If you want to scan, crop, rotate, scale, sharpen, enhance, or touch up anything, you need an image editing program. They're also useful for making images from scratch, like pictures of text, drawings, graphics, or whatever else you can think of. An image editing program is essential for creating a web site.

• The pros use Adobe Photoshop. It's the King of image editing software. It's the big daddy, the industry standard. And it's excellent. Oh, and did I mention it costs $600? But once you have it, there's no end to the enjoyment, really. A lot of people rip it off from their graphic designer friends, but as a computer engineer, I really don't recommend that. By the way, if you're getting into Photoshop, you should also pick up Photoshop for the Web.
  
  
• For $100, you should consider Paint Shop Pro for Windows. It has most of Photoshop's features, and certainly more than most web designers need.
  
  
• If you're buying Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro, you should also consider getting Alien Skin Eye Candy and/or Kai's Power Tools. These programs greatly extend the features of Photoshop and PSP, and they're very popular among the pros.
  
  
• For free, there's The GIMP, short for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It was originally written for Unix and X-Windows, but it's also available for Windows. It's an amazing program, especially since it's free, but it's still in heavy development so save your work often!
  
  
• The tried and true free image manipulation program is ImageMagick, which has been around since I can remember. It's available for just about any computer, but it doesn't have all the bells and whistles of the other software on this page.

Scanners and Cameras:

I use my scanner a lot. It is incredibly useful. All my photos were scanned with it. For a simple web page, you don't need a scanner, but as soon as you start getting into anything serious, you'll find yourself wanting one.

• If you're into photography, but you don't want to dish out the big bucks, get an HP Photosmart scanner. It scans 35mm negatives, slides, and anything flat up to 5x7". As a proud owner and former HP employee, I must say it's a great little device, especially for the price: around $300. Compared to other 35mm scanners, it's cheap... but not too cheap. I can get great scans up to 1500x1000 from a negative or slide. Take a look at my photo gallery for examples. Also, you can get more opinions about slide/negative scanners at photo.net.
  
  
• PhotoCD is one way to go if you only have a few photographs, but it's very expensive. Your local pro photo lab will scan your slides or negatives with an expensive scanner and put them on an expensive CD for you. It's very expensive.
  
  
• If you just want to scan drawings, photographs, books, CDs, and other not-so-flat things, you need a flatbed scanner. It's just like the top of a photocopying machine. I don't know which flatbed scanners are best, but I can tell you this: Don't buy anything less than $150. Cheap scanners are cheap. They break. I have heard this over and over. It's just not worth it. You'll be in great shape if you pay around $200.
  
  
• I don't have a digital camera yet, but I think they're great for making web sites. The quality of a digital camera is perfect for the web, and you can get a good one for fairly cheap. I recommend checking out Digital Photography Review when you start looking around for one. Also, there's a more general article about digital cameras at photo.net.