27.12.2020

Sketch App Alternative Mac

Illustrator is great for graphic design but it's not for everyone. Here's a list of several powerful vector design tools you don't want to miss.

Sketch isn’t a photo-editing app per se, but you can editing images within the Mac prototyping tool. The best part of editing in Sketch is that all edits are nondestructive, meaning that any of your changes take effect without overwriting the original image file. (So you can always go back to the original if you want.). The largest collection of free and premium Sketch resources for mobile, web, UI, and UX designers working with Sketch by Bohemian Coding. All.sketch files and.svg files are editable and easy to use. Sketch, two weeks ago, celebrating their 10th anniversary and the joys of truly native Mac apps: Best of all, native Mac apps like ours are designed to fit with the rest of the operating system. It’s hard to quantify, but if you use Apple’s built-in apps you immediately get a ‘feel’ for how things should work in native apps.

  • Download this app from Microsoft Store for Windows 10, Windows 10 Team (Surface Hub). See screenshots, read the latest customer reviews, and compare ratings for Sketchable.
  • Sketch (Free Trial 30 days, MacOS only) If you are working on a Mac and in need of a budget-friendly alternative to Photoshop, Sketch is the answer. Sketch is a vector graphics app that has the design field all excited, specifically website designers.

In this post, we’ll explore 14+ paid and free graphic design tools that you can use as vector editor Adobe Illustrator alternatives.

While Adobe Creative Cloud — Illustrator, Photoshop, Adobe XD, InDesign, and more — may be known as the industry standard for graphic design, its expensive monthly subscription model ($20.99 per month or $52.99 per month for the entire Creative Cloud) can bruise a budget.

Part of your world: Why we’re proud to build a truly native Mac app in 2020 New in Sketch: Color Variables, Components View (Beta) and a new Insert Window New in Sketch: Say hello to Assistants — a helping hand for your designs. New in Sketch Color Variables & Components. Sketch 40 - Latest version of the vector drawing tool 'Sketch is great because it is a lot faster to use than Adobe Illustrator for most things and is fairly powerful. Plus, you can just copy an.

This post delves into some surprising alternative vector design tools to uncover:

  • Features
  • Files supported
  • Pricing
  • Compatible systems (Windows, Mac, iPad, etc.)
  • Potential downsides

For a list of some FREE Adobe Illustrator alternatives, scroll to the bottom.

If you’re looking for alternatives to Adobe Photoshop, we’ve also got a handy list here, along with our picks for the best web design software tools.

Vectors vs. rasters: quick lesson for the uninitiated

For context, graphic designers work on two types of static image formats: vectors and rasters. Vectors are made from lines, curves, and shapes (plus some machine learning magic). Rasters are comprised of pixels.

Have you ever noticed an image get super grainy when you try to blow it up? That’s raster image pixelation at work (and why you don’t want your logo to be a raster).

Vectors: Scale ’em up, scale ’em down. Vectors are easily editable and resizable — perfect for logos, icons, illustrations, print/signage graphics, and even some animations.

Rasters: Preferred for digital photography, enormously wider range of color palette options (16 million), better for nuanced detail

If you’re looking for Adobe Illustrator alternatives to create digital graphics, logos, illustrations, and animations for print, web, and interfaces — you’re in the right place.

Our list of top Adobe Illustrator alternatives:

  1. RelayThat
  2. Affinity Designer
  3. CorelDRAW
  4. Sketch
  5. Figma
  6. Snappa
  7. Canva
  8. Artboard
  9. Vector Creator
  10. Boxy SVG
  11. Graphic
  12. Gravit Designer
  13. Inkscape
  14. Vectornator
  15. Design Wizard
  16. + more free Adobe Illustrator alternatives at the end

Sure, Adobe Illustrator may be king. But if you’re into coups, here’s where you should start:

1. RelayThat

RelayThat flips the whole idea of a professional marketing graphics design tool on its head by allowing you to import your brand assets (or magically upload from a URL). This cloud-based graphics design superstar let’s you immediately get to work with thousands of premade, social-friendly layouts based on specific branding.

  • Files: Import PNG, JPEG, and SVG. Export PNG and JPEG
  • Trial version: No
  • OS: Web app, optimized for Chrome
  • Pricing model: AppSumo Lifetime Deal: $49 forever [limited time]

Potential downsides: Focus on digital social media graphic creation, limited layout sizes

2. Affinity Designer

Built and continuously improved as Serif’s pièce de résistance, Affinity Designer is designed to be intuitive for the experienced Adobe user. With one of the most comprehensive vector design toolsets on this list, plus raster finishing, Affinity Designer might be the alternative you’re looking for.

With full compatibility with Adobe’s Suite, Affinity Designer supports standards: 10-bit, CMYK, CIELAB, and Pantone. Affinity Designer has some capabilities similar to Photoshop, like bitmap functions. Users like that the program is not too heavy and doesn’t take up too much RAM.

  • Files: PSD, AI, PDF, SVG, JPG, TIFF, EXR
  • Free trial: Yes (for Mac and Windows)
  • OS: Mac, PC, iPad
  • Pricing: One-time price of $49.99, free and frequent updates (only $19.99 on iPad)

Potential downsides: Relatively newer product, awaiting more advanced editing features that Illustrator has, lack of educational and how-to resources

3. CorelDRAW

Compatible with other tools in the Corel graphic suite including Photo-Paint, a Photoshop competitor, CorelDRAW gives you a robust set of vector illustration tools. Get vectors ready for print fast and easy, edit multi-page documents, convert bitmap to vector non-destructively, and generate QR codes.

Check out the LiveSketch feature on touch-enabled devices to turn sketching into precise vector graphics. CorelDRAW is the go-to software for many printing industries in certain parts of the world.

  • Files: Download to AI, PSD, PDF, JPG, PNG, SVG, DWG, DXF, EPS, TIFF + more
  • Free trial: Yes
  • OS: Windows and Mac (and tablet-compatible app)
  • Pricing: Buy a full license for $669 or get an annual subscription for $198

Potential downsides: Very large application size, fairly expensive, fewer updates

4. Sketch

Built for UI design, prototyping, and wireframing, Sketch also gives users powerful vector graphics editing abilities. Users report that it is fairly easy to use and has strong organizational/breadcrumb features. Plus, Sketch has a diverse suite of educational resources.

  • Files: PNG, JPG, TIFF, WebP, SVG, EPS, SVG code, PDF. AI and PSD files are upload-only, giving you a flattened layer.
  • Free trial: Yes
  • OS: Mac
  • Pricing: $100 per year to renew license

Potential downsides: Reliance on third-party plugins and integrations (may be good or bad), focus on UX/UI and prototyping

(For a free Sketch alternative for Windows, check outLunacyfrom icons8.)

5. Figma

As a collaborative wireframing and UI design tool, Figma isn’t a direct Adobe competitor, but its collaborative, web app-based approach might be worth your consideration. Share files with links, instead of exporting each time you need another pair of eyes on your work.

Speaking of collaboration, Figma might be most well-known for offering real-time teamwork-friendly possibilities. This Adobe Illustrator alternative is focused in on design made for the web, so its tools for pure vector graphic creation are more basic. But you’ve still got your pen tool, vector networks, and smart components.

  • Files: Export to PNG, JPG, SVG, or PDF. Import .sketch, PNG, JPG, GIF or Figma Files (.fig)
  • Free trial: Sort of? It is free up to 2 editors and 3 projects
  • OS: Windows, Linux, Mac, and Chrome
  • Pricing: Free up to 2 editors and 3 projects, $12-45 per editor per month after that

Potential downsides: Not a pure vector graphics editor, not touchscreen compatible, reliance on plugins, focus on UX/UI and prototyping

6. Snappa

Snappa is great for creating professional marketing designs in that made-for-social-media style. Its UI is a lot simpler and more lightweight compared to Adobe – of course, that comes with many relative limitations as well. Users seem to like its easy graphic resizing feature and library of visual assets. As part of the Stocksnap.io family, you also get access to tons of pre-licensed, free stock images.

  • Files: Download to JPG or PNG
  • Free trial: Free up to 5 saved/downloaded designs per month
  • OS: Web app
  • Pricing: $10-$15 per month or $120 annually

Potential downsides: Focus on digital social media graphic creation, limited file export options

7. Canva

Many people who use Illustrator or Sketch rely on tools like Canva when they need to create graphics quickly. Canva is extremely versatile, and while it doesn’t have the same deep vector editing features as Illustrator, the tool boasts an impressive range of assets, vector icons, templates, and ready-made design solutions.

  • Files: Upload SVG, PNG, or JPEG. Download to JPG, PNG, PDF, Powerpoint, GIF, or MP4.
  • Free trial: Yes
  • OS: Web app
  • Pricing: $12.95 per month or $119.40 annually

/rosetta-app-for-mac.html. Potential downsides: Limited export options, users dislike the feeling of being nickeled and dimed for +$1 additional assets.)

[Looking for Canva alternatives? We’ve written about 9 different options.]

8. Artboard

Built by the team at Mapdiva, Artboard is a Mac app with surprisingly smart vector editing capabilities. With tons of drawing tools, timesaving workflows, layers, and boolean tools, Artboard is a simplified Illustrator alternative for quick design turnaround.

  • Files: Import JPEG, BMP, GIF, PNG, TIF, PDF, and SVG. Export to PNG, TIF, JPEG, and fully scalable PDFs.
  • Free trial: Yes
  • OS: Mac
  • Pricing: Starts at $39.99 for a single user license

Potential downsides: User complaints about the lack of a pathfinder tool, struggle to edit text

9. Vector Creator

From the team at Icons8: meet Vector Creator. This tool is uniquely focused on creating those soft people illustrations you see all over SaaS websites.

  • Files: Import in SVG, PNG, and JPEG. Export to PNG or editable .SVG with Icons8 license (Pro features include SVG export and attribution removal)
  • Free trial: Free version
  • OS: Web app
  • Pricing: Free or $19.90 per month for Vector Creator Pro (plus all of Icons8)

Potential downsides: Newer tool, basic features, lacks file export options

10. Boxy SVG

Using SVG as its native document format, Boxy SVG was made just for scalable vector graphics. This tool is available across operating systems and devices.

  • Files: Upload PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP, PDF and AI files. Download to PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP and HTML. Plus .pdf for Windows and macOS apps
  • Free trial: Not really
  • OS: MacOS, Windows, Linux, ChromeOS, web app
  • Pricing: $9 or $9.99 per month depending on the version, free for Linux

Potential downsides: Dated UI, super focused on vector editing (SVGs) so missing some broader graphic design features

11. Graphic

Graphic started as a vector drawing iPad app, but it’s since moved to iPhone and Mac OS X as well. This vector software also gives you tools like layers, editable brush strokes, and UI creation elements.

  • Files: Import and export SVG, PDF, and PSD
  • Free trial: No
  • OS: iPad, iPhone, MacOS only
  • Pricing: Mac App Store for only $29.99

Potential downsides: Originating from iPad, this tool has a different feel from native web or desktop apps (may be a good or bad thing)

Free Adobe Illustrator Alternatives:

12. Gravit Designer

Gravit Designer is a free vector graphic design app geared toward professional designers. Choose from a wide library of shapes, illustrations, etc., and export infinitely scalable vector graphics. The paid PRO version has even more vector graphic features, including cloud file syncing and offline mode, as well as way more file import/export options.

  • Files: Export to PNG, JPG, PDF, and SVG. With PRO: Import PDF, EPS, SVG, AI, and .sketch
  • Free trial: Full free version. Free trial of PRO.
  • OS: Any desktop (Mac OS, Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS)
  • Pricing: Free. Get PRO for $49.99 per year

Potential downsides: Doesn’t support graphics tablets, some users complain that it can take up a lot of RAM, missing some key features under the hood like snap to grid functions

13. Inkscape

Free, open-source, and impressive, Inkscape gives you flexible drawing tools, embedded bitmaps, transformations, gradient editor, node editing, boolean operations. Sure, the UI is a bit dated. But with Inkscape, you can design, edit, draw in 2D, easily convert bitmap images into vectors, and create compliant SVG files.

  • Files: Import/export: SVG, PNG, OpenDocument Drawing, DXF, sk1, PDF, EPS, + more
  • OS: Windows, Mac OS X and GNU/Linux
  • Pricing: It’s free

Potential downsides: Interface can be overwhelming, can lag or crash when working with super high-res files, no preview features for the visualization of filters and effects

14. Vectornator

Starting as an iPad app, Vectornator is a pretty interesting free choice with some more advanced vector editing tools like boolean operations, grouping, pen tool, anchoring, and masking capabilities. Plus, this will be a tool to watch, since real-time collaboration is coming soon.

  • Files: AI, SVG and PDF
  • OS: iPad, iOS, MacOS only
  • Pricing: It’s free

Potential downsides: It’s really new and it remains to be seen how all the features will develop and mature.

15. Design Wizard

Design Wizard gives you the freedom to create great videos and images easily. The resize feature is a standout here, and allows you to quickly resize images on the free plan. Design Wizard holds over 1 million premium images and thousands of high-quality videos. And every video and image has also been licensed for commercial use!

Files: Upload SVG, PNG, JPEG or MP4. Download to JPG, PNG, PDF, SVG, M-JPEG, MP4

Free trial: Yes

OS: Web app

keyboard on screen mac download Pricing: $9.99 per month for Pro or $49.99 per month for Business

Potential downsides: No print or music integrations as of yet!

Sketch App For Windows

Here are more free alternatives to Adobe Illustrator that you may want to check out:

  • Vectr – free vector graphics software
  • GIMP – free, not for Macs

Can t delete app on mac. Free vector-editing adjacent tools:

  • Vecteezy (Vector images with an editor)
  • Vector Magic (convert files with an editor)

Sketch App Download

You can also check out our list of discounted graphic design tools to help you create without breaking the bank.

Good luck! We hope you find an Adobe Illustrator alternative that you love — a tool that can scale with you! Comment below letting us know which tool is your favorite to work with!

It seems like Evernote isn’t doing much with Skitch these days and in fact, the company announced it ended support for the screenshot and annotation software on multiple platforms. It’s still an awesome tool especially considering it’s free, but there’s never a bad time to explore some other options.

Today we’re detailing three excellent alternatives to Skitch on Mac. These apps excel at their ability to take detailed screenshots, plus add flare and purpose to them with different annotation tools and more. If you’re ready to move on from Skitch, give these a try.

Tip: If you don’t use a Mac, no problem. We’ve detailed even more Skitch alternatives for Windows and Android too.

1. Snagit

Okay, admittedly Snagit is the most expensive option on this list, but it’s arguably one of the most advanced screenshot apps you’ll ever come across for your Mac. It lets you not only take screenshots, but screen recordings as well. Then you edit them in nothing short of a phenomenal editor that can please the most avid screenshot taker.

Snagit lets you edit the border and dimensions of the screenshot before you finish taking it — a feature I’ve always liked in Skitch. Once you take the screenshot either from keyboard shortcut or menu bar, it opens in the full Snagit UI. Here you can add arrows, text, comment bubbles, shapes, fill colors, a ridiculous number of stamps, magnification for focus, crop it, blur it, cut it out and more. Click Effects for more features like shadows, perspective and filters. The breadth of features is absolutely superb.

Taking it one step further, you can adjust these tools to your liking. For instance, with the magnification tool, you can adjust how much magnification you want, the border width and color.

The customizability extends right down to the sharing aspect, which includes your personalized Share Sheet options from your Mac, plus recommended services from Snagit Outputs like Screencast.com and Google Drive.

Alas, Snagit is $49.95 after the free trial ends, but absolutely buy it if you can afford it. The app is arguably one of the best in the game.

Sketch App Alternative Mac Free

2. Lightshot Screenshot

Lightshot Screenshot is a screenshot tool that lets you draw and annotate. It doesn’t live in your dock, but rather the menu bar so it’s readily available. Click the icon to draw your frame, then use the included tools to mark it up. These are a pen, line, circle, rectangle, highlighter, arrow and text.

Over in the left toolbar is a bunch of sharing tools including one of my favorite features I’ve ever seen in a screenshot program. You can copy the image to your clipboard, upload to the cloud, share it with friends andsave it, but you can also perform a Google search with it. It will take the screenshot, upload it to Google and let you automatically search with the image to find similar results or identify what is in the picture. It’s a hugely convenient way to image search.

Unfortunately you can’t open any existing screenshots in Lightshot or edit ones you already saved, so it’s best used solely as a creation tool. It’s definitely overall a bit more basic than Skitch, but it’s totally free in the Mac App Store.

3. Apowersoft Mac Screenshot

Apowersoft Mac Screenshot is another screenshot tool that has several editing and annotation features built in. One of the best features right away is that it has a screen magnifier unlike Skitch or Mac’s default screenshot tool. So while you’re trying to draw a regional screenshot, the app magnifies your pointer and surrounding area so you can make a precise selection.

When you capture your screenshot, a toolbox appears along the bottom of the frame with your options. It’s actually a bit uncanny how similar this UI is to Lightshot. You can draw an circle, rectangle, line, arrow, use a paintbrush tool, blur a selected area, write text and more. It also supports full window screenshots too.

Tip: The blur tool doesn’t produce the same pixelated effect that Skitch does. Apowersoft’s is more of a Gaussian blur, so that’s something to consider if the difference means anything to you.

When you’re done editing, Apowersoft Mac Screenshot also includes several sharing features. You can share your screenshot to the cloud and send it off via cloud link, copy it to clipboard or save it to your computer.

The one glaring downside to this app is, like Lightshot, it won’t open image files to work with those, including completed screenshots. This means you essentially can’t edit and make additional changes to screenshots you’ve already saved.

Apowersoft Mac Screenshot is free to try but ultimately costs $39.99.

SEE ALSO:How to Take Control of Screenshots from Menu Bar on a Mac


The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.Also See#image editing #images

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