Serif DrawPlus is probably the best-known drawing program for under £100 and its functions stretch across illustration, design and web graphics.

Now released in version 8, Serif has added natural media brushes and PDF support to its 'vector' drawing program.

Unlike a 'bitmap' photo editor that deals with image pixels, a vector-based application like DrawPlus works with the lines and areas of coloured fill that define them.

The natural media Paintbrush tool takes the lines you draw and applies effects to make them look like hand-drawn brush strokes, made with watercolours, pastels or charcoal. The effect is very realistic and can be adjusted for width, colour and density.

If you work with a graphics tablet, rather than a mouse, the effect can be very natural, which is composed completely of fully editable lines.

Brushstrokes can be applied to predefined QuickShapes, too – stars, spirals and geometrical shapes which are the building block of drawings.

Textures, also new to this version, simulate the unevenness of materials on which you might work; everything from rough paper to marble, to wood or brickwork.

PDF files have become the common language for information files on the internet and DrawPlus 8 can import them directly, keeping all their graphic and text content in place. As well as being able to save your own designs as PDF documents, you don’t need a copy of Adobe Acrobat to do it.

These functions and all the old drawing tools from previous versions of the program have been made easier to get at through a redesigned interface that is more logically laid out and includes plenty of context-sensitive toolbars.

There are still a few things missing or in need of improvement, though.

For example, although there’s an 'autotrace' function – which can turn a photo into a group of vectors – to get anything like the detail of the original photo, you have to create a vector image made up from thousands of curves.

So, unless you have a very powerful PC, it then becomes too slow to work with.

However, for the price and range of features on available, this latest version remains one of the best drawing packages around.

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