Course Resources:

Free Digital Art & Creation Tools List (2025 Edition)

Welcome back creators, artists, students, and digital explorers!
As part of refreshing and expanding the resources at The NET-ART Website, I’m excited to share this updated collection of free digital tools you can use to create, experiment, and innovate across many forms of media.

These tools are accessible to all skill levels and are meant to encourage playful exploration, bold storytelling, and creative growth.

Every tool on this list is active and has been verified as of May 2025.

🎨 Free Digital Art and Design Tools

Photopea — Photoshop-style online image editor (no download needed!)
Pixlr E — Powerful browser-based image editor, great for quick graphic design
Kleki — Simple and intuitive online drawing app
Canva Free — Graphic design templates for posters, social posts, and more
Autodraw — AI-assisted sketching tool that guesses and cleans your drawings

🤖 Free AI Art and Creative Tools

Craiyon (formerly DALL·E Mini) — AI image generator based on text prompts
Runway ML (Free Version) — AI tools for generating video, image, and effects
Artbreeder — Blend and evolve images with AI-assisted manipulation
Mage.Space (Safe Mode) — Free simple AI image generator
Leonardo.Ai (Free Tier) — High-quality AI image generation with templates

🧩 VR and AR Art Creation Tools

OnCyber — Build free 3D/VR galleries and worlds directly in the browser
Spatial.io — Create VR/AR spaces for art shows, meetings, and exhibitions
Tilt Brush Open Source (via OpenBrush) — VR painting in 3D space (desktop VR needed)

🖼️ Free Image Remix and Experimentation Tools

GIPHY Create — Turn photos and videos into GIFs or stickers
Photomosh — Create glitch art effects easily
Deep Dream Generator — Surreal AI-assisted image remixer
Remove.bg — Instantly remove backgrounds from images

🎥 Free Video Editing Tools

Kapwing — Online video editing for trimming, effects, captions, and GIFs
Clipchamp (Free Tier) — Microsoft’s web-based video editor
Canva Video Editor — Free simple video editing inside Canva
VEED.io — Quick browser video editing for reels, shorts, and presentations

🌐 Research, Remix, and Exploration Resources

Internet Archive — A treasure trove of public domain and creative commons media
Are.na — Visual bookmarking and research platform
Open Processing — Explore creative coding artworks and make your own
Rhizome — Explore the history and future of net art

Final Thoughts

The tools listed here are only starting points. The best way to learn them is by playing, remixing, experimenting, and building your own mini-worlds of art and communication.

Your creativity is the true software!

Keep exploring, keep pushing, and stay tuned — we’ll be publishing more resources and challenges soon here at the Net-Art website!

Below is the original page content published on May 26th 2017 – I am leaving it here for archival purposes!

Below is a growing list of OER resources, Useful links and digital desktop / mobile art making platforms. Desktop and mobile platforms will be regularly introduced and discussed here. What role do you play? If you have arrived here, you have a choice to make, contribute, observe, re-share, learn and assimilate. Collaborations will take place and artistic / creative interventions will expand. We need you! This page will grow over time as students, faculty and community members contribute.

{This page is also a metaphoric activation portal for those who have been asking the universe for a sign, this is it!}

Tutorials:

NET-ART Making Tutorial – http://www.ryanseslow.com/a-how-to-net-art-gif-making-tutorial/

2. More NET-Art Making Tutorial Examples- http://www.ryanseslow.com/to-howto-augment-reality-at-a-museum/

3. Net-Art to Animated GIF – Process & Examples in Public Space – http://www.ryanseslow.com/howto-storytelling-a-netart-series/

4. Embedding to.be & newhive fields into wordpress posts & pages – http://wp.me/p5YSN2-HE

5. How to GIF a Static Portrait – https://www.ryanseslow.com/cuny-qcc-2d-design-students-gif-the-portrait/

6. Newhive Net Art Making to Screen Recording .Mov file out-put – http://art642.com/gifs/video-tutorials-with-newhive-quicktime-screen-recording/

Helpful GIF & Net Art Making Video Tutorials on the Web:

How to make an animated GIF in Photoshop – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omdfcGYEqPY
How to make an animated GIF in Photoshop from a Video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgFU6zRxUZQ
Creating an animated GIF with the Puppet Warp Feature in Photoshop – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tsq0b12JuOc
Making Static photos animate & move – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmEcxGghzHE
Creating Vapor wave Net-Art 1- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKokry41Ixg
Creating Vapor wave Net-Art 2 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ_ZT0Phfo4
Professor Smith’s YouTube Channel of Awesome Tutorials – https://www.youtube.com/user/michaelbransonsmith/videos
Dansky’s YouTube Channel of Awesome Tutorials – https://www.youtube.com/user/ForeverDansky/videos
Terry White’s YouTube Channel of Awesome Tutorials – Subscribe here.

Open Education Resources (OER) for Content and Subject Matter:

(organized via – http://guides.cuny.edu/c.php?g=225386&p=1493709 )

Public Domain Images Public domain images, royalty free stock photos, copyright friendly free images. Not copyrighted, no rights reserved.

U.S. Government Graphics and Photos

Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Images from the Library of Congress, now in the public domain.

National Gallery of Art With the launch of NGA Images, the National Gallery of Art implements an open access policy for digital images of works of art that the Gallery believes to be in the public domain.

Digital Public Library of America The Digital Public Library of Americabrings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world.

NYPL – The New York Public Library Digital Collections Archive

Flickr CC – Creative Commons on Flickr.

Gif Cities – Internet Archive

Desktop / Web Browser Art Making Platforms:

photopea – https://www.photopea.com/

Click Drag Click – clickdragclick.com

Imgur – imgur.com

Verctr – https://Verctr.com

Pixlr (photoshop alternative) – https://pixlr.com/editor/

Glitcher – http://akx.github.io/glitch2/

Image Glitch Tool – https://snorpey.github.io/jpg-glitch/

c64 – http://c64.superdefault.com/