Webmasters with modest goals can get away without a digital camera, scanner, or clip art, but no serious Webmaster can live without some type of illustration program. Indeed, at some point all designers will find themselves needing some type of logo, customized button bar, or ornamental headline to lend personal identity to their pages. Illustration programs deliver these goods, and run the gamut from downloadable shareware to $700 suites with more special effects than a Pink Floyd flashback.

Pluses Of all the imaging models covered here, only illustration programs offer you the liberty to realize anything your imagination might conceivedigital cameras record real-life events, scanners digitize "found art," and clip art comes pre-fab courtesy of another designer. With illustration programs, endless tweaking options give you the opportunity to explore and explore, and chances are good that once you buy one of the more complex programs, your favorite hobby will switch from Web surfing to menu surfing. Most illustration programs are now Web savvy, meaning you can reduce file sizes and convert to GIF or JPEG without launching a second app.

Minuses Of all the digital imaging models, illustration programs have the highest learning curve. The more tools you have at your disposal, the more chapters you'll be reading in the user's manual. And read you will. Special effects in particular defy intuition, and can be tweaked ad nauseam with precision controls, all of which require explanation.

Special effects pose a second problem by inadvertently encouraging every designer on the planet to use the same effects device in the same way. For example, the "page curl" effect has become a laughing-stock among professionals due to overuse. But you can produce stunning imagesas long as you resist the gimmicky but tempting overused effects, and set your cheese sensors on high.

Options While illustration programs have traditionally fallen into two distinct categoriesraster-based and vector-basedmany of today's apps are a mixture of the two. A raster-based image is defined by a matrix of colored dots; a vector-based image is defined by a combination of points and lines, with colored dots filling in the gaps. In general, raster-based programs are designed for freeform "painting," while vector-based programs are designed for building precise illustrations that are composites of different geometric shapes.

Jasc Paint Shop Pro 4.0 ($69) is a solid, entry-level raster-based program that lets you paint with a number of cool effects brushes, such as crayon, airbrush, and charcoal, and may prove to be the only drawing program you'll ever need. The shareware version can be found at the Jasc Web site.
Take a look at the Jasc multimedia catalog.

Macromedia Flash ($249) is a raster-vector hybrid that doesn't require finicky vector point manipulation (a task indeed). Some Webmasters find it so easy and fun to use, they bypass its intended animation functionality and use it as their default drawing tool.

Macromedia Freehand 7 ($399) and Adobe Illustrator 6.0.1 are two extremely powerful raster-vector hybrids favored by print design professionals. If you can master each program's learning curve, you'll be pleased with the results and limitless design possibilities. Deneba Canvas 5 ($399) is another hybrid that's billed as "a favorite among technical illustrators." Don't let that spook you. It's built for precision, but is easier to use than Illustratorand has been since each program's 1.0 version.

One of the coolest illustration programs you'll ever play with is Fractal Design Painter 4 ($549), a raster powerhouse that effectively recreates all the tools and media textures used by fine artists. For example, if you draw one line with the wax crayon tool, and another line with the felt marker tool, and then cover both lines with watercolors, the wax crayon line will repel the watercolor, while the felt marker line will bleed. Even more amazing are the tools that let you automatically paint in the styles of famous artists, such as Van Gogh and Seurat. Some of Painter's fine detail will be lost once you reduce your file sizes for the Web, but the program is incredibly fun, and comes with a marvelous manual.