If you think of graphics, think Adobe. You really can't go wrong with Adobe. Legions of web designers and illustrators swear on the bible that they make the best graphics software around, and we are inclined to agree. If you are looking for a graphics / image-editing package that offers tremendous power and ease of use, choose Adobe.

Adobe Photoshop 5.5 comes packed with ImageReady 2.0, which includes many web capabilities that Photoshop previously did not offer, such as:

Flash-competitive slices
JavaScript rollovers
Gif Animation

This is a very welcome change, since with previous releases, most web designers using Photoshop were quite unimpressed with the lack of web-critical features.

Company
Adobe Systems San Jose, CA - http://www.adobe.com

System Requirements
Pentium-class processor
64MB RAM
125MB hard drive space
Win95/Win98/WinNT

Mfr. Est. Price
$609; $199 (upgrade)

Macromedia has established itself as the premiere company for providing web developers with powerful software that turns developing websites from a chore into an art. There are dozens of HTML editors out on the web today, and Dreamweaver is hands down the best and ONLY HTML editor you should buy.

Some Benefits / Features of Dreamweaver:

Embedded tables are a piece of cake
Create image maps with just a few points and clicks
You can run a separate HTML editor window to fine tune your website code
No more headaches with frames
Built in spell-checker
Built in search and replace feature
Layers have never been easier!

Company
Macromedia, Inc. San Francisco, CA - http://www.macromedia.com

System Requirements
Pentium-class processor 90MHZ+
32MB+ RAM
20MB hard drive space
Win95/Win98/WinNT

Mfr. Est. Price
$269; $99 (upgrade)