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We always love working in Photoshop, Flash, 3D Studio Max as designers but sometimes they could really get slow or fixing a minor correction in such huge programs may really give a test for our patience which make us think about some other alternatives to these bulky softwares. We have a solution to this in the form of smaller designer programs which can substitute some of the most used features found in the bigger ones.
They could really be a handy tool if you are going to do repetitive and simple tasks by quickly finishing your job in quite an effective way because they are meant to that specific job and you need not be a professional to use these programs which makes your job much easier if you are assigning your task to somebody else and don’t want them to use your precious programs.
Design programs involve a lot of things like editing the images in any specific way, program the designs in an illustrative way, creating an animation, Tools to create high end graphics, create 3D life like images, using Flash Tools and many other technical aspects are involved which these smaller programs do it in a much professional and in a quick way.
Presenting you with such a collection of programs which could really surprise you with their small size and great functionality.
Paint.NET is a photo editing software or photo editor tool with a range of powerful tools, layers, undo options, history, actions manager and special effects. Supports common image formats.
GIMP or GNU Image Manipulation Program is a Graphics editing program similar to Photshop is used for photo retouching, image authoring and composition. Can also be used as batch processing system or mass production image renderer.
Xara Xtreme works on Linux and is used as a powerful drawing tool which has many tools like Zoom, text tool, Transparency tool, Blend and Bevel tool, Freehand tool and many other tools and has a new plug-in system for importing and exporting filters.
PaintStar is a digital image processing software mainly used for Photo retouching, Image morphing and composing, displaying thumbnails. Also supports the common editing techniques and has many tools like transformation tools, selection tools, gradient fill tools, filters and effects, color conversion and more.
Active Pixels, a similar photo editor as Photoshop has many similarities to it as layers, magic wand tool, gradient etc., Active Pixels includes a screen capture tool, red eye fixer and a picture browser but some of its filters lack proper configuration settings.
Picasa locates your pictures and sorts them into visual albums arranging by date with name of the folder for easy recognition and keeps them neatly organized. Makes it easy to share images and albums and posting them on blogs, the latest from Picasa is Web Albums.
ArtWeaver is a drawing program from novice to advanced users where you can record your steps to play in future. Offers a wide selection of brushes, filters, history function, editable text layers, graphic tablets and many other functions.
VCW VicMan’s Photo Editor offers simple image editing, allows refining digital photos, draw artworks and produce powerful graphics. Has a Caricature tool to transform faces into funny, distorted images.
Phot Pos Lite is an Image and Computer Graphics editor which is a free version of the Photo Pos Pro which contains a part of the Photo Pos features which lets you edit, enhance and manipulate the images, supports many file types, scanners and digital cameras, special effects, editing tools and more.
MAGIX Vtreme Photo Designer offers an impressive set of tools to edit your photos easily and transform photo ideas into reality. Has an intelligent task wizard to explain the editing procedure. Also create collages with image retouching tools, cloning tools, magix wand tool.
ColorPic is a professional tool for picking colors from a palette which lets you select 16 colors at once where the HSV and RGB values can be adjusted and a magnifier attached for accuracy.
Magnify the thinks on the screen to its pixel level which is very use to use with a re sizable magnification area, an adjustable zoom factor, mouse wheel control, an overlay grid and image capture facility.
Easy Thumbnails is a Windows utility to create precise thumbnail images and scaled down / up copies from other picture formats. Also has a slider control to rotate and adjust the brightness, sharpness or contrast of the images and preview them. Also has 11 re sampling filters and a simple file selector and built in image viewer.
Fastone Photo Re-sizer is a tool to convert and rename images in batches with sequential number and a preview. Supports popular image formats and allows to re-size, apply color, border and watermark effects, supports folder or non folder structure.
ImageDiff is a comparison tool to compare images and see the accurate differences by each pixel. Compares images of different proportions and formats and applies a colored filter to see the exact degree of change.
Irfanview is a small and fast graphic viewer which is based on feature cloning and stealing of ideas with multipage TIF and ICO support. Includes features like paint options, email option, multimedia player, scan support, loss less jpg rotation, plug-ins, slideshow, support for Photshop filters and many more.
FastStone Image Viewer is an fast and stable Image browser, converter and editor. Provides a full screen mode, thumbnail browser, magnifier, musical slideshow, image annotation and other functionality pop up when mouse touches the edges of screen.
Alch Icon Suite is an icon editing studio which has a range of effects to edit any windows icons and create your own icons in an effective manner.
DrawPlus is a vector drawing software where anyone can create graphic drawings to web animations. Has an watermark and border wizard, natural curve editing and smoothing, quick shape tools, helps creating logos, calendars, envelops, business cards, banners and more.
DrawPlus is a vector drawing software where anyone can create graphic drawings to web animations. Has an watermark and border wizard, natural curve editing and smoothing, quick shape tools, helps creating logos, calendars, envelops, business cards, banners and more.
InsightPoint is used for creating illustrations and layout, multipage slide shows in SVG format, object oriented vector design tools and can be used in both Windows and Linux.
Karbon is a vector drawing application to explore vector graphics to create vector art or photo realistic vector images. Also create logos, illustrations, clip arts and more.
SmoothDraw is a freehand drawing tool for creating natural paintings and high quality pictures. Supports many brush tools, retouching tools, adjustments and other effects.
Pencil is an open source animation / drawing software for creating hand drawn animations or cartoons using bitmap and vector graphics. This software can be used in Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.
SPRAY vector generator produces helper objects like random position, outline color, grids and rays for Vector Illustration software like Xara X. Generated objects can be placed through clipboard.
ParticleDraw is a Windows drawing program where the brushes are result of dynamic systems which are tunable and can construct arbitrary systems of particles which can be further used as brushes.
Blender is an open source 3D rendering program used for modeling, animation, UV Unwrapping, shading, Imaging and Composting, Game creation. Includes tools fir 2D and 3D procedural brushes, collision simulation and lot more.
K-3D us a 3D modeling and animation software with an object oriented plug in architecture excelling in polygonal modelling and a procedural engine.
Google SketchUp is a 3D modeling program to create 3D models of house, spaceships, redecorating your room or giving your city a new look and place in Google Earth and anything for which you want to create a model. You can also share your models with others through 3D Warehouse.
3D Canvas is a 3D modeling and animation tool with an intuitive drag and drop approach where complex models are created using tools to deform, sculpt and paint those shapes.
Looxis creates 3D portraits through a hi-tech camera by using a laser which etches the portrait within an optical crystal making it a unique piece.
Bryce 7 is a 3D landscaping and animation tool which can create a paradise with unbeleivable realism, improved skies and even particles, lighting and much more.
3D Box Shot Maker is used to design an impressive and attractive box shot as your software box cover. Just a font and side image is enough to generate the final image which can also include shadow and reflections.
Alibre Design Express is a 3D modeling software for creating mechanical parts and 2D drawings and assemblies. It is used in wood working, manufacturing, creating mechanical designs.
AnimPixels is an animated movie software where you can create your own animated movie using the movie components in AnimPixels or download them from the Internet.
Touch Art Sampler is used to learn, design and perform live visuals, 3D artworks and VJing. Customize the visuals by adding the lighting, color, textures, audio and sync visuals.
Synfig is an open source vector based animation software designed for producing high quality animations and eliminates the task of manual tweening and producing 2D animations of great quality.
A Windows application which can create a single animated GIF file from any number of images which are saved as separate GIF files. Also includes automatic interlacing and transparency detection.
An amazing graphics design software for all to create stunning graphics for your home, school or business to create 3D scenes, logos, animations and models.
A light yet powerful tool for artistic expressions, includes internal support for BMP files where brushes and animation frame sequences can be loaded and also images in other formats can be converted in the same.
AmitySource Usebar Generator generates unique and attractive sidebars with a choice of colors, patterns, special effects and an overlay image.
uMark is a Professional Image Watermarking software which marks your images with a copyright notice or a logo of yours so that nobody else can see or copy that.
Terragen is a photo realistic scenery rendering software which generates realistic landscapes and animations, special effects and has been used in films, games, books, magazines and advertisements.
Flash Slideshow Maker creates animated photo slide show as a Flash album. Automatically transforms your digital photos to flash file format with background music and transition effects.
LiveSwif is a key-frame based animation system to create Flash movies, buttons or banners. Provides a path and transform motion to create animations.
Sothink SWF Catcher is an extension to Internet Explorer which is used to save Flash based charts,movies, presentations and games at the same time. Can be embedded easily into Internet Explorer by adding a small button.
Sue Fisher manages TrueType fonts in Windows which installs and uninstalls fonts, copies or deletes them, renames, filters, groups and uses multiple font windows to compare them.
FontHit Font Tools is a font software used to preview, install, uninstall, print and view the fonts in categories. Can drag and drop the fonts for preview. Supports various font formats.
FontRenamer Software renames the truetype font to the real name of the fonts which makes it easy to understand. For example arialbi.ttf is renamed as Arial Bold Italic.ttf.
FontInfo has an overview of fonts installed on your system which you can view as a concise list of fonts.
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Wednesday, January 26th, 2011 05:55
These look like excellent programs! Thanks for the great list.
Monday, October 11th, 2010 15:48
Thank you for this great compilation. I have some more, especially for those who are also involved in creating texts: http://www.indoition.com/creativity-productivity-tools-technical-writing.htm
Sunday, October 10th, 2010 09:09
Thanks Siva,
Article helps me a lot, nice round up
Once again Thank You very much.
Saturday, October 9th, 2010 00:23
ugh..
I agree with “this article is nothing but pure link-bait/seo masturbation. The author adds NOTHING to this list. It might as well be a google results page for “design tools”. I am looking forward to better content from this site.” (via Tagny Daggart)
Wise one:
“If you need 50 apps like this to be productive, you may need to re-assess your workflow.”
My 2 cents:
This post is called “50 Must Have Design programs for Increased Productivity”, there’s nothing “must have” shown in it. Not to mention the second part of the title, I mean, how this bunch of mostly random apps could possibly increase anyone’s productivity? I guess you would just spend one day installing them, the next day trying out each of them, and another day UNinstalling them from your system…
Final thought: either 1wd seems to be out of ideas (which is quite hard to believe in), or editor-in-chief is on vacation.
Friday, October 8th, 2010 15:34
Um, I love this site, but this article is nothing but pure link-bait/seo masturbation. The author adds NOTHING to this list. It might as well be a google results page for “design tools”.
I am looking forward to better content from this site.
Thursday, October 7th, 2010 08:33
Drawplus and Inkscape have the same teaser texts. Nice roundup still, yet a lot of programs that really have no use compared to better free equivalents.
Thursday, October 7th, 2010 06:49
Nice Collection. Thanks alot for sharing. It’s really very very useful.
Wednesday, October 6th, 2010 16:04
Thanks for this impressive collection Siva, I recommend Pinta, it’s a nice alternative to Paint.Net and is compatible with Linux, Mac and Windows.
Wednesday, October 6th, 2010 06:48
Meh. If you need 50 apps like this to be productive, you may need to re-assess your workflow. Honestly, this list just seems like a bunch of random, obscure graphics programs. Hardly any of them seem suitable for any kind of prodessional design work aside from maybe GIMP and Inkscape.
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010 16:34
No mention of Pixelmator?
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010 15:29
Nice post with many valuable tools to make work more easier. Thanks for posting.
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010 14:39
Now this is a mighty list. I haven’t seen more than 1/2 of these image programs. Gonna have to check a few of them out. Thanks
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010 14:17
Nice collection.
You have missed out Poser which is also a great 3D rendering program.
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010 13:37
Lots of useful tools. Thanks a lot for sharing.
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010 15:29
I’m sorry but none of these are “must have” in the least – especially if you have the programs you mentioned before.
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010 15:10
Some really useful stuff here, downloading bryce right now – thanks!
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010 14:33
Nice collection of design programs ;)
Just FYI: The description for InkScape is missing…. :|
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010 14:32
Nice nice list ,gotta share with friends …Thanks for sharing !
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010 14:14
A correction alert (after which you can ditch this comment, if you like): You have the description for DrawPlus in both 19 (Inkscape) and 20 (DrawPlus). I comment because I’m interested in what Inkscape might be. Other descriptions seem fine, I think.
Saturday, October 9th, 2010 00:26
“Inkscape is a Vector Graphics Editor, similar to Adobe Illustrator, that strives to
be SVG Compliant, open source, responsive and extensible.”
By the way, have you heard of search engines, like google?
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Rick Wolff
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010 14:14
A correction alert (after which you can ditch this comment, if you like): You have the description for DrawPlus in both 19 (Inkscape) and 20 (DrawPlus). I comment because I’m interested in what Inkscape might be. Other descriptions seem fine, I think.
Sergei Tatarinov
Saturday, October 9th, 2010 00:26
“Inkscape is a Vector Graphics Editor, similar to Adobe Illustrator, that strives to
be SVG Compliant, open source, responsive and extensible.”
By the way, have you heard of search engines, like google?
Kannan
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010 14:17
Nice collection.
You have missed out Poser which is also a great 3D rendering program.
Jessica Benton
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010 14:39
Now this is a mighty list. I haven’t seen more than 1/2 of these image programs. Gonna have to check a few of them out. Thanks
Narendra Keshkar
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010 15:29
Nice post with many valuable tools to make work more easier. Thanks for posting.
Sasha
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010 13:37
Lots of useful tools. Thanks a lot for sharing.
Rudy
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010 19:11
Good List.. but no love for the mac community
John Paul
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010 14:32
Nice nice list ,gotta share with friends …Thanks for sharing !
Phillipe Calmet Williams
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010 14:33
Nice collection of design programs ;)
Just FYI: The description for InkScape is missing…. :|
J
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010 15:10
Some really useful stuff here, downloading bryce right now – thanks!
Jack
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010 15:29
I’m sorry but none of these are “must have” in the least – especially if you have the programs you mentioned before.
Martin Lucas
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010 16:34
No mention of Pixelmator?
Andy Hutchins
Wednesday, October 6th, 2010 06:48
Meh. If you need 50 apps like this to be productive, you may need to re-assess your workflow. Honestly, this list just seems like a bunch of random, obscure graphics programs. Hardly any of them seem suitable for any kind of prodessional design work aside from maybe GIMP and Inkscape.
Srinivas Gupta
Sunday, October 10th, 2010 09:09
Thanks Siva,
Article helps me a lot, nice round up
Once again Thank You very much.
Marc Achtelig
Monday, October 11th, 2010 15:48
Thank you for this great compilation. I have some more, especially for those who are also involved in creating texts: http://www.indoition.com/creativity-productivity-tools-technical-writing.htm
Brett Widmann
Wednesday, January 26th, 2011 05:55
These look like excellent programs! Thanks for the great list.
Sergei Tatarinov
Saturday, October 9th, 2010 00:23
ugh..
I agree with “this article is nothing but pure link-bait/seo masturbation. The author adds NOTHING to this list. It might as well be a google results page for “design tools”. I am looking forward to better content from this site.” (via Tagny Daggart)
Wise one:
“If you need 50 apps like this to be productive, you may need to re-assess your workflow.”
My 2 cents:
This post is called “50 Must Have Design programs for Increased Productivity”, there’s nothing “must have” shown in it. Not to mention the second part of the title, I mean, how this bunch of mostly random apps could possibly increase anyone’s productivity? I guess you would just spend one day installing them, the next day trying out each of them, and another day UNinstalling them from your system…
Final thought: either 1wd seems to be out of ideas (which is quite hard to believe in), or editor-in-chief is on vacation.
Juegos
Wednesday, October 6th, 2010 16:04
Thanks for this impressive collection Siva, I recommend Pinta, it’s a nice alternative to Paint.Net and is compatible with Linux, Mac and Windows.
srilaxmi
Thursday, October 7th, 2010 06:49
Nice Collection. Thanks alot for sharing. It’s really very very useful.
Red
Thursday, October 7th, 2010 08:33
Drawplus and Inkscape have the same teaser texts. Nice roundup still, yet a lot of programs that really have no use compared to better free equivalents.
Tagny Daggart
Friday, October 8th, 2010 15:34
Um, I love this site, but this article is nothing but pure link-bait/seo masturbation. The author adds NOTHING to this list. It might as well be a google results page for “design tools”.
I am looking forward to better content from this site.