Google revolutionized the role landscape with the cloud-based Google Docs, challenging the supremacy of Office apps like Give-and-take and Excel with reasonable success. One picayune-known tool in the Google Docs arsenal, however, is a Google draw tool called Google Drawings.

What is Google Drawings? It isn't a full-featured Photoshop replacement, but if you lot're looking for a quick and piece of cake-to-utilize drawing tool to create new diagrams or charts on the web, Google Drawings could be the tool you need. To describe with Google using Google Drawings, all you need is a Google account–it's totally free to use.

What Is Google Drawings?

Google Drawings isn't new—information technology'south been around since 2022. It allows you to create diagrams, shapes, and other drawings that you lot can then utilize in other Google Docs apps like Google Slides. You lot're also gratuitous to share, publish, and export your images on the web or to other software on your PC or Mac.

Don't expect a full set of image-editing tools in Google Drawings, considering it isn't a full image-editor like GIMP or Photoshop. Google Drawings just doesn't have that kind of functionality—everything is pretty basic, with similar image-editing features to those found in Google Sheets, for instance, but with its ain design canvas.

It'south more of a like-for-like replacement for Microsoft Visio, the diagram software included with Office, than anything else. The departure between Visio and Google Drawings, however, is the cost—y'all tin employ this Google draw app for free.

How To Depict With Google Using Google Drawings

Thankfully, there isn't a steep learning curve with Google Drawings. If you've always used a tool in the Google Docs suite, the interface will seem very familiar as it uses the same carte bar way that you'll see in Google Sheets, Slides and other Google apps.

To commencement using Google Drawings, head to the Google Drawings website and sign in using your Google business relationship.

  • If you've never used Google Drawings before, a blank drawing will announced automatically. You lot can open up existing drawings by clicking File > Open and selecting a previous drawing from your Google Drive storage.
  • Google Drawings allows you to insert text boxes, various shapes, tables, diagrams, charts and graphs, to proper name but a few. To insert any of these, you'll need to click the Insert tab and select i of the options.
  • Adding a new shape, for example, volition require y'all to click Insert > Shape, choosing a type of shape (for instance, Arrows) and clicking ane of the visual styles. You can so draw the shape using your mouse or trackpad.
  • To add a basic text box, click Insert > Text Box and draw the text box using your mouse or trackpad. Once the text box is created, you can then add text to information technology using your keyboard.
  • You can too insert outside images into your drawing, allowing you to dispense or use it alongside your text, shapes, and other objects. To do this, click Insert > Paradigm and choose ane of the available options. Yous can upload an image from your PC, select one from your Google Bulldoze storage, as well as search online using Google's congenital-in image search.
  • You can utilize line objects to link images or objects together. To do this, click Insert > Line and employ your mouse or trackpad to create a line object in your chosen location.
  • To save your cartoon, yous'll demand to give it a name. Click on the gray Untitled drawing box at the superlative of the Google Drawings window and type in a memorable name. Your drawing will then exist saved automatically with this proper noun in your Google Drive storage.

Creating Advanced Diagrams & Drawings In Google Drawings

While information technology also has basic shapes and image editing capabilities, Google Drawings can be used to create more than avant-garde drawings that utilise diagrams, tables, and charts.

  • To insert a new diagram into Google Drawings, click Insert > Diagrams, and so select your diagram style from the menu that appears on the right-manus side, confirming the number of levels, as well as the colour. Yous can then edit the diagram once information technology's been inserted into your drawing.
  • To insert a tabular array, click Insert > Table and select the number of columns and rows you demand. The table volition exist inserted into your drawing automatically, where y'all tin can then movement it and brainstorm to add together data.
  • Y'all tin also import graphs and charts from Google Sheets or create them in Google Drawings directly. Click Insert > Charts to do this, so select the type of chart or graph you want to create. Printing From Sheets to insert a chart from an existing Google Sheets spreadsheet.

Sharing & Exporting Drawings On Google Drawings

Similar other Google apps, Google Drawings allows you to extensively share and consign your diagram with others. Yous can share the file to exist viewed or edited past other users, publish your drawing to the web, or consign it to your computer as an SVG, PNG, JPEG, or PDF file.

  • If you want to export your drawing to your PC, click File > Download and select one of the file format options.
  • To share your image with others, click the Share button in the summit-left, then type in their email addresses in the People box that appears afterward. Alternatively, click the Go shareable link push button to copy a directly link to your image for users to view or edit your cartoon anonymously. Click Done once y'all're finished.
  • To publish your drawing as a publicly-accessible file on the web, allowing information technology to be embedded on other web pages, click File > Publish to the web.
  • You lot can select the size of your published drawing image under the Link tab by selecting a size under the Image Size drop-down menu, then copy the direct URL to your drawing in this size.
  • To embed your published prototype on the web, click the Embed tab in the Publish to the web window. Y'all can then select and copy the HTML lawmaking shown to exist able to insert it onto a web page correctly.
  • Click the Stop Publishing push button to remove your drawing from the web at whatever point in the future.

Exploring Your Creativity With Google Docs

All of the apps in the Google Docs arsenal allow y'all to edit photos and images, but only Google Drawings allows you to draw with Google on a drawing canvass similar you would with a true photo editing tool like Photoshop. Information technology's more than of a replacement for Microsoft Visio than Photoshop, but it'southward all the same worth taking a look at.

There are other ways you can use Google Docs, of course. Yous can use it to build a new resume using Google Docs templates, and even use the built-in sharing tools to create a simple web page for free.

What are your favorite apps in the Google Docs suite? Allow u.s. know in the comments beneath.