So I'm in the process of writing up my biomedical based lab project and am drawing up some figures and diagrams, I'm currently using photoshop but feel its a bit clunky and may not make high quality diagrams for presenting and printing.

I was just wondering what everyone else uses? Ive seen some really cool diagrams in papers and such but never known how they were drawn up!

Adobe Illustrator is the vector drawing package which accompanies photoshop - photoshop is really for rasters / photos.

The licencing cost is similar.... it is a top spec package, probably other things out there for cheaper.

I'd go with Invisio - I'm using it to do schematic drawings for my PhD. It's very easy to learn how to use it and quite intuitive. In fact, I've managed to knock out 4 complicated schematic diagrams today using it.

Invisio - not sure about it but Microsoft Visio is a very useful tool for digital drawings - adobe products are for advance and professional designers. I believe Microsoft Visio will work for you.

MS Visio gets a vote from me. However for all my diagrams in my thesis I used MS powerpoint. If they don't need to be so technical (to scale etc) then powerpoint is perfect.

Sorry for the confusion. I meant visio but was thinking about Nvivo at the same time :$

I just use microsoft powerpoint and irfanview :)

I like OmniGraffle... if you have a mac :p

Can't compare with Visio as I have never used it, but OG is much simpler to use than Illustrator. It might not have as much features, but for nice diagrams it's enough.

Creately is a good free-ish online tool for diagram purposes.

http://creately.com/