This week’s race
Adobe leads; Serif climbs 14 spots.
Power ranking
Who leads this sub.
This week?
Adobe holds the top spot for the third week running in the designer category. GIMP climbed eight places to number eight, the biggest mover upward, while Procreate fell fourteen spots to twenty-nine. ProtoPie gained ten positions to land at eighteen. Topaz Labs and Miro both entered the rankings this week at twenty and twenty-four respectively, pushing some established names down.
The questions?
These rankings answer 3 buyer questions. Open any one for the head-to-head.
The subcategory score is an aggregate. Each question has its own AI ranking, reviewer check and weekly movement — that's where the picks actually come from.
Act one
Where the machines rank them.
Three AI models rank every brand in this sub — who just arrived, the full board, the lineups each fields, and who owns each trait.
Newcomers
Just arrived.
new · Jun 2026
#82
new · Jun 2026
#47 · in best ui/ux design tools
new · Jun 2026
#61 · in best photo editing software
new · Jun 2026
#73
new · Jun 2026
#83 · in best photo editing software
new · Jun 2026
#79 · in best photo editing software
new · Jun 2026
#90
new · Jun 2026
#87 · in best graphic design software
new · Jun 2026
#55 · in best photo editing software
Full ranking
Every brand ranked.
as of June 15 · vs June 16 · 3 intents?
Brand portfolios
What each brand fields here.
Act three
How the models think.
Where each brand actually competes across the buyer questions, and the running ledger of what just moved in this sub.
Intent dominance
Where each brand actually competes.
as of June 15 · 3 intents?
Ledger?
What just moved in this sub.
- ▼ fall#29 → #66
- ▼ fall#27 → #60
- ▼ fall#30 → #56
- ▼ fall#25 → #41
- ✦ debutdebut at #15
- ✦ debutdebut at #17
- ▼ fall#28 → #40
- ▼ fall#2 → #13
- ▲ climb#14 → #4
- ▼ fall#15 → #25
- ▼ fall#16 → #26
- ▼ fall#21 → #29
- ▼ fall#23 → #31
- ✦ debutdebut at #23
- ▼ fall#20 → #27
- ▲ climb#22 → #16
- ▲ climb#26 → #20
- ✦ debutdebut at #24
- ▼ fall#17 → #21
- ▼ fall#11 → #14
about for designers
Pick by what you need
- buying intents · in products →
- Best Graphic Design Software
- Best Photo Editing Software
- Best UI/UX Design Tools
interesting facts from for designers
The brands here build tools for people who make things. Some favor speed and simplicity. Others dig into precision and control. Figma lets teams work together in the browser. Adobe runs deep. Sketch stays focused on the app. Affinity moves to the desktop. Each has its believers.
The category splits between the cloud-first shops and the ones that came before. A buyer picks a brand the way a carpenter picks a saw. It fits the hand. It does the job. The real question is whether you work alone or with others, and how much craft matters versus how fast you need to move.
The brand rail stops here. For the individual products inside this sub, switch to the product view.