Free Design Apps to Brighten Your Holidays

Adobe Capture CC

An Adobe app designed for iPhone and iPad, Adobe Capture CC turns photos into production-ready assets to be used in other Creative Cloud apps. Some of the kinds of assets people have created from their photos include:

• Geometric patterns
• Color themes or palettes
• Vector graphics
• Custom brushes
• Dynamic looks

Adobe Capture CC is Brush CC, Color CC, Hue CC, and Shape CC all in one mobile app.

Over

Another great app for your iPhone or iPad, Over lets you easily make social media images on the go. Place text and shapes over photos. You have control over color, position, layer order, and much more.

Sip

Our third iPhone and iPad app may be the best way to collect, organize, and share your colors, to single-pixel precision.

Colorable

For the serious designer, Colorable is a palette combination contrast tester. You choose a color palette and get contrast values for every possible combination — a very useful tool for finding safe color combinations with predefined colors. It even includes pass/fail scores for the WCAG accessibility guidelines.

Vectr

Available as a browser-based web app and as a stand-alone desktop app for Mac, Windows, Linux, and Chromebook platforms, Vectr creates 2-D vector graphics that are versatile enough for day-to-day design tasks such as creating icons, websites, illustrations, logos, and more. It also offers live collaboration and synchronization options to connect with anyone, anywhere to create together.

SVG-Edit

Web-based SVG-Edit is surprisingly capable for free graphic design software. In fact, it’s considered among the best free design tools for SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics). Built on CSS3, JavaScript, and HTML5 without the requirement of server-side processing, SVG-Edit lets you create and edit documents, modify the code after download, and design vector graphics in two dimensions.

Krita

Designed with the VFX industry and concept artists, illustrators, matte, and texture artists in mind, Krita is a free and open-source painting tool that's been in development for over 10 years and is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux. It comes with a full set of brushes suitable for every manner of work, with a host of plugins available.

Gimp

One of the best free graphic design programs, Gimp is a GNU image manipulation program. It helps with photo retouching, image composition, image authoring, and similar tasks; works on Linux, Mac, and Windows platforms; and offers third-party plugins to increase your productivity. It’s one of the best and most-installed graphic design programs.

Lightroom on Mobile

Edit, organize, and share images on your iPhone, iPad, or Android device and seamlessly sync your changes with Lightroom on your computer.

Behance

Part of the Adobe family, Behance is a leading online platform to showcase and discover creative work. The global creative world updates its work in one place to broadcast it widely and efficiently. Companies explore that work and access talent.

Paper

When inspiration strikes, you can use this iPhone and iPad app to write it down. Paper lets you capture and connect your notes, photos, and sketches, create checklists, spotlight details in photos, and sketch diagrams with speed and ease.

Pinterest

Well, because it’s Pinterest.

WhatTheFont Mobile

Working via Wi-Fi or a cellular network, WhatTheFont Mobile lets you identify the font in any photo or web graphic simply by snapping a photo of it. WhatTheFont Mobile identifies fonts in seconds by connecting directly to MyFonts’ font identification service, now 10 years old.

GIF Keyboard

This app for iPhone, iPad, and iMessage lets you make GIFs on the go. Discover or create the right GIF or video to visually sum up exactly what you’re trying to say — directly from your keyboard. Express the emotion, inside joke, or clever response you want to share.