7 Best T-Shirt Design Software & Tools in 2024 [Free & Paid]
Make the most unique t-shirts with these top solutions
10 min. read
Updated on
Share this article
This article is translated in
Improve this guide
Read our disclosure page to find out how can you help Windows Report sustain the editorial team Read more
Key notes
- Personalized T-shirts can be great tools to promote your message, build your brand, or just express your personality.
- Whether you want to make it for your own or as a promotional business merch, you need powerful software to create adequate designs.
- We gathered below both premium, paid tools as well as freeware that provide a good toolset for T-shirt design.
Do you want to start a T-shirt design business? Or you want to design your next T-shirt and you’re feeling confused? No need to worry, this post is meant for you.
T-shirts are one of the most popular clothing items due to being easy to customize for various purposes ranging from politics to religion.
There are several T-shirt design tools around and without further ado, we give you the very best T-shirt design software.
How to design a digital T-shirt?
Nowadays, you can design a digital T-shirt using graphic design software like the ones we described below. Basically, all it takes is to choose a t-shirt design or mockup and upload a personalized design to the t-shirt.
You can also use dedicated online solutions and find a plethora of templates to create your t-shirt design and impress all the people around you.
What are the best T-shirt design software tools?
inPixio Photo Studio Pro 12 – Ideal for product editing
inPixio Photo Studio Pro 12 is an easy-to-use editing software that is perfect for both beginners and advanced users.
Using the Erase function of this tool, you can delete objects or text from the picture you want to add to your T-shirt, allowing you to create the perfect design for your clothes.
If you want to add the same object multiple times in a T-shirt design, you can do this easily with the Clone Stamp tool.
Try out inPixio if you are a beginner in the field, there are multiple interactive introduction exercises and tutorials to help you start editing like a pro.
inPixio Photo Studio offers a quick solution for background removal. The cutout tool can be used to draw around the section of the picture you want to keep, and then remove the rest.
You can also replace your background with something else.
The tool also has some automated features that can improve pictures at the touch of a button. The One-Click Image correction tool uses smart technology to detect and fix any problematic parts within a picture.
Here are the main features of inPixio Photo Studio Pro 12:
- Flawless cut-outs of your photos and images
- Remove tool for removing an unwanted object in your photos
- Interactive assistant to help you learn to use the software
- Restoration of old photos is possible
- Share on social media Facebook and Twitter
- Photomontage
InPixio is a licensed product with three major packages available.
Photo Studio Pro 12
Design your T-shirt with this easy-to-use software that comes with plenty of editing features.Adobe Illustrator – Professional graphic designs
Adobe Illustrator is one of the more popular design software but it also doubles as at-shirt design software.
This software gives numerous features with many fonts, sizes, shapes, and effects that can be combined to good effect to create beautiful T-shirt designs.
Illustrator implemented enhanced 3D effects options. Users can edit their vector creations in-depth, with rotating, lightning, and many more 3D effects.
Adobe Illustrator offers designers the possibility to collaborate via the Cloud. Users can easily invite others to review their work and get real-time feedback.
The tool integrates a Learn panel where users can find quick and easy guides without having to switch up tabs or applications.
This t-shirt design software works well with designs involving shapes and layers.
Let’s quickly look at its key features:
- Numerous fonts, effects, and images
- Diverse tools for creating designs
- Bonus advantage of it being compatible with making designs for various printing techniques.
- Seamless integration with other apps and services
- Compatible with any device and any OS
Adobe Illustrator is a subscription-based software. You can get it as part of the Creative Cloud, or individually. Users also can benefit from a 7-day free trial.
Adobe Illustrator
Make your clothing as unique as you are with the world’s best design software.CorelDraw Graphics Suite – Art drawings
CorelDraw is the most popular design tool used in the world for a good reason. It has a large database of fonts, art, and color choices which most graphic design software lacks.
It is a nice software to use for designing T-shirts, as it gives over 10,000 clip art and images, and 2,000 templates that can be used to create any type of design.
In addition, CorelDraw gives users the ability to fit images and fonts to a particular area and customize their placement.
CorelDraw also supports collaboration, allowing users to easily share their work. It has easy-to-use feedback tools such as comments, annotation, highlights, and more.
With this tool, you can create patterns and detailing that can be easily applied to textiles.
The Apparel and textiles features within the Corel Draw Graphics suite let you visualize your design directly on garment templates.
This can help you better see whether your design needs any adjustments.
The tool also offers many font options and text effects. It also lets you convert bitmap logos into vector images so you can easily brand your shirts.
Let’s quickly look at its key features:
- A large number of design features
- Huge collection of editing tools
- Create beautiful artistic and mosaic patterns for designers who love comic designs
- Impact effect extensions that add perspective and give energy or motion effects
- Fully compatible with Windows (it even supports older versions such as Vista, 7, 8)
CorelDraw can be purchased as a one-time licensed product, and it is also available under a subscription plan. You can try it out for free for 15 days.
CorelDraw
Design stunning T-shirts with professional vector illustration powers to really stand out from the crowd!Placeit – Free mockup templates
The next mockup editor makes the perfect solution for users of all levels who need to design eye-catching apparel or t-shirts.
Firstly, this online editor has customizable t-shirt templates that offer numerous mockups and models to design inspiring, fun, and fitting t-shirts for you and your loved ones.
So you can start to create your personalized mockup with different clothes displayed on thousands of models that show the looks and style of the future t-shirts. Not only that, you may craft other products or clothes with bags, cups, sweaters, and so on.
Regardless of the apparel designs, you’re able to create other digital products such as music or video designs, logos, or posters with free designs and a multitude of graphics.
It is also a complete online hub that drives the most creative outcomes for people who need to craft standout graphics with various templates that include web designs or shirt ideas for your friends.
Plus, personalization is the keyword for Placeit because you can simply use drag-and-drop to import appealing designs and apply them to the template.
Let’s quickly look at its key features:
- Free gaming and video designs
- The most extensive mockup library
- Business logos and banners
- Video intro & outro designs
- Streaming avatars and overlay
Placeit
Pick from thousands of mockups and personalized designs for t-shirts and apparel.Adobe Photoshop – Industry standard designs
Worldwide cherished Adobe Photoshop is another powerful tool for T-shirt design. That should not be surprising at all since we are dealing with the world’s best imaging and graphic design software.
Covering all your creative needs from photo editing to digital painting and more, there is virtually nothing that you cannot do with the almighty Photoshop.
The best part is that it does not confine you to a specific environment – follow your inspiration and unleash your creativity across desktop, tablet, and iPad to craft unique T-shirt designs.
Photoshop has an advanced set of photo manipulation tools that allow designers to add unique spins on pictures and make great artwork.
These include colo subtracting options, tons of artistic filters, brushstroke filters, and many retouch options such as patch tools, healing brushes, and red-eye control.
Designers who use the Adobe Creative Cloud can get inspired by thousands of ready-made templates. These can represent a good foundation for your design and help you get started quickly.
The software has advanced typography options and lets you add different structures and shapes to your text. It gives access to tons of fonts through the Adobe Fonts library.
Photoshop is known for its extensive brushing options. T-shirt designers can make great use of calligraphy brushstrokes. These allow you to create highly customized, thus unique lettering.
The software has all sorts of options that users can mix and match. These include splatter effects, watercolor brushes, and thousands of presets.
Let’s quickly look at its key features:
- Fonts auto-activation feature
- Unlimited colors, effects, layers, and masks
- Crop, remove objects, retouch, and combine photos
- Rotatable patterns to easily change the orientation of any pattern
- Object Selection tool to create fast and precise selections
Adobe Photoshop
Unleash your creativity with the world’s best imaging and graphic design software to craft one-of-a-kind T-shirts.Canva – Numerous designs and elements
When it comes to design, Canva is your trusted ally and you can confidently use this versatile tool to design anything from web pages with beautiful graphics to unique print materials such as T-shirts.
Canva provides a generous range of design features including a photo editor, palette color generator, a logo maker, and much more.
The beauty of this software resides in its simplicity backed up by valuable support, a design size guide, and even more valuable teaching materials to get you started.
Canva is very intuitive and is mostly based on drag-and-drop principles. It is very easy to overlay and move around objects in order to create unique designs.
This design tool has plenty of pre-made templates and sizing options for different types of design purposes, including T-shirts.
The template library is very extensive and includes graphical T-shirt ideas and text-based designs.
A great advantage of this tool is that it allows you to easily change up parameters such as colors, transparency rates, and sizes.
This means that you can create multiple versions of the same artwork which is a desirable option when creating a textile design.
The tool offers support for creating your own logo so you can brand up your design, but it also lets you upload a pre-made logo design.
Then you can add it to your T-shirt and easily adjust it to fit the whole design.
Let’s quickly look at its key features:
- Extensive library (60M+ photos illustrations and icons, 1000+ fonts or upload your own)
- Resize to any format
- Premium animations and 20.000+ professional templates
- Organization tools (folders and storage options)
Canva is available for free, but it also has a subscription plan that includes additional options such as a background remover and access to more templates without watermarks.
Autodesk Sketchbook – Digital artwork tools
Autodesk SketchBook is a comprehensive digital art software solution that packs a wide range of features to cover all your drawing needs.
With a unique combo consisting of a friendly, intuitive interface and a comprehensive set of tools, you can start using it straight away to design stunning T-shirts that are guaranteed to catch all eyes.
Autodesk has a minimalistic user interface. It is easy to navigate, users can access all the tools necessary without being overwhelmed.
You can make unique t-shirt designs with the help of hundreds of brushes including ballpoint, inking, and felt-tip brushes.
Users can also create and save their own brush presets and also get additional brushes from the SketchBook Extras library.
Let’s quickly look at its key features:
- 140+ brushes included plus the possibility to import more
- Supports layers, layer grouping, and various blending modes
- Up to 16-sector radial symmetry supported
- Includes fully adjustable guides, rulers, and French curves
- Scan sketches made on physical paper with your tablet or phone
Making T-shirts does not stop at design alone, you still have to print on fabrics. However, a great design will get you started in the right direction.
Do share with us your experience in using any of the T-shirt design software we mentioned above. Feel free to comment below.
