And you know JT, that I agree that GIMP is a great FREE image editor and used by many cartographers pros and amateurs alike. Madmaxneo mentions his familiarity with Illustrator and preferring to work with vectors. I'd have pointed out Inkscape as a vector program since it too is FREE, but he mentioned it not fitting his needs having some experience with it. With those parameters in mind, Xara is a good solution.