Free Web Design App For Mac

Jump to How to design a website on a Mac - Here are some of the most popular web design software options for Mac. A bumper crop of Mac apps has sprung up to help people in just such a predicament, applying a friendly front end and familiar tools to the ever-more-complicated word of web coding. While none of the three polished apps we review here will be perfect for everyone, chances are that one of them has the right feature set to fit your needs.

When you hear the word 'app,' you immediately think of those small programs for your smartphone. However, an app is simply any piece of software that serves some kind of purpose, either online, on your computer or another electronic device.

Some of the best and most versatile apps are available for Mac. We've compiled a list of the best free Mac apps, from well-known ones such as Dropbox and Skitch, to lesser known ones such as Adium and CheatSheet.

SEE ALSO: The 25 Best Free iPad Apps

Some of these apps can be found within Apple's App Store, while others are registered under the GNU GPL license, meaning that you can view and change the source code easily. Many of them are also compatible with various plugins and add-ons, which make it easy to customize the app to your liking.

Which free Mac apps would you add to the list? Let us know in the comments section below.

Homepage image: Flickr, John Watson

In this post we have gathered 28 free Mac apps for graphic and web designers. Here they are:

GIMP

GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a freely distributed piece of software suitable for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition, and image authoring. It is a powerful piece of software with capabilities not found in any other free software product. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert-quality photo-retouching program, an online batch-processing system, a mass production image renderer, or an image-format converter. GIMP is modular, expandable, and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image-manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.
Overview and Download:GIMP Homepage.

Scribus

Scribus is an open-source program that brings award-winning professional page layout to Linux/Unix, MacOS X, OS/2 and Windows desktops with a combination of “press-ready” output and new approaches to page layout.Underneath the modern and user friendly interface, Scribus supports professional publishing features, such as CMYK color, separations, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation.
Overview:Scribus Homepage.
Download:Scribus Download Page.

JAlbum

JAlbum allows you to create nice-looking photo galleries for the Web. You simply select or drag and drop folders containing images or movie files onto JAlbum, and it creates thumbnails and HTML pages to publish your images as a gallery or as a picture slide show. The galleries are based on various templates, and their appearance can be further customized by advanced users. The application’s additional features include support for IPTC/EXIF data, style sheets, lossless image manipulation, pluggable image filters, and a built-in FTP/SFTP client.
Overview:JAlbum Homepage.
Download:JAlbum Download Page.

Paparazzi

Paparazzi! is a small utility for Mac OS X that makes screenshots of webpages.It’s written in Objective-C using the Cocoa API and the WebKit framework.
Overview:Paparazzi Homepage.
Download: Paparazzi Download Page.

Google SketchUp

Developed for the conceptual stages of design, SketchUp is powerful yet easy-to-learn 3D software. We think of it as “the pencil of digital design”. This award-winning product combines a simple yet robust tool set that streamlines and simplifies 3D design. SketchUp is used by professionals and consumers alike. It contains a unique interface that allows 3D forms to be created, viewed, and modified quickly and easily. The core of its simplicity is that you draw the edges of the desired model in 3D space, just as you would using a pencil and paper. SketchUp infers your design intent and automatically determines the nature of the lines and fill shapes to create 3D geometry.
Overview:Google SketchUp Homepage.
Download:Google SketchUp Download Page.

Linotype Explorer

Linotype Explorer is a great font management application for the Mac. You can use it to both install, manage and “test” fonts.
Overview:Linotype Explorer Homepage.
Download:Linotype Explorer Download Page.

FotoFlexer

FotoFlexer is the world’s most advanced online image editor. Completely free access to hundreds of fun and powerful features. Includes photo effects, graphics, shapes, seam carving, morphing and collages. Integrates with Facebook, MySpace, Photobucket, Flickr, and Google.
Overview: FotoFlexer Homepage.

Seashore

Based on Gimp, but doesn’t require X11.
Overview:Seashore Explorer Homepage.

Xee

Fast image viewer and image browser.
Download:XEE Download Page.

Lego Digital Designer

Lego Digital Designer, also known as LDD. With the free Digital Designer software you can build absolutely anything with virtual Lego bricks right on your computer. Then you can buy the real bricks to build your creation online in Lego Factory, or you can print out an inventory of bricks and take it to any Legoland theme park or LEGO Store. The latest version of LDD is 1.5 This version has increased stability and fixes a number of small bugs from version 1.4.
New in Version 2: Improved building experience, quicker brick selection, easier to connect bricks when building, new brick palette tool, more bricks, partly built models for easy start, new backgrounds, new UI, and more.
Overview: Lego Digital Designer Homepage.
Download: Lego Digital Designer Download Page.

Colorate

Colorate is a utility for creation of harmonized color palettes and color schemes, aimed from hobbyist to professional designers.Colorate fully automatizes the palette generation from a particular color swatch, selected from the standard Color Panel, dragged from other application or obtained from an image through the integrated Image Analyze feature.Once the palette has been generated, it is possible to add the new palette to the Library. Colorate can save and open as many Libraries as needed. Colorate also lets save the selected palettes as standard “.clr” system palette files. This feature allows use any of the generated palettes from hundreds of application that uses the Mac OS X standard Color Panel for color selection.
Overview: Colorate Homepage.
Download: Colorate Designer Download Page.

Front End Digital Media WorkShop

Front End Digital Media Workshop harnesses the power of QuickTime to bring you powerful batch based conversion of sound, video, and image files. Resize, resample, join, split, trim, basic edits, selective conversions via marked I/O points are some of the tools. All in an environment that provides powerful play back features including variable speed, slow motion, full screen playback and video to image frame capture. Batch lists can be saved and also used as play lists. Some of the dozens of supported formats include: MP4, MOV, AIFF, 3GP, 3GP2, WAV, AU, AVI (basic codecs), JPEG, PICT, PNG, PSD, BMP, and TIFF. QuickTime video filters and effects are also available.
Overview:Front End Digital Media WorkShop Homepage.
Download:Front End Digital Media WorkShop Download Page.

Autodesk Maya

Maya Personal Learning Edition (PLE) is a special version of Autodesk Maya software, which provides free access to Maya for non-commercial use. It gives 3D graphics and animation students, industry professionals, and those interested in breaking into the world of computer graphics an opportunity to explore most aspects of the Autodesk Maya Complete software in a non-commercial capacity.
Overview: Autodesk Maya Homepage.
Download: Autodesk Maya Download Page.

Graphisoft ArchiCAD

Graphisoft’s ArchiCAD 11 delivers new and enriched capabilities designed to help architects develop their concepts, compete for business more effectively and boost business efficiency. The enhancements reinforce ArchiCAD as an extraordinarily powerful design tool for architectural practices – large and small – worldwide.
Overview:Graphisoft ArchiCAD Homepage.
Download: Graphisoft ArchiCAD Download Page.

Simple CSS

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a way to specify the styles of fonts and other page elements on your sites. It makes it easier for you to update styles too, because when done right, you only need to make a single change to update the styles on multiple pages and elements. Another bonus is that your visitor’s browser needs to load less data per page, helping you reduce your data transfer usage while serving the same information. That means you’ll be able to accommodate more site visitors without having to spend more on data transfer. Your pages will also load faster. To help you work with CSS, we’ve created a tool called Simple CSS, which runs on Macs, Windows and Linux. Simple CSS allows you to create cascading style sheets from scratch, and/or modify existing ones, using a familiar point-and-click interface.
Overview:Simple CSS Homepage.
Download:Simple CSS Download Page.

Blender

Blender is the open-source software for 3D modeling, animation, rendering, post-production, interactive creation and playback. It is available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License. Version 2.44 offers numerous bug fixes. Version 2.46 includes cloth and fur simulation, physics caching and baking, shading, glossy reflection and refraction, raytraced soft shadows, improved rendering features, and more.
Overview:Blender Homepage.
Download:Blender Download Page.

HyperEngine-AV

HyperEngine-AV is a true multimedia editor that lets you combine seamlessly video, photos, sounds and text to create slide shows, family movies, business presentations, or your own feature films quickly and easily, with full DV quality.Media clips can be dragged and dropped, imported or captured in real time from a FireWire DV camera, then freely arranged in the workspace to make movies. Real-time, editable transitions are automatically created when video clips are dragged on top of each other and over a dozen video effects are available and can be applied to any video clip.Audio clips can be edited, arranged, stacked, and processed to generate stunning soundtracks. There is no track limit because . . . there are no tracks! With HyperEngine-AV there is simply no learning curve, you learn as you go, and you can get all the fun of creating any multimedia pieces without the hassle of dealing with tedious and counter-intuitive software interface.
Overview and Download:HyperEngine-AV Homepage.

POV-Ray

POV-Ray is a three-dimensional ray-tracing engine. It takes information you supply and simulates the way light interacts with the objects you’ve defined, creating stunning 3D pictures and animation
Overview:POV-Ray Homepage.
Download:POV-Ray Download Page.

Gnuplot

Gnuplot is a portable command-line driven interactive data and function plotting utility for UNIX, IBM OS/2, MS Windows, DOS, Macintosh, VMS, Atari and many other platforms. It was originally intended as to allow scientists and students to visualize mathematical functions and data. It does this job pretty well, but has grown to support many non-interactive uses, including web scripting and integration as a plotting engine for third-party applications like Octave. Gnuplot supports many different types of terminals: interactive screen terminals (with mouse and hotkey functionality), pen plotters (like hpgl), printers (including postscript and many color devices), and printings to output file as vectorial pseudo-devices like LaTeX, metafont, pdf, svg, or bitmap png. Gnuplot is easily extensible to include new devices.
Overview:Gnuplot Homepage.
Download:Gnuplot Download Page.

DAZ Studio

DAZ Studio is a feature rich 3D figure posing and animation tool that enables users of any skill level to easily create stunning digital imagery. Whether youre a 3D newbie or an avid 3D artist, you’ll find DAZ Studio is the perfect tool for designing unique digital art and animation with virtual people, animals, props, vehicles, backgrounds and more. Experience total creative freedom with DAZ Studio and express yourself in 3D like never before. Version 2.2.2.20 may include unspecified updates, enhancements, or bug fixes.
Overview:DAZ Studio Homepage.
Download: DAZ Studio Download Page.

Bryce

Create breathtaking realistic 3D landscapes and animations with DAZ 3D Bryce 5.5. The easy user interface simplifies the design process for a novice or the seasoned professional. Start out building or importing a landscape as impressive as the Grand Canyon. Populate it with buildings, people or any other object you create or from the extensive DAZ 3D library. The Light Lab provides you robust control over your sunsets, moonlight nights or high-noon ambiance. Tree Lab allows you to plant your landscape like the gardens of Versailles. You’ll have to register your copy of Bryce 5.5 on the publishers web-site to gain access to your free Bryce serial number.
Overview and Download:Bryce Homepage.

Goldberg

Goldberg is a freeware image and movie viewer with image-editing capabilities and support for applying QuickTime and other effects.and its new version affering rotation capabilities, free zooming, and undo support.
Overview and Download:Goldberg Homepage.

Image Tricks

Image Tricks is an image editing application that allows you to easily edit and apply various effects and filters to your photos and images. This program allows modification of around 50 core image effects and filters, import over 20 image formats (TIFF, JPEG, GIF, PDF, EPS among them), export to TIFF, JPEG, PNG, and GIF formats, resize images, and iPhoto integration.
Overview and Download: Image Tricks Homepage.

Inkscape

Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw, or Xara X using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format. Supported SVG features include shapes, paths, text, markers, clones, alpha blending, transforms, gradients, patterns, and grouping. Inkscape also supports Creative Commons meta-data, node editing, layers, complex path operations, bitmap tracing, text-on-path, flowed text, direct XML editing, and more. It imports formats such as JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and others and exports PNG as well as multiple vector-based formats. Inkscape’s main goal is to create a powerful and convenient drawing tool fully compliant with XML, SVG, and CSS standards. We also aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development process, and by making sure Inkcape is easy to learn, to use, and to extend.
Overview:Inkscape Homepage.
Download:Inkscape Download Page.

Adobe photoshop lite for mac free. Adobe Photoshop CS6 only strengthens the benchmark software's existing position as the unrivaled production suite and an indispensable tool for old and new. Free to try Adobe Systems Mac OS X. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Free to try Perfect your photos with advanced controls, experiment in a nondestructive environment, organize and share anywhere. Adobe photoshop lite free download - Adobe Photoshop CC, Adobe Photoshop Elements, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC, and many more programs. Download Adobe Photoshop Elements 2020 for macOS 10.13 or later and enjoy it on your Mac. ‎It’s never been easier to make your photos look amazing and turn them into treasured keepsakes. NEW Automatically colorize your photos Change up the colors in your photos or give black-and-whites new life with automatic colorization. Adobe Photoshop for Mac - Take advantage of powerful new photography tools and breakthrough capabilities for superior image selections, image retouching, realistic painting, and a wide range of workflow and performance enhancements. Hide your real IP address and protect your privacy while online! Pro VPN for Mac!

NIH Image

NIH Image can acquire, display, edit, enhance, analyze, and animate images. It reads and writes TIFF, PICT, PICS, and MacPaint files, providing compatibility with many applications, including programs for scanning, processing, editing, publishing, and analyzing images. NIH Image supports many standard image-processing functions, such as contrast enhancement, density profiling, smoothing, sharpening, edge detection, median filtering, and spatial convolution with user-defined kernels. NIH Image can be used to measure area, mean, centroid, and perimeter. It also performs automated particle analysis and provides tools for measuring path lengths and angles. Spatial calibration is supported to provide real-world area and length measurements. Version 1.62 fixes bugs and improves compatibility with PowerPC machines.
Overview:NIH Image Homepage.
Download:NIH Image Download Page.

Comipro Plus

Comipro Plus is a cartoon production software. You can produce the cartoon work with the kind of feeling which compiles the document with the word processor as the material using the picture and the photograph. Version 4.0.20 may include unspecified updates, enhancements, or bug fixes.
Overview:Comipro Plus Homepage.

Scratch

Designed for children, this freeware multimedia programming tool makes creating animated stories, video games and interactive artwork a snap. Scratch uses a simple graphical interface that lets users put together multimedia programs without any programming knowledge.
Overview:Scratch Homepage.
Download:Scratch Download Page.

iPhoto

Whether you have twenty or twenty thousand digital photos, iPhoto 4 keeps track of them all, automatically organizing them so you can find them fast. Lightning fast. Easy to use, iPhoto puts you in charge of your photographs-helping you import them, organize them into albums, enhance their appearance, as well as, share them in print, via email, over the web and in stunning coffee-table books.
This update addresses several issues with using multiple text rules in Smart Albums and it also eliminates some problems with creating iPhoto books in the German and Dutch languages. Additionally, 4.0.3 keeps users informed about new version of iPhoto that have become available.
Overview and Download:iPhoto Homepage.

Well thats it, I hope I haven’t missed any. (Let me know if I have).