Hello,
I am not a professional designer but for some small jobs I sometimes like to design some images. Now At the moment I don't have a license for Photoshop (And I also Run on a Linux PC). The question I have is what tools do you use to design Graphics for your site?
Thanks very much
To the commenters blindly recommending Sketch.. May I please point you to this part of the question? Thank you very much.
And I also Run on a Linux PC
Sketch is a Mac app.
To answer your question: If you want to go with Photoshop, you can get a cheap 1-app subscription at adobe.com that'll cost you like €12,- a month. Otherwise you could go for free graphic manipulation programs like Gimp (horrible interface, great power) or any of the other apps @xananax recommends here in the comments.
I have long experience in both branding and photo retouching (+15 years) as well as websites design (+10 years). I've opened my own studio and used the Adobe suit extensively. Five years ago, I dropped all the Adobe stuff to rely exclusively on open-source software on a Linux box. Works like a charm, as long as I don't need co-workers to intervene on the files (getting people to switch from their beloved Photoshop is hard). Even then, it's possible, just a bit cumbersome.
I use:
To answer your question more directly:
To design a UI, I'd use Inkscape for a quick sketch, then implement it directly in the browser, where a responsive design can take place. If I don't want to code anything, the web provides a number of application (both free and subscription based) to design a web UI, a Google search for "design UI mockup online" will provide results.
To design UI components, I'd use either Inkscape, if I need to export at different resolutions, or Gimp/Krita if I don't.
Marcin Piekarski
When you mention that you like designing images.
Do you mean that your adding a lot of gradients, shadows, effects and heavily editing multi-layered raster images? (Tweaking levels, creating grayscale images, etc)
Or are you just drawing shapes and adding occasional stock images, etc?
As Leabon mentioned, Sketch (https://www.sketchapp.com/) does an amazing job when it comes to web design.
What makes Sketch great is that your limited in what you can do, and that might sound a bit crazy but what it means is that it's fairly straight forward to translate a Sketch design to an actual website.
Here's what I mean.
I've worked with many media agencies where designers have gone absolutely nuts in Photoshop.
You'll get massive Photoshop files with countless layers that are both linked and effected (multiply, darken, lighten, etc), burst gradients, really fancy typography, the works. Everything that works great in print, no so much on the web.
Because of the way Sketch limits you. Your forced to work within certain confines. The files are normally easier to reason with, easier to work with, require fewer resources, and it's cheaper.
Download both trials and see what works.