• Drawing programs such as Adobe Illustrator and Corel Draw allow artists to create their work directly on a computer screen. While such programs will never truly replace more traditional forms of creative expression, they hold a number of advantages that serve commercial artists well. In an increasingly technological environment, artists who wish to work steadily need to use drawing programs as part of their repertoire.
  
  

Correction Abilities

• Most drawing programs offer a number of tools to help artists correct their mistakes. The "undo" option removes a given action with the touch of a button, and more advanced programs allow you to pick and choose which action you want to remove, allowing you to go back multiple steps to change something if you need to. Drawing programs also offer layering options, allowing you to separate your work into multiple sections and work on one without affecting any of the others. You also gain the advantage of invisible perspective lines, which you can reference when working with the scale of different elements. In a traditional painting, you'd need to do a little guesswork once the lines were covered, but drawing programs let you add or remove them without affecting the rest of the image.
  
  

Color Control

• Drawing programs allow an unprecedented amount of color control, allowing the artist to select the precise hues for the job. With traditional art, a certain amount of guess work is involved, trusting in the precise mixture of paint to create the proper effect. If the color doesn't work as well as you thought, you either have to live with it or scrap the painting and start again. With drawing programs, you can adjust the color midway through the project to a tone you prefer, and even adjust the overall hue and saturation of the piece as a whole. Magic wand functions allow you to isolate individual color hues in a complete painting and tweak them without influencing the remainder of the work.
  
  

Storage

• Original works of art can be very delicate--easily damaged when shipped and subjected to the vagaries of temperature and storage. Drawing programs, however, allow the artist to create multiple copies of his work--each the equal of the other--and store them in separate hard drives where they can be safe. This is especially important in industrial or commercial art. If the client damages a copy, you can send him another one without a second thought, and copies can be sent on data sticks for just a few pennies of postage instead of paying large fees for mailing an original piece.