NFTs have seen a huge upsurge in popularity in recent years. Many artists have started to create NFT artworks – and they are selling really well! Do you want to create your own NFT art? It’s absolutely possible. All you need is good digital art software, and here is the best software to create NFT art that you should definitely check out!
Non-fungible tokens of artwork developed already back in 2014. But only during the last two years did they increase in popularity and became known to a wider audience.
NFTs can be anything from digital art, drawings, games, videos, music, and so on. They are traded on special NFT marketplaces, and anyone with a cryptocurrency wallet can buy and sell NFTs.
NFT art has been trending over the past years – and it’s extremely lucrative. The NFT market has reached a US$41 billion valuation, with US$10 million worth of NFTs being sold every week.
Related: How To Make Money With Digital Art
You might have heard of the rocket sales that some NFT artworks sold for. The so far most expensive NFT artwork called ‘The Merge’ by artist Pak sold for almost US$100 million. Another example is Beeple’s ‘Everydays’, a piece of digital collage art that sold for over US$69 million.
The good news is that it’s absolutely possible to make your own NFT art!
This is the best software to create NFT art:
What Are NFTs?
NFT art came into existence after cryptocurrencies were introduced. NFT stands for non-fungible token. This refers to a unique digital asset that cannot be copied or duplicated.
It’s like an original painting: you can make prints of it, but the original art piece remains the one-of-a-kind – and thus the most valuable.
On the other hand, crypto coins are fungible tokens because one coin is equal to another and you can exchange one fungible token for another.
Once a piece of NFT art is created, it needs to be minted or tokenized on a cryptocurrency service, such as the Ethereum Blockchain. When someone buys the token, they own a unique piece of art that can be extremely valuable.
Can I make my own NFT art?
Yes, it’s absolutely possible to make your own NFT art! And it’s not even that difficult.
…and before you are asking: you can create NFT art without needing any coding skills.
Once you’ve created an NFT artwork, you’ll need to start the minting process. Minting basically means uploading your work to an NFT marketplace and offering it for sale.
The most popular NFT marketplaces are Mintable, Rarible, and OpenSea. Then, you’ll need to create a digital wallet to store both your cryptocurrencies and your NFTs.
Most NFTs are sold on the Ethereum Blockchain. For a full guide on how to sell NFT art, check out this blog post on The Verge.
What is the best program to create NFT art?
With that said, it’s time to talk about how you can actually make your own NFT artwork. What you need is good digital art software, and here is the best software to create NFT art! Let’s dive in!
Best software to create NFT art
1. Adobe Photoshop
- Why To Buy
- Overall best software to create NFT art
- Super-powerful & feature-rich
- Platforms
- MacOS
- Windows
- Pricing
- Photography Plan $9.99 / mth.
- Single App Plan $20.99 / mth.
- All Apps Plan $52.99 / mth.
Adobe Photoshop is a no-brainer. It’s the gold standard in photo editing and image manipulation. It offers the most powerful tools and advanced features that you can find in the market.
That said, Photoshop is the best software to create NFT art, just like any other piece of art.
(If you are a beginner and don’t know yet how to use it, don’t worry. There are heaps of free Photoshop tutorials available to help you advance your skills.)
With Adobe’s new subscription model, you’ll always get all updates automatically, without having to pay any extra cost. The cheapest subscription plan is the Photography Plan, where you will get Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom for only US$9.99 per month.
2. Adobe Illustrator
- Why To Buy
- Best vector graphics editor
- Great for large sets of NFT art
- Platforms
- MacOS
- Windows
Adobe Illustrator is another big name in the industry. And as its name suggests, it’s specifically geared towards illustrations and vector graphics.
Illustrator makes it easy to create anything from icons, logos, web graphics, and so on.
You can easily add effects, text, and advanced 3D effects. Because Illustrator is a vector graphics editor, all your creations are unlimitedly scalable, without losing any quality.
So turns out Adobe Illustrator is another best software to create NFT art, especially if you want to make large sets of NFTs.
Just like Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator is available through a subscription plan, the most affordable one being the Single App Plan at US$20.99 per month.
3. Corel Painter
- Why To Buy
- Perfect for digital painting & drawing
- Huge brush library
- Platforms
- MacOS
- Windows
Corel Painter is world-class software for digital painting and drawing, and one of the best programs to create NFT art. You’ll get the most advanced tools for painting on a blank canvas and creating photo art.
The program has a huge library with all types of natural media brushes, including thick paint, watercolor, pastel, particles, airbrushes, and many more. You can fully customize all brushes, textures, and other media.
Painter is perfect for creating illustrations, fantasy art, films, games, and fine art. Artificial intelligence helps you to start the painting process, and auto-painting and cloning tools make your workflow smooth.
Digital painting without a drawing tablet isn’t possible. So you’ll be delighted to hear that Corel Painter is designed to work perfectly with Wacom tablets.
4. NFT Creator
- Why To Buy
- Special app for NFT art
- Lots of premade templates
- Platforms
- iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Mac
NFT Creator is specialized software to create NFT art on your iPad and iPhone. The app is straightforward and makes it easy for anyone to produce high-quality digital art.
Even though NFT Creator is a mobile app, it has many features of advanced photo editing software. It comes with a layer-based workflow similar to Photoshop, allowing you to stack images, apply masks, adjust opacity, and so on.
You can either upload your own images, paintings, and graphics or use any of NFT Creator’s ready-made backgrounds, gradients, and special crypto graphics. There are a ton of brushes, filters, and fonts you can choose from to enhance your NFTs.
One thing to note is that NFT Creator allows you to create graphics. But to upload or sell them as NFTs, you will still need a minting platform, crypto wallet and marketplace.
5. Fotor
- Why To Buy
- Professional photo editor for multiple platforms
- Special NFT art effects
- Platforms
- iOS, MacOS
- Android, Windows
Fotor is free software to create NFT art on multiple platforms. You can use it on Mac and Windows computers, and on your iOS and Android devices.
Fotor is one of the tools that come with special NFT art effects. With just a few tabs, AI helps you turn your photos into masterpiece paintings and trendy NFT styles, such as cryptopunk.
There’s a great selection of creative resources, including design templates, stickers, backgrounds, stock photos, and much more.
Apart from that, Fotor has everything you would expect from a professional photo editor. You can crop and resize images, create photo collages, remove backgrounds, and apply effects. More advanced features include portrait retouching, including red-eye removal, teeth whitening, and color correction.
In short, Fotor is the fast digital way to create perfect photos and artwork!
6. The NFT Generator
- Why To Buy
- One-stop solution for NFT art
- Easy to make your own NFTs
- Platforms
- MacOS
- Windows
- Pricing
- Standard Plan starting at $49 / mth.
- Advanced Plan starting at $99 / mth.
The NFT Generator is a one-stop solution for everyone wanting to create NFTs without requiring too much graphic design skills.
Since the software works with layers, all you need to do is upload the images you need for your NFT creation. For example, you can layer up multiple photos and objects on top of the background to achieve the final result.
Once you are done, you can save your work as JPEG or PNG and organize your creations into unlimited collections with categories, metadata, blocklists, and more.
The NFT Generator is pretty easy to use. You can try it out for free, without having to create an account on the website!
7. Inkscape
- Why To Buy
- Free software for illustration
- Lots of tutorials available
- Platforms
- MacOS
- Windows
- Linux
Inkscape is the free alternative to Adobe Illustrator. It is an extremely versatile graphics editor that you can use to create illustrations, web design, logos, and vector images.
It includes all the tools to create shapes, paths, and text. For example, there’s the pencil tool for freehand drawing, the pen tool for creating Bézier curves and straight lines, and the calligraphy tools for drawing filled paths. Shape tools let you create rectangles, ellipses, stars, polygons, and spirals – to just name a few.
Inkscape comes with a learning curve, but you can find a volume of tutorials, including on Inkscape’s website.
That means Inkscape is one of the best free software to create NFT art on Windows, Mac, and GNU/Linux!
8. GIMP
- Why To Buy
- Serious alternative to Photoshop
- Powerful editing features
- Platforms
- MacOS
- Windows
- Linux
GIMP is one of the top free software to create NFT art. Despite being completely free, it can do almost everything that Photoshop can do.
You can work with layers and masks, and there are plenty of filters and downloadable add-ons to increase your editing possibilities. The blending mode options allow you to create catchy visual effects just like in Photoshop.
Because it’s been around for such a long time, there are many tutorials available for GIMP and the official GIMP website offers a ton of helpful information as well.
9. Krita
- Why To Buy
- Versatile image editor
- User-friendly & easy to learn
- Platforms
- MacOS
- Windows
- Linux
Krita is another free software for making your own NFT art. It is open source and user-friendly.
The program is specifically geared towards digital painting, illustration, comic and concept art.
In addition to the standard editing tools, Krita provides a lot of the functions you would also find in Photoshop, such as layers, masks, blending modes, and a large amount of brush presets.
That also makes it a great choice for digital painting, because it features a huge number of brush customizations and a hands-on pop-up color and brush selection palette.
My name is Angie and I’m a self-taught digital artist. On this blog, I am sharing my knowledge and discussing the best software and hardware for different artistic needs. My desire is to offer options for all creative stages and budgets so that everyone can follow their dream and create art!
I am continuously browsing online for tips that can assist me. Thx!
You’re most welcome, Arita. Thanks for stopping by!