market to the comparatively feature-richQuarkXPress 3.3, released in 1992, and 4.0, released in 1996. Quark stated its intention to buy out Adobe[3] and to divest the combined company of PageMaker to avoid anti-trust issues.
Adobe rebuffed the offer and instead continued to work on a new page layout application. The project had been started by Aldus and was code-named 'Shuksan'. It was later code-named 'K2' and was released as InDesign 1.0 in 1999.
InDesign was the first Mac OS X-native desktop publishing (DTP) software. In version 3 (InDesign CS) it received a boost in distribution by being bundled with Photoshop, Illustrator, and Acrobat in Creative Suite.
InDesign exports documents in Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) and has multilingual support. It was the first DTP application to support Unicode for text processing, advanced typography with OpenTypefonts, advanced transparency features, layout styles, optical margin alignment, and cross-platform scripting using JavaScript.
Later versions of the software introduced new file formats. To support the new features, especially typographic, introduced with InDesign CS, both the program and its document format are not backward-compatible. Instead, InDesign CS2 introduced the INX (.inx) format, an XML-based document representation, to allow backwards compatibility with future versions. InDesign CS versions updated with the 3.1 April 2005 update can read InDesign CS2-saved files exported to the .inx format. The InDesign Interchange format does not support versions earlier than InDesign CS. With InDesign CS4, Adobe replaced INX with InDesign Markup Language (IDML), another XML-based document representation.[4]
Adobe developed InDesign CS3 (and Creative Suite 3) as universal binary software compatible with native Intel and PowerPCMacs in 2007, two years after the announced 2005 schedule, inconveniencing early adopters of Intel-based Macs. Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen had announced that 'Adobe will be first with a complete line of universal applications'.[5]The CS2 Mac version had code tightly integrated to the PPC architecture, and not natively compatible with the Intel processors in Apple's new machines, so porting the products to another platform was more difficult than had been anticipated. Adobe developed the CS3 application integrating Macromedia products (2005), rather than recompiling CS2 and simultaneously developing CS3.
InDesign and Leopard[edit]
InDesign CS3 initially had a serious compatibility issue with Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5), as Adobe stated: 'InDesign CS3 may unexpectedly quit when using the Place, Save, Save As or Export commands using either the OS or Adobe dialog boxes. Unfortunately, there are no workarounds for these known issues.'[6] Apple fixed this with their OS X 10.5.4 update.[7]
Server version[edit]
Adobe InDesign Server
In October 2005, Adobe released InDesign Server CS2, a modified version of InDesign (without a user interface) for Windows and Macintosh server platforms. Oxford dictionary app for pc. It does not provide any editing client; rather, it is for use by developers in creating client–server solutions with the InDesign plug-in technology.[8] In March 2007 Adobe officially announced Adobe InDesign CS3 Server as part of the Adobe InDesign family.
File format[edit]
Filename extension | .indd |
---|---|
Internet media type | application/x-indesign |
Open format? | no |
Website | https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/kb/supported-file-formats-indesign-cs5.html |
The MIME type is not official
Versions[edit]
InDesign CS5 icon
- InDesign 1.0 (codenamed Shuksan, then K2): August 31, 1999;
- InDesign 1.0J (codenamed Hotaka): Japanese support;
- InDesign 1.5 (codenamed Sherpa): April 2001;
- InDesign 2.0 (codenamed Annapurna): January 2002 (just days before QuarkXPress 5). First version to support Mac OS X, native transparencies and drop shadows;
- InDesign CS (codenamed Dragontail) and InDesign CS Page Maker Edition (3.0): October 2003;
- InDesign CS2 (4.0) (codenamed Firedrake): May 2005;
- InDesign Server (codenamed Bishop): October 2005;
- InDesign CS3 (5.0) (codenamed Cobalt): April 2007. First version to support Intel-based Macs, regular expression and table styles;
- InDesign CS3 Server (codenamed Xenon): May 2007;
- InDesign CS4 (6.0) (codenamed Basil): October 2008;
- InDesign CS4 Server (codenamed Thyme);
- InDesign CS5 (7.0) (codenamed Rocket): April 2010;
- InDesign CS6 (8.0) (codenamed Athos): April 23, 2012;
- InDesign CC (9.2) (codenamed Citius): January 15, 2014;
- InDesign CC 2014 (10) (codenamed Sirius): June 18, 2014;
- InDesign CC 2014.1 (10.1): October 6, 2014;
- InDesign CC 2014.2 (10.2): February 11, 2015;
- InDesign CC 2015 (11.0): June 15, 2015;
- InDesign CC 2015.1 (11.1): August 11, 2015;
- InDesign CC 2015.2 (11.2): November 30, 2015;
- InDesign CC 2015.4 (11.4): June 20, 2016;
- InDesign CC 2017 (12.0): November 2, 2016;
- InDesign CC 2017.1 (12.1): April 14, 2017;
- InDesign CC 2018 (13.0): October 18, 2017;
- InDesign CC 2018 (13.0.1): November 2017;
- InDesign CC 2018.1 (13.1): March 2018.
- InDesign CC 2018.2 (13.2): March 2018.
- InDesign CC 2019 (14.0.1): November 2018.
- InDesign CC 2019 (14.0.2): April 2019.
Newer versions can as a rule open files created by older versions, but the reverse is not true. Current versions can export the InDesign file as an IDML file (InDesign Markup Language), which can be opened by InDesign versions from CS4 upwards; older versions from CS4 down can export to an INX file (InDesign Interchange format).[9][10]
Internationalization and localization[edit]
InDesign Middle Eastern editions come with special settings for laying out Arabic or Hebrew text. They feature:
- Text settings: Special settings for laying out Arabic or Hebrew text, such as:
- Ability to use Arabic, Persian or Hindi digits;
- Use kashidas for letter spacing and full justification;
- Ligature option;
- Adjust the position of diacritics, such as vowels of the Arabic script;
- Justify text in three possible ways: Standard, Arabic, Naskh[further explanation needed];
- Option to insert special characters, including Geresh, Gershayim, Maqaf for Hebrew and Kashida for Arabic texts;
- Apply standard, Arabic or Hebrew styles for page, paragraph and footnote numbering.
- Bi-directional text flow: The notion of right-to-left behavior applies to several objects: Story, paragraph, character and table. It allows mixing right-to-left and left-to-right words, paragraphs and stories in a document. It is possible to change the direction of neutral characters (e.g. / or ?) according to the user's keyboard language.[11]
- Table of contents: Provides a set of table of contents titles, one for each supported language. This table is sorted according to the chosen language. InDesign CS4 Middle Eastern versions allows users to choose the language of the index title and cross-references.
- Indices: Allows creating of a simple keyword index or a somewhat more detailed index of the information in the text using embedded indexing codes. Unlike more sophisticated programs, InDesign is incapable of inserting character style information as part of an index entry (e.g., when indexing book, journal or movie titles). Indices are limited to four levels (top level and three sub-levels). Like tables of contents, indices can be sorted according to the selected language.
- Importing and exporting: Can import QuarkXPress files up to version 4.1 (1999), even using Arabic XT, Arabic Phonyx or Hebrew XPressWay fonts, retaining the layout and content. Includes 50 import/export filters, including a Microsoft Word 97-98-2000 import filter and a plain text import filter. Exports IDML files which can be read by QuarkXPress 2017.
- Reverse layout: Include a reverse layout feature to reverse the layout of a document, when converting a left-to-right document to a right-to-left one or vice versa.
- Complex script rendering: InDesign supports Unicode character encoding, with Middle East editions supporting complex text layout for Arabic and Hebrew types of complex script. The underlying Arabic and Hebrew support is present in the Western editions of InDesign CS4, CS5, CS5.5 and CS6, but the user interface is not exposed, so it is difficult to access.
User groups[edit]
Graphic Design Software Adobe
InDesign has spawned 86 user groups in 36 countries with a total membership of over 51,000.[12]
See also[edit]
- Scribus, a free, cross-platform and non-proprietary alternative to Adobe InDesign
- Tasmeem, an Arabic enhancement
References[edit]
- ^Lextrait, Vincent (January 2010). 'The Programming Languages Beacon, v10.0'. Retrieved March 14, 2010.
- ^'language versions | Adobe InDesign CS5'. Adobe.com. Retrieved December 4, 2010.
- ^Ann Marsh (May 31, 1999). 'Pride goeth before destruction'. Forbes. Archived from the original on August 28, 2017. Retrieved February 5, 2013.
- ^'InDesign developer documentation'. Adobe Developer Connection. Adobe Systems. Retrieved November 24, 2013.
- ^San Francisco - Live Coverage of Steve Jobs Keynote 1:00PM EDT, June 6th, 2005, WWDC 2005 - Live Coverage of Keynote, The Mac Observer
- ^'Adobe InDesign CS3 5.0.2 Update Read Me'(PDF). Retrieved December 4, 2010.
- ^Leopard 10.5.4 Fixes InDesign Nav Services Glitches By: Anne-Marinewse, June 30, 2008, InDesignSecrets
- ^'Adobe InDesign Server CS2 Frequently Asked Questions'(PDF). Adobe.com. Archived from the original(PDF) on June 4, 2007. Retrieved April 29, 2007.
- ^'How do I save my file using InDesign CS6 so that it can be opened with CS5?'. forums.adobe.com. January 2013. Retrieved January 28, 2015.
- ^'Can You Save/Open CS6 Files on CS5, CS4 or CS3 – and Vice Versa?'. prodesigntools.com. February 20, 2013. Retrieved January 28, 2015.
- ^'Arabic and Hebrew features in InDesign'. Adobe InDesign User Guide. Retrieved August 7, 2018.
- ^'User Group Chapters'. indesignusergroup.com. Retrieved February 25, 2011.
External links[edit]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Adobe InDesign. |
Wikiversity has learning resources about Adobe InDesign |
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