Very illuminating.

As I didn't have the cash for Adobe Photoshop, and Illustrator was available where we were living at the time (Korea - and I mean legally, which was much more difficult to get than the ten-dollar versions!), I got Illustrator.

I create my computer-assisted fantasy art

with Illustrator, a little-known program called PhotoImpressions, and the humble Paint (believe it or not, it's more versatile than ya might think!) Upon occasion a little help from Print Artist, but that has strange compatibility issues as well (it inverses the order of layers, never mind 'mirror image'! everything that was stacked on the bottom goes to the top - veerrrrrrry disconcerting visually!)


El cheapo hint of the day for misbehaving graphics: if what you need is the image, right this second, and don't have the time to fiddle with fixing it in Word, etc. - try hitting the 'print screen' button. Open that humble old Paint (under All Programs / Accessories) and hit Paste. Your image will appear as a screen dump and you can then simply crop it and save as a bitmap or jpeg and insert into your document as usual.