What programs are best to use in drawing Illustrations?

photoshop is pretty good! It is my favorite actually. I also use GIMP (it's a free software) and Autodesk sketchbook. http://www.clubic.com/telecharger-fiche10178-the-gimp.html http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?siteID=123112&id=6848332

My first choice is Xara Xtreme. You can download a 30-day trial. Be sure to look at the gallery of examples. And then, there is Inkscape, a free vector-drawing program. Gimp, is the photoshop capable free open-source program. FYI, I do see web-based graphics moving to the .svg file-format -- vector art that embeds into .xml and xhtml very nicely.

You want a bitmap editor -- which you have in Photoshop -- and a vector graphics program, such as Illustrator or the Open Source Inkscape: http://www.inkscape.org The weakness of any bitmap or raster editor is that it is resolution dependent: You get exactly one size of image: and how it appears on the page depends on how your printer prints out images. The weakness of a vector graphics program is that it has a steep learning curve, period. I learned back in college on Freehand back when Aldus owned it. Over the years Adobe ended up with it and since they have Illustrator it is moribund. I hate Illustrator's user interface though, and do most of my work on Inkcape, which like freehand and illustrator does most of its work under the hood using .eps files and also imports and exports Illustrator .svg files. .svg files are scalable graphics, as are eps files, so you can MAKE your image the size you want it. It's not resolution-dependent. Therefore learn to use a vector graphics program. I've listed three and given you links to one you can download for free legally. They have a steep learning curve. Figure weeks, but they are worth it.