Looking for solid UI Design software. Got any suggestions?

Help and Feedback Game Design Support
#1

As the title suggests I’m looking for some good UI Design software as I’m trying to design some UI for my game. I’m already fairly good at using Paint.net and I’ve been looking into Inkscape however I’d like to know all of my options and what personally serves me best.

I already know about the creative suite and was formerly subscribed. I actually used illustrator for designing UI however given that I can no longer afford the creative suite I’d like to look for cheaper alternatives.

I’m kinda going for something like this:

image
image1300×928 663 KB

Thank you for any suggestions. Feel free to suggest anything and I’ll be sure to hear them out.

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#2

Figma is an awesome tool, definitely worth checking out! (Btw it is free to use!)

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#3

If you’re looking for relatively affordable alternatives to the Adobe Creative Suite, I highly recommend software by Affinity. In particular, Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer are fantastic for UI design.

Affinity Photo

Affinity%20Photo%20Logo

Affinity Photo is a raster graphics editor and an Adobe Photoshop alternative. It comes with practically everything you’d need in an image editor and over my years of experience working with it, I haven’t experienced any problems. Naturally, it doesn’t have every feature Photoshop has but for the most part, it does what you need it to do.

Affinity Designer

Affinity%20Designer%20Logo

Affinity Designer is a vector graphics editor and an alternative to Adobe Illustrator. Due to the nature of vector graphics, this would be the software best suited for UI design. In a similar fashion to Affinity Photo, it is missing a few of Illustrator’s features, such as dynamic text editing, but I’ve found it’s possible to work around this with the right amount of practice.

Pricing and Utility

Both Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer are once-off purchases of €54.99 each, which is quite reasonable for what you get, especially compared to Adobe’s subscription-based plan.

I tend to use both Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer hand-in-hand to make use of each program’s unique features but either program would work great on its own once you become familiar enough with it. I recommend checking out the Affinity website to help you figure out which program would suit you best.

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#4

I’d say stick to paint.net but make sure you got all the tools needed for that (png. → .svg converter; not sure if that’s a thing since I use Illustrator for that). Paint.net can be powerful and a really good alternative to all other programs if you know what you’re doing.

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#5

I do like the one-time payment thing going on. I’ll certainly try it once I can afford it.

#6

Figma has got to be one of the best I’ve used. Thanks for the suggestion.

Quickly tossed this together to experiment:

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#7

Hey there! I have asked the same question.
People gave many great suggestions there, feel free to check them out.

As a reminder, please do a quick search before creating any topic to ensure nothing is repeated.
Thank you.

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#8

Hey, you can use Adobe Illustrator. It’s a great tool to draw or create shapes and forms. It’s very accurate, you can manipulate anything you want.

#9

I see all these suggestions but none suggesting Photoshop?

This bring me to the question - Is Photoshop good for this sort of thing?

#11

Not really because Photoshop doesn’t have all of the drawing tools that Illustrator has plus it’s for photo manipulation and not creative design.

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#12

Yeah, I know what it is, I actually mentioned I was looking for a cheaper alternative in the post itself.

1 Like