Mug's Digital Creation Bookmarks

Why does this list exist?

I originally created this list for my own use, a plain HTML page I'd use as bookmarks, that way I would'n have to deal with importing and exporting Firefox backup files every time I switch to a new operating system, as I was working on this a thought came to mind, "If I had this 2-4 years ago I would've advanced much faster." so here I am building some kind of "Master list" of all the digital tools I can gather for whoever might find it useful (I will mainly put tools that are free to use, weather open or closed source).

Tools:

Fonts:

Sources: (All of these foundries provide free fonts licensed for commercial use.)
The League of Moveable Type One of the first free, open-source web font foundries, small library but well-crafted.
Collletttivo Open-source, collectively designed contemporary Italian typefaces.
Google Fonts Free, open-source web font library, huge but hit-or-miss on quality, also hosts Material Symbols, a solid icon set.
FontShare Curated free fonts from Indian Type Foundry, generally more polished than most free libraries.
Velvetyne French, community-run foundry, leans experimental and multilingual.
Bye Bye Binary French collective distributing inclusive, non-binary and post-binary typefaces.
Open Source Publishing Brussels-based collective building libre fonts and tools, DIY and workshop-driven.
Tools:
Wordmark Types your text out across every font installed on your system at once, for quick comparison.

Raster:

Sources:
Mockups Design Free layered PSD mockups organized by category, packaging, business cards, apparel, outdoor signage, more realistic than generic template packs.
Poly Haven Mainly for 3D work but they offer a wide range of textures that can be used for other purposes.
Ambient CG Free CC0 PBR materials, more focused purely on textures than Poly Haven.
Texture Labs A wide range of free, high-quality textures, leaning grunge, paper, and print-decay, photographic overlays rather than the PBR materials Poly Haven and Ambient CG use.
Public Domain Image Archive Hand-picked collection of out-of-copyright works.
NYPL Digital Collections Collection of items digitized from The New York Public Library's collections.
Transparent Textures Free textures for your UI/UX works.
Tools:
Krita Free, open-source raster editor, focused on digital painting and illustration.
Photopea (Web-based) Photoshop alternative, opens PSD and other native formats.
RawTherapee Free, open-source RAW photo processor.
GIMP Free, open-source raster editor, similar to Photoshop.
Aseprite Pixel-art editor (This is the purchase link, you can either buy a one-time paid key to support the developer, or you can find the source code here and build it yourself for free, or you can download a Windows prebuilt version here although lags behind on updates.)
LibreSprite GPL-2.0 fork of Aseprite. Less advanced but excellent if you're looking for a more straightforward alternative.
Snapseed (iOS link) (Mobile) Google's photo editing app, known for its powerful yet easy-to-use tools.
Affinity (Requires a Canva account) Professional creative suite for design and photo editing, free alternative to Photoshop, Illustrator & InDesign, with Canva AI integration.

Vector:

Sources:
Flaticon Mostly paid vector content, but they have a free high-quality collection of icons, including monochrome brand icons.
Vecteezy Stock images and vector assets/templates, free tier is limited but worth digging through.
theSVG One of the larger free brand-logo SVG libraries, multiple variants per brand (color, mono, light, dark, wordmark), no attribution required.
Tools:
FontForge Free, open-source editor for building or modifying typefaces at the point/curve level.
Graphite (Web-based) Early-stage open-source vector editor, node-based and non-destructive.
VectorPea (Web-based) Illustrator alternative from the same developer as Photopea, opens AI, SVG and PDF files.
Inkscape Free, open-source vector editor, similar to Illustrator.
Calligra Karbon Free, open-source vector editor, similar to Inkscape.
Canva (Web-based) Simple and fast design tool with a vast library of templates and assets.
Affinity (Requires a Canva account) Professional creative suite for design and photo editing, free alternative to Photoshop, Illustrator & InDesign, with Canva AI integration.

Color:

Adobe Color Palette generator and library with direct Creative Cloud export, plus a large community-submitted library.
Coolors Fast color palette generator, with a large library of user-submitted palettes.
Color Hunt Curated collection of color palettes, with a focus on modern and trendy color combinations.
Colormind AI palette generator trained on photography, film, and art datasets, lock in a color and it fills in the rest, or pull a palette straight from an uploaded image.
Color Hex All-in-one color tool, shades, tints, RGB/CMYK percentages, and ready-to-copy CSS for backgrounds, text, borders, and shadows.
Huemint Color palette generator with templates to visualize color combinations in real use-cases.
AnyGradient (Web-based) Universal gradient generator with OKLCH & Display-P3 support.

Moodboarding/Brainstorming:

Sources:
are.na Algorithm-free platform for curating and sharing ideas.
Cosmos Visual moodboarding tool, built around a searchable image grid with a color-based search tool.
Behance Adobe's portfolio platform, full project case studies across every design discipline.
Pinterest The default moodboard tool, deep library but mid algorithm and ad-driven.
Branding Styleguides Archive of real brand guideline documents pulled from actual companies.
Fonts in Use Archive of typefaces spotted in real design work, searchable by font or by industry.
Savee Minimalist, ad-free image curation, another alternative to Pinterest, similar to Cosmos.
Tools:
PureRef Lightweight reference board, keeps pinned images on top of other windows.
Anytype Free knowledge management tool.
Logseq Another free, open-source knowledge management tool, self-hostable.

Video/Animation:

Tools
Kdenlive Free, open-source video editor, similar to Adobe Premiere.
Blender 3D software at its core, but its node-based compositor and Grease Pencil tools make it a genuinely usable free alternative to After Effects for motion graphics.
DaVinci Resolve Paid with a generous free tier, closed-source video editor, similar to Adobe Premiere.
Glaxnimate Open-source vector animation tool built around the Lottie format, closer to a free After Effects plus Bodymovin workflow than to Adobe Animate.

Audio:

Sources:
Freesound Collaborative collection of sound effects and field recordings, searchable by license type.
Free Sound Effects Free for commercial use sound effects.
Free SFX Free sound effects for all situations, searchable by category.
Tools:
Audacity Free, open-source audio recording & editing software.
8 Bit Composer (Web-based) 8-bit chiptune music tracker.
LMMS Free, open-source digital audio workstation.

3D:

Sources:
Poly Haven Textures, normal maps, assets, blender addons and more.
Ambient CG Free CC0 PBR materials, more focused purely on textures than Poly Haven.
Tools:
Blender Free, open-source 3D creation software.
Twinmotion (Requires Epic Games account, free for revenue under $1M/year) Real-time 3D visualization software powered by Unreal Engine.
Blockbench Free, open-source 3D modeler for creating voxel art, suitable for Minecraft models.
Materialize (Windows only) Free, open-source, Turns a single image into normal, height, and AO maps for PBR materials

Uncategorized:

Office:
WPS Office AI-powered office suite, available on all platforms.
LibreOffice Free, open-source office suite.
Google Drive (Web-based) Slides, Docs, and Sheets are nice alternatives to Microsoft Office.