Graphic Design Apps for MAC
16 free Mac apps in Graphic Design, including Preview3MF, ItsPaint, and Birdfont. Each app page lists its version, size, macOS requirement and what’s new, and the download button leads to the developer’s official source.
16 apps
Preview3MFPreview3MF is a free, open-source Quick Look extension for .3mf files, the 3D Manufacturing Format used by 3D-printing slicers. Select a .3mf file in Finder, press Space and you get a real 3D preview of the model, rendered with lighting, shading and materials, which you can orbit and zoom with a mouse or trackpad. It also adds proper Finder thumbnails for .3mf files, reusing the slicer's embedded preview image when there is one and rendering the model itself when there is not. You do not need to open Bambu Studio, PrusaSlicer or OrcaSlicer just to see what a file contains.Graphic Design
ItsPaintItsPaint is a small paint and markup app for the Mac, built around a simple job: take or paste a screenshot, number the steps, point at things and drag the finished image into a bug report or a document. Its developer sums it up as MS Paint for the Mac. It marks up images with numbered step badges, arrows and callouts, a highlighter, pixelation and a spotlight that dims everything outside a box, and it paints too, with thirteen tools including pencil, brush, eraser, clone, fill and Instant Alpha selection.Graphic Design
BirdfontBirdfont is a font editor for Mac that lets you create vector graphics and export them as TTF, OTF and SVG fonts. It supports both monochrome and color font formats, so it suits ordinary typefaces as well as color fonts. Its release notes describe a dedicated ligature tab, spacing classes, anchor glyphs, a color wheel, and the option to import another font and merge it with the one you are working on.Graphic Design
Wings 3DWings 3D is an advanced subdivision modeler that aims to be both powerful and easy to use. It was inspired by Nendo and Mirai from Izware, and offers a wide range of modeling tools, a customizable interface, support for lights and materials, and a built-in AutoUV mapping facility. It concentrates on modeling: Wings 3D has no support for animation. Its import and export plugins cover formats such as OBJ, 3DS, PLY, glTF and Collada.Graphic Design
SeashoreSeashore is an easy-to-use image editor for macOS with support for layers. Its developer describes it as a light GIMP or Photoshop, with most of the features non-professionals need to create images. It has brushes, a pencil, an eraser, clone and smudge tools, gradients, a fill bucket, a text tool, cropping and several selection tools, plus effects such as blur, bloom and crystallize.Graphic Design
ScribusScribus is a free, open-source desktop publishing program for page layout and print production. You build documents with master pages, guides and bleed areas, place images and text in frames, and export the result as a PDF that a commercial printer can use. Reliable PDF creation has been central to the project from the start: Scribus was the first desktop publishing program to support the demanding PDF/X-3 specification, and it can also export PDF/X-1a:2001 and PDF/X-4, along with PDF presentations and forms for the screen. Color is the other strength, with RGB, CMYK, LAB/HLC, spectral and spot colors, color management that leaves you in control, and an emulator that shows how a design looks to people with color vision deficiencies.Graphic Design
Pencil2DPencil2D is an easy, intuitive tool for making 2D hand-drawn animation. Draw frame by frame, like traditional cartoons, and switch freely between raster and vector drawing so you can sketch, ink and paint as you go. Its minimal design keeps the tools simple, so you can focus on animating rather than on which button to press next.Graphic Design
KiCadKiCad is an open-source software suite for electronic design automation (EDA). It covers the whole path from idea to circuit board: draw your circuit as a schematic, then lay out the printed circuit board (PCB) and export Gerber or IPC-2581 files to send to a board maker. KiCad aims to be the best cross-platform electronics design application for professional designers, while hiding the complexity of advanced features so that it stays approachable for beginners.Graphic Design
LibreCADLibreCAD is a free 2D CAD application for technical drawing. Use it to make precise 2D drawings, such as floor plans, mechanical parts and diagrams. It works with DXF, the drawing format used by many CAD programs, and can read DWG drawings too. A command-line converter can turn DXF and DWG drawings into other formats without opening the editor.Graphic Design
ImageOptimImageOptim makes images load faster by making their files smaller without losing quality. Drag images onto its window and it runs several of the best optimization tools automatically, such as MozJPEG, pngquant, OxiPNG, Zopfli and SVGO, and keeps the smallest result. It works with JPEG, PNG, animated GIF and SVG files. It also removes invisible junk: private EXIF metadata such as GPS position and camera serial number, embedded thumbnails, comments and unneeded colour profiles, so you can publish images without exposing private information.Graphic Design
PikaPika makes it quick to find colours on your screen in the format you need. Press its shortcut, point at anything on screen and Pika picks the colour, ready to copy as Hex, RGB, HSB, HSL, Lab, OKLCH or OpenGL values. It holds a foreground and a background colour side by side and shows how well they contrast, which helps you check text against the WCAG accessibility guidelines. You can swap the two colours, undo and redo, and use the macOS system colour picker when you want to choose a colour by hand.Graphic Design
FreeCADFreeCAD is a free parametric 3D modeler for designing real-world objects of any size, from small parts for 3D printing to machines and buildings. Parametric means your model is built from a history of steps and dimensions, so you can change a measurement later and the whole model updates. FreeCAD has workbenches for part design, sketching, assemblies, technical drawings, simulation (FEM), CNC machining (CAM) and architecture (BIM), and it opens and saves standard formats such as STEP, IGES, STL and DXF.Graphic Design
KritaKrita is a free, open-source digital painting app made by artists who want affordable art tools for everyone. It is built for illustration, concept art, matte painting, textures, comics and frame-by-frame animation, and it has the brushes, layers and color tools you would expect from a paid painting program. Krita is developed by the KDE community with support from the Krita Foundation and released under the GPLv3 license, with no ads, subscriptions or paid features.Graphic Design
InkscapeInkscape is a free, open-source vector graphics editor for Mac, Windows and Linux. It is used for illustrations, logos, icons, diagrams, maps, web graphics and print layouts, and it is the best-known free alternative to Adobe Illustrator. Inkscape uses SVG, the open web standard for vector graphics, as its own format, so your drawings stay sharp at any size and work directly on websites. It is made by the Inkscape Project and its volunteers and released under the GPL license, with no ads or paid features.Graphic Design
GIMPGIMP, the GNU Image Manipulation Program, is a free, open-source image editor for Mac, Windows and Linux. It covers photo retouching, image composition and graphic design, with layers, masks, selections, filters and painting tools, and it is the best-known free alternative to Adobe Photoshop. GIMP is made by volunteers of the GIMP team and released under the GPLv3 license, with no ads, subscriptions or paid features.Graphic Design
BlenderBlender is a free, open-source 3D creation suite. In one app it covers modeling, sculpting, texturing, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing, motion tracking and even video editing, and it is used by hobbyists, studios, game developers and architects around the world. Blender is developed by the Blender Foundation and a large community, and released under the GPL license, with no subscriptions or paid features.Graphic Design