Site Graphics and Multimedia Design Forum

This is probably a really amateur question but I really need to know. I saw a really cool graphic on the web, so I copied it and pasted it so I could see how it was done. Normally when you paste a gif or jpeg in Flash or Fireworks you can view each pixel when you maximise the image (using a magnifying glass tool). But with this image you can’t actually see the pixels. It’s all smooth. What application do you use to create graphics like that? It’s really hard to explain it, but the quality of this particular graphic was magnificent. Id love to be able to create pictures and stuff like that but im not sure what im supposed to be using to do this. I really hope I have made my question clear. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.