Techniques include digital drawing, colouring, rendering and image
editing for visual formats. Foremost among the available software
are Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, which have become industry
standards. Photoshop is a graphics editing program that is primarily
geared towards photo manipulation. Illustrator is a vector-based
drawing program, originally developed for the Apple Macintosh in
the mid-1980s. Today it has evolved into a sophisticated digital
drawing tool that allows for the conversion of bitmap imagery into
vector art. Illustrator’s versatility makes it well-suited for creating
composite illustrations and layouts, which are excellent for drawing
and presenting flats. Illustrator can also incorporate images and text
with vector graphics to enhance presentations. Other software
programs of note are CorelDRAW, a Windows-based vector
graphics program and its raster image creation and editing
counterpart, Corel PHOTO-PAINT. Macromedia Freehand is
another powerful vector graphics tool that is orientated towards
the desktop publishing market and now owned by Adobe.