Creating digital media is now a hobby of millions of people. Now free Social Media Platforms like Blogger, Tumblr, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest made it very possible for Individuals Creators to share their works with the world and even earn some money with their passion without the support from any Production Company.
Still the Industry Standard Proprietary Software available for Creative Works (Multimedia and Graphics Creation Software) are too expensive for an Individual Artist to bare. Though I must say that they really worth every penny for the features and experience they offer, but if you want them for hobby or for personal purpose (if not for making money) and if you are not able to utilise up to their full potential, it is hard to justify the expenses of such Tools.
In past, the Open Source and Free Tools in the field of Creativity were not good enough, but now their progress is impressive and is almost as good as Proprietary ones.
Still, there are few limitations in using free tools, yet possibilities are infinite. People are doing wonders with such free tools. And there are few limitations even with Proprietary Tools.
And for beginners, it is not advisable to start with the most expensive, feature rich, industry standard one. Rather, they should be starting with something Free and simple.
So here, I have created this List of Creativity Software as a part of the series - Open Source Software List. You can read all the previous parts here,
Part 4: Best Creativity Software for Hobbyists
I am most interested in Digital Painting, but I wanted to know about the software available in all other areas of Creativity. But I couldn’t find a single article that covers all the good software of all types of Graphics and Media Creation work (Oh! Later I found these two 1, 2), one that I want to have in my bookmark and refer it whenever I want. I obviously don’t wanna research for each of them individually!
I did a lot of research on each of them individually, and here I present to you the list of Open Source Creativity Software which hopefully will be useful to the folks interested in things like Blogging, YouTube, Photography, Graphic design, Illustration, Comic Art, Film Making, Animation, Game Design and so on.
This List got you covered the Open Source and Free software available in the following areas
You can click on the links in the content to directly jump to a specific category.
Best Open Source and Free Software for Graphics and Media Creation
There are very few Proprietary Programs which are completely free for Personal use, but to use for any Commercial Purpose you have to purchase a License. And that is fair; why not to support them back when you are making money!
The Programs in each category are in the order of Beginner to Advanced.
For each of the Program, I explained their distinctive nature than others, hoping it will help one to chose a program depending on one’s flavour of art style.
A. Digital Painting Software:
a. Raster Graphics Programs:
(Such as Adobe Photoshop, CorelPainter, AutoDesk Sketchbook Pro)
Raster graphics are comprised of pixels, the pixels will be visible when zoomed enough. Raster graphics is used in Photography, digital sketching and painting, conceptual art as it is better at mimicking a paint-brush-canvas type of environment.
MyPaint (Image Source)
Get MyPaint
If you are more on to comics and you draw anime or manga kind of stuff, you may like to have a Japanese program like FireAlpaca or MediBang, they both resemble the legendary Paint Tool Sai and Clip Studio Paint, and extremely similar to each other except MediBang has cloud service and can sync between devices, which FireAlpaca doesn’t. But Fire Alpaca provides an environment for animation which MediBang doesn’t. They are pretty light weight, clean interface makes them easy to use and has good basic transformation tools. Brushes are very simplistic in both the programs and you will find very few pre-installed brushes. 
FireAlpaca (Image Source)
FireAlpaca (Image Source)
Well, those all above are small programs with less no. of features, keeping simplicity in mind. If you are looking for a very advanced program with the strength of something like Adobe Photoshop, you have Krita there.
Krita is one of the best Digital Painting Program known to me. Krita is Open Source and utterly free for personal and commercial use. Krita is better in many cases than even Proprietary Programs like Photoshop or CorelPainter. Unlike many other free programs, its developers are very much active and passionately involved in developing the software, and it is updated regularly to compete with all the proprietary ones. Krita proves that a Free and Open Source program doesn’t have to be unprofessional; many great artists, like David Revoy, use this program for their works. 
Krita
Krita
b. Vector Graphics Programs:
(E.g. Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW, Affinity Design)
Vector graphics are comprised of points and paths connecting those points; mathematical formulae are used to create lines and shapes, so no matter how much you zoom, you get clean edges. Vector graphics programs provide more functionalities for editing and manipulating the work, so they are mostly used where one has to re-create and edit an image multiple times, like designing icons, logos, banners, T-shirt Printing and so on. We can simply say the types of works involved in Graphic Design, use this kind of programs.
Vector graphics look more computerised where raster graphics seem more traditional and organic.
Inkscape is a vector graphics editing software, which uses W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics(extension), can do pretty much everything you expect from a Vector Graphics program. Support for different colour modes and many other advanced features - such as alpha blending, clone objects, markers, tracing bitmap images and much more, make Inkscape the most promising Open Source and Free alternative to Adobe Illustrator or CorelDRAW.
You might try Krita as well, it provides some tools for Vector graphics editing.
B. Photo Editing Software:
(Such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel PaintShop Pro)
Basically, most of the Raster Graphics software (Of course the digital painting tools mentioned before) can be used for photo editing as the photos taken by cameras are Raster Images. But some programs are created especially for Photo Editing and Manipulation in mind.
If all you need is a little bit of photo editing to share them with your friends and family, or if you need little editing for your personal blog or website then Adobe Photoshop will be an overkill and is not worth spending much for a software if you never need most of its features.
Paint.Net is a nice photo editing program with some basic but very useful features and it is pretty easy to use. Paint.Net is free but only available for Windows machine. Features include layers, unlimited Undo’s, special effects and wide varieties of very useful tools of Photoshop, at the same time its pretty clean Interface makes it very intuitive even for someone new to photo editing. 
Paint.Net
Get Paint.Net
Paint.Net
Get Paint.Net
If you are a Photographer, or for any other reason Paint.Net can’t satisfy your needs and you want some feature rich software as Photoshop, then GIMP is the best thing what free has to offer. GIMP is probably the most loved Open Source bitmap image editor available. And it is been there in the industry for two decades and still going strong. 
GIMP
GIMP
Photographers might need some raw image processing software like Adobe LightRoom. Open Source program Ufraw deserves a try. It can work as a standalone program or as a Gimp plugin.
Video Editing: Mostly involves cutting, adding and removing Video and Audio clips, putting the shots in proper sequence in time to create the main storyline. A well-known program for Video Editing is Adobe Premier Pro.
Video Compositing: Process of layering multiple video clips, text, images or graphics; performing colour correction; creating and adding Visual Effects and Motion Graphics is Video Compositing. Generally, Video Editing programs can do few basic and necessary Video Compositing and vice versa. But a dedicated Video Compositor can do much more stuff. The most used Video Compositing and Video Post Processing Software is Adobe After Effect.
There are really good Video Editing software available for free, they may or may not provide as many advanced features as Adobe Premiere Pro or Sony Vegas, but they are good enough for making a very nice professional quality video. Some Editors in the list are the free versions of Proprietary Programs but they can be used for a personal and commercial purpose and no watermark appears on the videos produced.
For casual video editing, the Windows Movie Maker on Windows PC and iMovie on MAC used to be the most famous option until Microsoft removed their support from Movie Maker and iMovie has become no longer free.
OpenShot Video editor is a very easy to use Video Editing software which is Open Source and available on Linux, Windows and Mac Platform. It has many more features than Movie Maker and iMovie and covers more area in video editing and compositing, and it even supports a 4K resolution. If you are interested making short films or any other videos for YouTube OpenShot is a great program to start with.
OpenShot Video Editor (Image Source)
Besides all the features which other above-mentioned Video Editors provide, HitFilm takes it to the next level as it has lots of Compositing Features and high-quality Visual Effects to offer. You can find features of Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects combined in HitFilm Express, and the interface is reminiscent of those commercial video editing software. If you are looking for Real World Editing or making awesome movies, HitFilm Express is a great program for you.
HitFilm Express (Image Source)
You can find many nice tutorials for HitFilm Express on YouTube; but only problems I found is, it does not support many audio and video codecs, and even transparent background of an image becomes black (I hate it).
Check out this short film Portal Combat, which shows the capability of the software to edit VFX even at its free version.
Blender is a very powerful and versatile tool and is Open Source and Free. Blender provides many advanced features for professional Video Editing and Video Post Processing. The only problem with Blender is its complex Interface and stiff learning curve. But the time you invest learning the software is worth, as beside video editing it is useful for many other things, you will find them later on in this article. You can create great VFX effects for Sci-Fi movies.
Video Editing in Blender
Download Blender | Check out Tears of Steel, a Sci-Fi movie created with Blender.
D. Screen Recording Software:
(E.g. Camtasia)
A good Screen Recorder should record your screen, plus record the sound, coming out of the system (Sound from any media which is running on the computer; for eg. sound from a game) as well as the sound captured by a mic and produce a good quality video with those. You need this while performing some task on your desktop which you want to share with people afterwards, or just document the process of doing the task. This is very useful when you making Video Tutorials or Game Play Videos for YouTube.
A very popular solution for this is CamStudio (not to be confused with Camtasia). It is Open Source and Free, very simple to get started with and very light weight. It is good to use while recording your desktop screen, for example when you are making a Software Tutorial videos. But not recommended for recording high-quality graphics and VFX like gameplay, as frames per minute it can record is quite low.
CamStudio (Image Source)
If you want a very good quality but free screen recorder to record gameplays and other high-quality graphics applications, I recommend using Open Broadcaster Software. It does all the job a sophisticated screen recorder should do. And it is also a very good streaming program, where you stream videos directly to YouTube, Twitch, Vimeo or all other video sharing platform. But it is a bit difficult to set this application up, so if you don’t need all the features you better go with the previous one.
OBS Studio (Image Source)
Download OBS Studio
E. Audio Recording and Editing Software:
Audacity is the only Open Source and Free software I can recommend to record and manipulate sounds for Podcasts or for your Films and other videos. Its Interface looks old but it provides all the features most of us will ever need, and that is why many even quite big YouTube channels and Podcasters record their voices using this Free Program. You can record multiple audio tracks, mix and edit them, you even can remove background or surrounding noises very effectively. Many tutorials are available on YouTube to help you get started with it.
F. Animation Programs:
This is the part I love the most, though I am not good at Animating yet. The Wikipedia definition of Animation is “Animation is the process of making the illusion of motion and the illusion of change by means of the rapid display of a sequence of images that minimally differ from each other”.
Emphasis on “making the illusion motion” because this part makes it distinct than Video Editing.
Animation can be 2D or 3D, it can be hand drawn Frame by Frame or Flash animation, it can be Motion Graphics or it can be Stop Motion and so on. But here we will mostly discuss the programs that help to create 2D or 3D animations which we see in cartoons or animated movies, not Stop Motion or Motion Graphics.
a. 2D Animation:
(E.g. TVPaint, Toon Boom Harmony, Adobe Animate CC, Adobe After Effect)
Generally, you can categorise 2D animation in 2 types,
1. Traditional animation: where each and every frame is hand drawn, an example would be old Disney movies. This can be drawn either on paper or computer program. Flipbook is a traditional animation which is drawn on paper.
2. Flash Animation: where key frames and may be some few other frames where necessary are manually drawn, and all the remaining frames are created by a computer. It saved lots of time and effort for the studios, made it possible to create so many cartoon series in so less time. Nowadays barely any cartoon series or animated movies are not Flash animation.
There is very much difference between the creation of Traditional and Flash Animation, but all Flash Animation software can be used for creating Traditional animations as well. All industry standard 2D animation programs (TVPaint, Toon Boom Harmony) nowadays are very good for both, and even provides nice Video Post Processing feature so that you don’t have to use any other software for final production.
If you want good drawing tools and bit less of animation, maybe you would like to use any painting program mentioned before. You basically draw each frame there and save every frame as a separate image then use a video editing software to make an animation with those. This is a good practice if telling a story is your first priority and you don’t want to spend much time on creating traditional frame by frame animation.
Many good Animation Channels I like to watch on YouTube use Paint Tool Sai to draw (because it is cheap and easy to use), then import them into a software like Adobe Premiere Pro and create a video. Theodd1sout is one my favourites.
FireAlpaca, a painting software mentioned before, provides some features that make animating on it easier than animating on other painting program but certainly it is not as good as a dedicated animation software. What it actually does is, while it is on animation mode instead of layers it provides frames and on the program, you can run the animation. And again the output will be a group of images (one image for each frame) and you need to use some other software or online application for making a video. Good for creating small animated GIFs.
FireAlpaca Provides a service called AlpacaDouga, where you can upload sets of images and create and download GIFs.
i. Traditional Animation Program:
As mentioned above in this kind of programs you basically draw each frame manually. It is time-consuming and comparatively difficult work, plus you have to be a good draftsman to create good traditional animation. But the outcome is amazing, motions can be created so much more organic and fluid than computer generated Flash Animation! With these software, you can create similar animations like old Disney movies like Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King so on.
Watch this Traditional Animation, drawn in 60 frames per second - Duet by Glen Keane
If you are just starting out animating and ask for a simple software just to feel and get to understand the environment for animating, Pencil 2D is the program you wanna have. Pencil 2D is a both Raster and Vector graphics, frame by frame animation program, its clean and simple interface makes it super easy to learn; and it is very light weight. It is good for learning animation but won’t be much fun if you like to sketch and draw a lot; because drawing tools (pencils, brushes) in the program are not good enough.
Pencil 2D (Image Source)
DigiCel’s FlipBook is another great software to start with because it is easy and fun to draw frame by frame animation, its drawing tools are so amazing. It just feels to me like drawing on paper. In testimonials on their website, you can find some artists who worked in big studios like Disney said they love to use it for rough pencil test and practising at home. The problem in the free version is a watermark appears to the animation you create, though that is fine for learner and hobbyist but not good if you want to share those animation and use for commercial purpose. It lacks some necessary features which many software nowadays provides.
DigiCel’s FlipBook (Image Source)
Another software I find very much fun to draw on is Plastic Animation Paper (PAP), the interface is very out-dated though. The software is really very old, yet it provides all the necessary tools to create very nice traditional and classic style animation. If you are beginning to animate or you love creating traditional animation you will love this software. You can use it for commercial purpose.
PAP: Pro 4 (Image Source)
ii. 2D Flash Animation:
Important features like Motion Tweening, Character Rigging made the process of creating Flash Animation faster. Though there are many free good programs for traditional animation, there are very few free programs available for flash animation.
Synfig Studio is a great Open Source animation software that uses Vector Graphics like Adobe Animate CC (Previously known as Macromedia Flash then Adobe Flash, not to be confused with Adobe Flash Player). With this free software, you can create nice flash animations like Domics or ExplosmEntertainment.
Synfig Studio (Image Source)
Krita: Yes, the same painting program mentioned above comes with pretty good features for animation. Besides being very good for traditional frame by frame animation, it provides shape and motion tweening feature like Adobe Animate CC. But unlike Adobe Animate it is a Raster Graphics Program which is not so easy to manipulate, but generated animation looks more organic and traditional.
OpenToonz is another great Open Source software for 2D animation, which was developed by Studio Ghibli, was used to make almost all of their movies, like Spirited Away for example. It has more features than Adobe Animate CC. Especially powerful Effects can be created by adding some plugins to it, which is usually done on software like Adobe After Effect or Toon Boom Harmony. It is a good alternative to Toon Boom Harmony.
OpenToonz (Image Source)
Both the programs Krita and OpenToonz have a bit stiff learning curve and are in their development phase, so expect some glitches. But oh man are their developments progressing fast!
b. 3D Animation or CGI:
(E.g. Autodesk Maya, Autodesk 3DS MAX)
Though every type of animation has same basic principles but working on 3D Animation Program is completely different than working on Traditional 2D animation. There you create 3D models of characters, which are like virtual puppets, having flexible limbs and body so that by moving them you can create the “illusion of life”.
Blender: With Blender, you can create 3d models for movies or games. From 3D modelling to sculpture, texturing, animation, from video post-processing to compositing, simulation and rendering, blender covers a broad spectrum and competes with the proprietary ones in many domains. No need to use multiple programs, everything you need to create a 3D animated movie (similar to Tangled, Up, Monster Inc.) can be found in one software Blender, and that is for free. As mentioned before, with tonnes of features and versatility Blender is not so easy to learn and use.
3D Modelling in Blender (Image Source)
Download Blender, a Great tool for creative people.
Check out the teaser of a movie: Agent 327: Operation Barbershop and here are few other animated shorts.
G. Game Development Software:
Well, I must admit it, I do not have much knowledge in this domain, however, I will share about few programs for Game Creation known to me. As I come to know more, I will keep this article updated.
All the creative skills and tool sets mentioned above are needed to create game assets. But of course you don’t necessarily have to create all by yourself, you can use game assets already available for free or not, or you get someone else to do it for you. For creating a game you should be able to design logic, input, physics, maps and you have to manage graphics, sounds and all other game assets. A Framework or a Game Engine will help you to do that.
There is no very clear difference between Framework and Game Engine. A framework is sets of code that basically helps you designing a game by setting the rules and managing the game assets. Where a Game Engine, with an addition to that, provides readily available tools and mechanism to create certain types of games. So choosing right Engine according to the genre of games you want to create, reduces effort to a great extent.
Here is a nice video on What Game Engines Are? -GDquest
Phaser is an HTML5 Framework, this is a sweet Open Source platform for creating 2D games of any genre. Games can be created for Desktop, Mobile device and even for Web Browser (can be played directly in the Browser).
Phaser
Godot is an Open Source Game Engine, available for Windows, Mac and Linux Machines. Godot is a Simple engine, good for creating 2D and 3D games of all genres.
Godot
Unity Is one of the most popular Game Engine, It is feature rich, it has a large and active community, and there are lots of tutorials and assets available to get started with. Its Personal Version is free, which provides all the features beginners or hobbyists need. There is paid version of it for Advanced features. 2D and 3D Games of all genres can be created for Desktop, Mobile, Web Browser or even for Consoles (Playstation, Xbox, Wii).
Unity Engine (Image Source)
Blender: There is a full featured Game Engine within Blender. This program has the ability to create any type of 2D and 3D games for multiple Platform. But, as it also covers lots of domains other than Game making, it is less efficient and time-consuming. But it really has powerful Features for creating any type of games any device.
Blender Engine (Image Source)
Download Blender | Check out Yo Frankie - Game created in Blender Game Engine
For those, who don’t want to do coding at all, Construct 2 or GameMaker Studio 2 are Engines to consider.
To know about many other Game Engines, check out PixelProspector’s The Big List of Game Making Tools.
Resources For Learning:
Well, you are into free tools, then you must be interested in free resources to learn them. Here I am sharing few of my favourites which I remember now.
Proko: This guy makes video courses on drawing which are really fun. He makes tutorials mostly on traditional drawing. All the necessary Basic tutorials are freely available on his YouTube Channel. But if want to be a master then you have to subscribe for paid courses, it is fair isn’t it?
Draw With Jazza: Another great YouTube channel, it provides lots of nice tutorials on digital painting and animation. I love his great animated short: The Tale Teller.
For learning to draw cartoons I think I will love courses on ToonBoxStudio.com; Paris Christou teaches there to draw characters of Disney or Warner Bros style. Some nice free tutorials I found on his YouTube Channel.
Animators must know these 12 Principles of Animation.
For game creation I love GDQuest’s YouTube Channel, he teaches everything from start to end, everything you need to create games. And check out Extra Credits too.
If you are very serious about animation, then you must have Animator’s Survival Kit, bit pricey, but it is the greatest resource for learning animation and worth much more than what it costs you.
If you are interested in digital art, and if you do not have a Pen tablet already, you must save up for one. Though I encourage not to rely much on tools, but a Pen Tablet for a Digital Artist is a basic need, it like pencil and canvas for a Traditional Artist.
Check out an inexpensive tablet on the link below, it is really good one for the price.
Huion H610Pro
[The amazon links are my affiliate links, if you purchase anything from Amazon, entering through these links, it may earn me a little commission without any extra cost to you.]
This article covers so many good Free and Open Source Software for many major areas of creativity. Still, if you think I have missed anything important, please let me know about it. I would love to know more and make the list even better. Feel free to do any constructive criticism.
Please share it with the people to whom you think this article might be helpful. It really helps me.
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