Adobe Fresco is a great option for working with vector and raster graphics. However, it doesn’t allow you to adjust the color, saturation, and hue of specific layers, so make sure to pay attention to other similar programs as well. In this article, you will find a list of the best Adobe Fresco alternatives that includes free and professional software for creating drawings and illustrations of any complexity.
On this list of Adobe Fresco alternatives, you will find perfect options for beginners and professional artists alike. They support vector and raster graphics.
Each program has a set of brushes and a color palette with a color picker. When using them, you can see the history of your edits and undo any of them. The main advantage of these Adobe Fresco alternatives is that they have extensive drawing toolsets. Besides, they allow you to use images from in-built libraries when working on your projects.
In this list, you’ll find some of the best Adobe Fresco alternatives out there that will provide you the tools, advanced capabilities, and functionality necessary for creating paintings and designs, while boasting an intuitive UI and terrific performance. Here, you’ll find both free drawing software, paid software for working on your PC, and apps for your smartphone.
SketchBook was created solely for drawing. It is a perfect choice for digital artists as it has easy-to-adjust, precise tools and an interesting design. The program has all the necessary tools for creating drawings, including sets of brushes, the layer editor, guides, etc.
Main SketchBook Features:
The program has a set of drawing tools that will come in handy for every professional artist, such as a pen, brush, marker, pencil, etc. You can save files in several raster formats, including PSD. This software supports layers and allows you to draw images using a stylus.
Its powerful engine allows you to work with a 100mpx canvas with high precision. All the edits are applied quickly, which makes it a great choice for professionals working on creative projects. This software allows you to use device cameras as scanners, which makes it easier to save various reference images.
Krita is a free drawing software that is popular among professional artists and beginners. It comes with a set of basic and advanced drawing tools. Besides, this program is compatible with a variety of devices, including regular and graphics tablets.
Main Krita Features:
To make it easier for users to edit drawings, Krita has an integrated layer editor. It allows you to combine and group your drawings. Another key advantage is that it has symmetry tools that will help you facilitate your workflow. You will find them in the top right corner.
Krita has a wide choice of brushes that you can use depending on your needs. Besides, you can customize each filter and preview it in real-time. To do it, you can adjust color channels, highlights, shadows, use blending modes, etc.
Adobe XD was developed by Adobe for creating layouts, prototypes, and presentations. It’s a great option for designers, companies, and teams that need to work on large-scale projects.
Main Adobe XD Features:
When using Adobe XD free of charge, designers can collaborate with other teams for adding animations, creating prototypes, and getting feedback in real-time. It’s one of the best Adobe Fresco alternatives for those who need to work on three-dimensional designs and save custom templates to avoid creating new designs from scratch.
Your team can use this solution for creating and resizing prototypes as well as for changing the layout alignment based on their content.
Corel Painter was developed for creating digital drawings. You can use its impressive range of professional drawing tools, such as brushes, oil and watercolor palettes, paper textures.
Main Painter Features:
Corel Painter allows you to customize your digital canvas. You can also change textures and various details. After adjusting the paper texture settings, you can create a highly detailed, photorealistic painting.
What makes it stand out among other Adobe Fresco alternatives is that it allows you to mix colors in the Mixer panel. This option will help you to blend various colors and use a color picker to select the one you need. You can make this panel up to 800px wide, which will make it even more convenient to use.
Adobe Express (the previous name - Adobe Spark), enables you to make pro-grade content effortlessly and realize any intention in the process of graphics, videos, and landing pages generation. It facilitates the process from scratch with the help of thousands of incredible templates, services for social media materials, logos, etc.
Key Adobe Express Functions:
The app includes a wide range of instruments for images and multimedia files elaboration. With the help of a simple guide you are able to find free pictures compilation. The platform is also compatible with Adobe Stock, Creative Cloud, Lightroom, Dropbox, Google Photo, and Google Drive. Furthermore, you are able to import media from your gadget.
Express is a free Adobe software. There are plenty of tutorials that will help you get started. This program is equipped with a comprehensible and simple interface.
ArtRage is a perfect drawing software for Windows and macOS. This Adobe Fresco alternative has a customizable interface. You can move most panels from your workspace wherever you want, for instance, to the second monitor. Besides, you can scale and rotate them.
Main ArtRage Features:
ArtRage is suitable for beginners and professionals alike. It allows you to create traditional works of art, graphic designs, videos and movies, book illustrations, product designs, special effects, science illustrations, comics, and sketches. The program comes with a traditional set of tools.
ArtRage has many selection, clone, drawing, gradient or pattern fill options. Besides, it has a mobile app with a set of drawing and editing features.
Procreate is a professional-grade tool for digital artists. One of the biggest advantages of this software is a huge library of over 150 brushes. The brush collection included in the app is suitable for nearly any type of art project.
Main Procreate Features:
Procreate works with PSD, TIFF, PNG, PDF, and JPEG files, which means you can export a half-finished project and easily continue working on it on your PC. It’s also useful for preparing your graphic designs for print.
Procreate’s selection tool allows you to highlight specific drawing areas for editing without affecting the rest of the canvas. The app is supplied with hundreds of brush and tool sets. You can also create your own brushes straight on your device. To do so, you merely have to import an image for the brush’s shape and texture, and then set its attribute parameters like spacing and angle.
PaintTool AI is a high-quality and intuitive drawing software that offers full digitizer support, terrific drawing anti-aliasing, convenient controls, and stable performance. Being one of the most interesting Adobe Fresco alternatives, it supports layers, PSD files, working with a drawing tablet, and the usage of various tools like an airbrush, marker, pencil, pen, and the ability to add vector components.
Main PaintTool AI Features:
The software’s UI allows having multiple documents opened simultaneously. The drawing canvas can be scaled or rotated by using the sliders provided on the navigator, or the hotkeys configured on your keyboard. You can also keep different areas of the same drawing opened in separate windows for further convenience.
The software comes with a full set of transformation tools used for manipulating selected areas, allowing you to move, resize, rotate, or freely transform them. Any series of transformations can be saved as a set and instantly applied to a specific selection in the future.
Draw Cartoons 2 is one of the best cartoon pictures apps for Android devices. After opening it, you’ll be greeted by a tutorial that explains all the features of the app. It also provides a large selection of tools for creating multi-frame drawings, and lets you voice and save videos.
Main Draw Cartoons 2 Features:
Users receive access to a library with a huge assortment of tools, fun characters, premade mechanisms, detailed locations, and much more. All your animations can be saved as a video in MP4 or GIF format and sent to YouTube. You can find the works of other animators by searching for the #drawcartoons2 hashtag.
You can change existing figures (“objects”) by dragging and rotating “skeletal” parts in sequential frames to create a feeling of motion. You can also save objects and share them as separate files.
The Crello online editor is designed for creating graphics and content for social media, video hosting platforms, and websites, representing one of the best Adobe Fresco alternatives on the market. Thanks to Crello, companies and regular users can not only produce content but also download photos and images from stock libraries. The program allows significantly optimizing the process of creating graphic designs and improving your workflow.
Main Crello Features:
To start working in Crello, the user has to select a premade template and format for their project. Crello has templates for most types of products and content: social media stories, posts, logos, posters, presentations, smart cards, etc. Depending on the selected template or format, the size of the workspace will change accordingly.
The program operates as a block-based designer, meaning the user drags the needed elements from the toolset panel onto the workspace and can change them as they see fit. Possible elements include images, videos, text fields, objects, backgrounds, and even music. When editing elements, you can change their color, size, placement, font, opacity, and animation. Organizations can enhance the graphics with their trademark style, which can be adjusted in a special tab.
Charcoal is a minimalistic and modern drawing app for iPad. The concept behind this app reflects the developer's aspiration to get rid of everything non-essential, allowing you to focus on your ideas rather than having to battle the software before you can get something done.
Main Charcoal Features:
This is arguably the best Adobe Fresco alternative for little kids, anyone with a decent understanding of technology, and even experienced artists that like the feeling of freedom that a clean workspace provides when nearly all you see is the digital canvas. Here, the user is provided with a digital paper sheet, several predetermined tools, and a modest color selection.
The app is incredibly simple to use: simply create or open a sketch and start drawing. You don’t have to mess around with layers, attribute panels, and convoluted settings. Instead of all of that, Charcoal offers rich tools and beautiful color palettes.
Vectornator is a professional free vector graphics software that is compatible with Mac, iPhone, and iPad. By using this flexible software, you can create illustrations, interface designs, mockups, and much more, all within a single app.
Main Vectornator Features:
This is one of the most optimized apps for the Apple Pen on iPad. If you prefer to use the combination of a Pen, touchscreen, mouse, or trackpad and are a fan of multi-touch gestures, then the Vectornator is among the best Adobe Fresco alternatives for you.
Its UI is highly optimized for Pen and multi-touch gesture use. The rotation handles are highly precise, meaning you won’t accidentally press the rotation button when trying to scale the image, etc. Having such convenient additions to touchscreen controls allow you to significantly simplify and speed up your workflow.
