Since the old age, drawings have always been a wonderful way to represent the ideas. Describing your idea verbally is important, but drawings allow you to show the exact dimensions of your imagination. Moreover, it helps in completing the actual project accurately within a specified time frame.
For example, before constructing a house, the engineers and architects need to prepare drawings for floor plan, electrical plan, plumbing plan, etc.to know how the house will look and function before actually building it. These drawings consist of scales, dimensions, and measurements, and in case they go wrong, the entire house building project can fail.
Inaccurate drawings and specifications often lead to misconceptions, which can increase your project cost and consume more of your time in completing the project. Many times, the result of the project may not be the way you have thought of due to an ambiguous interpretation of the idea. To get the project completed the way you want, you need to have accurate and precise drawings before you start the project, whether it is for constructing a building or manufacturing any machinery.
To overcome these challenges; there are best drawing software available, which include tools that help you to draw and represent your ideas in the simplest form possible. Here, we have come up with a list of the top 9 free and open source drawing software which you can consider based on the requirements of your business. But, before we go through the details of each software, let's have basic information about drawing software, what are the key benefits of using drawing software, and the features to look for while selecting a drawing software.
What is Drawing Software?
Drawing software is a computer program used for creating drawing with the help of a keyboard, mouse, and inbuilt tools like digital pens, markers, and paintbrushes. It provides extensive variants in drawing tools like stroke size, shapes, brightness, etc., and customizable color palettes. It allows users to create vectors, illustrations, charts, graphs, diagrams, images, etc.from scratch. Also, it can help users in exporting completed drawings and editing them.
There are 3 different types of drawing software, and each one of them is designed to accomplish a certain set of relevant functions, like drawing sketches, manipulating photographs, and creating graphics from scratch. Thus, knowing these 3 types of drawing software becomes necessary before you choose the one to accomplish your goals.
Drawing Software is Used for the Industries like -
Earlier, the designers, drafting technicians, or artists involved with the creativity used paper, pencils, crayons, paints, etc.to represent their ideas. After the existence of drawing software, keyboard and mouse were used to make drawings used for preparing construction plans, machinery designs, and many more applications. But, how did this drawing software come into existence? Just checkout the evolution of the drawing software mentioned below -
Evolution of the Drawing Software
As you can see above, drawing software has evolved a lot over the past decades and changed the way industrial designers, architects, and professional artists work these days. The age of manual drawing is over, and the engineers, manufacturers, and building constructors now rely on drawing software to complete their projects successfully. Below-mentioned are some of the benefits of using drawing software.
Benefits of Using Drawing Software
Thus, the people using drawing software to create, maintain, and update their drawings increase accuracy, save time, resulting in incurring costs involved with the design, construction, and manufacturing. We understand that selecting one drawing software from so many options can be difficult. To choose the right software, you need to consider the below-mentioned must-have features of drawing software so that you don't regret your decision in the future.
Features to Look for in a Drawing Software
Ability to Import & Export Different File Types
The drawing software you choose should have the ability to import & export different file types you require to accomplish your goals. If your client requires the complete design in the form of a JPEG file, your software should support that file extension.
Includes Templates Sufficing Your Business Needs
The drawing software should include basic drawing tools which help you in creating the type of design your business requires. For example, if you are looking forward to creating a floor plan, but the drawing software doesn't include templates relevant to floor plans, then it is of no use to you.
Auto Shapes Available
The drawing software you choose should allow you to draw shapes like arrows, call-outs, stars, banners, flow charts, landscape symbols, and signs of all types with a click of a mouse. Moreover, it should be easier for you to fill colors, textures, and flip & rotate those auto shapes easily, enabling you to make your job quick and easy.
Paint Tools
The paint tools can help you in adding an appealing look to your designs. You can add special effects like shadows, textures, gradients, and 3D effects using paint tools. Moreover, you can edit, modify, and repair digital photos using paint tools. Thus, you need to ensure that your drawing software includes paint tools.
Filling Colors & Effects
Your drawing software should allow you to fill the colors and effects of your choice. It should include a wide variety of patterns so that you can add realistic effects to your designs. Moreover, it should allow you to change the color of auto shapes, lines, backgrounds, symbols, etc., enabling you to work as per your specifications.
Clip Arts & Symbols
If your presentation demands to add clip arts & symbols, your drawing software should include the library of clip arts & symbols you require to use frequently. This will help you to make your drawings creative, presentable, and successful in conveying the idea you want to.
Accurate Dimensioning
The drawing software you choose should include dimensioning tools which help you in viewing the actual size of any object, shape, or line. Even after resizing any object, it should automatically update the dimension, which can help you in working with precision and achieving accuracy in your projects.
Incorporate Sounds and Notes
Many drawing software can allow incorporating sounds and notes within your presentations. So, if your business presentations require including sounds and notes, look for the drawing software which has this feature.
Layers
The drawing software you select should allow you to include layers in a single document. This will help you in designing different aspects of your design individually, without disturbing the entire design.
Sketch & Trace
There are many drawing software available, but still, some artists rely on sketching to represent their idea. The drawing software you select should allow tracing the handmade sketches and make further improvements to ease your job.
Supports Printers
After the completion of the design or presentation, you might require to print on the paper. The drawing software you select should support different types of printers allowing you to print on paper of any size.
Help & Support
What if you don’t know how to give a specific effect to your presentation while using your drawing software? There should be an easy to understand manual or online support available to help you on time.
After going through the must-have features of drawing software, the next question in your mind would be, which are the best options you need to consider. So, the below-mentioned are the top 9 free and open source drawing software which you can consider deploying for your business.
The Top 9 Free and Open Source Drawing Software
#1 Inkscape
Inkscape is a powerful design tool perfect for illustrators and designers wanting to create vector images. It includes flexible drawing tools and supports several file formats. It also has powerful text tools and allows bezier and spiro curves in the vector drawings. As it is a free and open source drawing tool, you can customize it as per your requirements without major investment.
Key Features
- Includes pencil tool, pen tool, calligraphy tool, shape tool, and text tool
- Allows embedding bitmaps
- Can manipulate images and objects
- Allows layering of different elements in a drawing
- Allows filling colors and patterns in the objects, and shapes
- Allows objects rendering
- Compatible with different file formats like PDF, PNG, EPS, etc.
If you have already used Inkscape, please feel free to share your reviews here.
#2 GIMP
GIMP is a free image editor that can work with GNU/Linux, OS X, Windows, and similar operating systems. As it is an open source software, you can change its source code and distribute it. It is a cross-platform drawing software suitable for graphic designers, illustrators, photographers, and even scientists. It can also include 3rd party plugins to provide versatile functionality.
(gimp.org)
Key Features
- Includes tools for high-quality image manipulation
- Allows artists to transform images into unique creations
- Allows creating icons, graphical elements, user interface elements, and mockups
- Supports multiple programming languages like C, C++, Perl, Python, Scheme, etc
- Includes top-notch color management features ensuring high-fidelity color reproduction
If you have already used GIMP, please feel free to share your reviews here.
#3 Krita
Krita is an open source painting software that is developed by artists wanting to provide affordable art tools for everyone. It is used to create concept art, texture and matte paintings, illustrations, and comics. It has a clean and flexible interface providing ample preferences for the artists to arrange the elements as per their requirements. It provides a set of construction kit parts in the form of Dockers and Toolbars.
Key Features
- Includes a variety of beautiful brushes and stabilizer which can smoothen and stabilize your brush strokes
- Includes built-in vector tools helping to create comic panels
- Allows creating textures and patterns seamlessly using its wrap-around mode
- Has the ability to import brush and texture packs from other artists enabling you to expand your toolset
- Includes drawing assistant to help with straight lines and vanishing points
- Allows painting a selection using the global selection mask
- Allows combining, ordering, and flattening layers
If you have already used Krita, please feel free to share your reviews here.
#4 MyPaint
MyPaint is an easy to use tool specially designed for digital painters. It is a free and open source raster graphics editor focusing more than image manipulation or post-processing. It works on Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Unix-like operating systems. Its brush engine is versatile and configurable. Moreover, it provides useful and productive tools required by digital painters to represent their creativity the way they want.
Key Features
- Supports pressure-sensitive graphics tablet
- Includes dynamic brush library
- Can integrate third-party applications
- Can manage different layers easily
- Includes easy-to-use interface
- Includes Gamut masking color wheel
- Provides unlimited canvas not requiring predetermination of image size
If you have already used MyPaint, please feel free to share your reviews here.
#5 Kolourpaint
KolourPaint is an easy-to-use and simple painting program used to create raster images quickly. It is similar to Microsoft Paint, but additionally, it can support transparency, color balance, and image rotation. Being simple to understand; it is designed for painting diagrams, image manipulation, screenshots, and photo editing, applying effects to images, drawing clipart, and logos with transparency.
(kde.org)
Key Features
- Supports 500 levels of undo/redo support
- Allows transparent image editing
- Includes undo and redoable selection commands
- Includes versatile effects and arbitrary rotation angles
- Facilitates "color similarity"
If you have already used Kolourpaint, please feel free to share your reviews here.
#6 Pinta
Pinta is an open source drawing software that also allows image editing. It facilitates users to draw and manipulate images using Linux, Mac, Windows, and *BSD platforms. It is simple to use and includes drawing tools, image filters, and color adjustment tools. It was developed, keeping usability in mind, which can be seen in the several main features of the program.
Key Features
- Includes drawing tools helping to draw freehand, rectangles, ellipses, lines, etc.
- Includes 35 adjustments and effects for enhancing your images
- Supports 55 different languages
- Can track your full history and allows undo at anytime
- Allows layering to separate and group elements of your image
- Allows customizing your workspace enabling you to work the way you want to
If you have already used Pinta, please feel free to share your reviews here.
#7 Tux Paint
Tux Paint is an award-winning free drawing software ideal to use for children from 3-12 years of age. Mainly it is used in schools around the world for teaching drawing activity in children. It has an easy-to-use interface, funny sound effects, and an encouraging cartoon mascot who guides the children while they use this software. Kids, with the help of a blank canvas and a wide range of drawing tools included in this software, can present their creativity in the form of their drawings.
Key Features
- Works on macOS, Windows, Android, and Linux systems
- It has a simple interface and so loading and saving images is quite easy
- Fun sound effects are played when tools are selected and used
- Several drawing tools are available helping in creating drawings easily
- Facilitates Undo and Redo to make your job easier
- Text tools available to add content in your drawings
If you have already used Tux Paint, please feel free to share your reviews here.
#8 Chibipaint
Chibipaint is an open source drawing software that allows users to draw and paint online and share their creativity with other art enthusiasts. It is an oekaki applet which can be downloaded and integrated into your website. It requires a little bit of web programming knowledge to integrate and start using this software. But, it is a highly capable software helping artists to create wonderful artwork.
Key Features
- Includes high-quality brushes
- Includes rotating canvas
- Supports multiple layers with many blending modes
- Includes filters like noise generation and blur
- Tablet pressure sensitivity through JTablet support
If you have already used Chibipaint, please feel free to share your reviews here.
#9 FireAlpaca
FireAlpaca is the free digital painting software compatible with both Mac and Windows. It is available in 10 different languages. It includes simple tools and controls using which even beginners can draw an illustration easily. It is continuously evolving, and new convenient tools would be added gradually.
Key Features
- Includes pen, pencil, airbrush, and watercolor tools
- Has a simple interface
- Available for Mac and Windows both
- Can work with speed using even an old computer
- Includes comic templates to make your job easy
If you have already used FireAlpaca, please feel free to share your reviews here.
Are you still confused about which one to select? You can go through to view the key features of these drawing solutions at a glance in the below comparison chart.
The Top 9 Free and Open Source Drawing Software Comparison Chart
Now, if your expectations from your drawing software are high and cannot be sufficed by these free software, we can suggest you consider one of the most popular drawing software - Sketchbook. Let's go through brief details about Sketchbook and know how it can help in enhancing your drawing presentations.
Sketchbook
Sketchbook by AutoDesk is one of the most popular drawing software that provides a superior drawing experience to the users. It can work on any device and any platform providing you the freedom to save your idea in the form of a drawing whenever it comes into your mind. It has a quick and easy-to-work interface allowing designers, architects, automobile designers to communicate their ideas in the most creative form. It comes with 7 days trial period so that you can check whether it suits your requirements or not before purchasing it.
Key Features
- Provides maximized drawing space on all the devices
- Can import scanned images with a transparent background
- Includes 190 customizable brushes that can incorporate textures and shapes both
- Can export your work in different forms like JPG, BMP, TIFF, PNG, etc.
- Can preserve PSDs with proper layer information
- Helps in refining your sketches into illustrated art
If you have already used Sketchbook, please feel free to share your reviews here.
Conclusion
You would agree to this fact that to create professional drawings and plans, and stay competitive in your respective industry; it has become inevitable to use drawing software. Whether you are planning to deploy a drawing software for your business or providing services to your clients, for both reasons, you cannot compromise on the quality of the important presentations you create by using an incompetent software. You need not be confused with so many options available. Just take your time and select one of the above-listed drawing software which can help you in accomplishing your specific goals.
If you are looking for other drawing features, you can also go through other options like YouiDraw, SmartDraw, Clip Studio Paint, Sketchable, MediBang Paint, Mischief, and ArtRage.
Also, go through the comprehensive list of drawing software here curated by GoodFirms Research Team.
Please leave your valuable feedback if you have used any of the software mentioned here.
Also, browse all software categories if you are looking for the best software for other requirements as well.
