Choose the right software before making figures
There are plenty of options out there so try and test lots of different programs to find out which ones talk to your instruments, fit best with your analysis work flows, and give the best presentation of data. We've put together a list of must-try software. Some of these are paid for but here we've also included free and open source options that you can use to achieve similar results.
1. Microsoft Office
So this might not be the first piece of software that comes to mind when you think about making graphics. You probably already use Word for writing papers, but the office package also has a lot of versatile features that are "good enough" for making publication-worth figures. A lot of papers you read will contain schematics made in Powerpoint, graphs drawn in Excel, and tables are are usually requested by journals in word format (the journal will often pretty these up on acceptance). A lot of the default settings in Microsoft Office are not ready for academic publications but a bit of fiddling will allow you to fulfill most basic needs with this software. Although you might need to pay for Office on your personal computer it is standard software in most universities (and for most publishers). Open source alternatives (like LibreOffice can give you similar results, but beware of problems with file compatibility. Your files might look fine in the native software but there may be formatting or information losses for anyone else opening your documents in MS Office.
2. Gimp
A lot of labs and and individuals don't have the need to pay out for Photoshop or other similar image editing software. If you can't or don't want to pay for Photoshop, Gimp is an open source, full featured, and versatile alternative. If you are already familiar with how to use Photoshop it should be fairly easy to get started with Gimp. If you're new to image editing programs expect a steep learning curve and frustration to start with although there are many online tutorials available now and plugins that can accomplish many complex tasks. You may not need to use all the features of Gimp or Photoshop when preparing academic illustrations but the tools are particularly useful for scaling, cropping and changing the color space of image files if your target journal has picky formatting requirements.
If you don't have time to work out how to use Gimp and Power Point isn't giving you the options you need Inkscape is a easy to use program that can produce compelling and clear graphics. It's completely free and highly intuitive to use. It particularly useful for line art like schematics and flow charts and can even be used as a layout tool. Some publishers even recommend that authors use this to prepare figures so it's worth becoming familiar with this software.
This is another gem of a program you can download for free. If you're working with micrographs or any other kind of image, this is the go to software for image analysis and can also output publication ready image files. If there's anything you can't do with ImageJ, someone has probably made a plugin that can help you.
4. Graphing software
5. Technical graphing software
Excel is a lot more powerful than some people realize but does have its limitations. A lot of scientific users at some point feel the need for more sophisticated software for analyzing and presenting scientific data. Matlab, Origin, Graph Pad, and Igor Pro are among the most popular commercial tools for scientist, and offer nearly every kind of graph solution that you could think of. The learning curve can be steep for some of these programs and they each have their quirks, but persevere and you will be able to create professional images that would not look out of place in high tier journals. Some versions of Origin allow you output directly output charts in the right format for certain target journals, and others have solid features for creating attractive plots and layouts. These features do come at a price and if you can't get access through your institution or research group the licenses are not cheap. If Excel isn't cutting it and you can't get access to any of these programs your next best option is probably the open source software R. This program is a must for any regular users of heavy statistical analysis, but it's also a very powerful in it's own right and has great options for outputting results graphically. R has a large range of add-on packages for various tasks and is well supported, but nevertheless it has a steep learning curve and will require a considerable investment of time to get the most out of this package.