Look around and you'll see lots of eye-catching pictures and ear-grabbing sounds on Web sites, presentations, and even e-mails. And it's not just Fortune 500 companies that are featuring these frills to promote their latest products or special offers.

You probably think small companies that use digital technology in their computer-based marketing efforts are draining their resources by having some highly paid technology genius on board. While a professional is certainly best equipped to optimize these files, it's actually not as hard as you think though to create basic digital images that will wow visitors, or to convert a sound into a digital format.

To create a digital image, you can either buy a digital camera that can connect to your desktop computer, or scan regular print photos with a scanner.

With a digital camera, you just snap the pictures and the resulting images can then be immediately transferred to your computer. Once you've downloaded them, they can be attached to e-mails, or designed into an HTML newsletter or Web page. The average price for a good digital camera can range from $300 to $700.

Scanning photos is just as easy - it takes just seconds to scan a photo with the latest models. And scanners have plunged in price this past year - a high quality desktop scanner can be purchased for less than $150. Just make sure the digital camera or scanner that you are considering is compatible with your desktop computer's operating system, and can connect to your computer's ports (e.g. SCSI, USB).

If technology is not your strong suit, another low cost option is to use a regular film processor. Most photo shops these days now offer digital versions of pictures as well. Keep in mind though that you'll need a photo editing program in order to touch up or resize your image.

Digitizing sound is also a pretty simple process. For the basics, you'll need a computer with a working sound card and speakers (both are standard features in systems less than 2 years old), a microphone that can be plugged into your computer, and a CD-ROM drive if you plan to make sound clips from a CD recording.

To create a 30 second-or-less sound clip, both the Mac OS and Microsoft Windows 98 (or later) operating systems make it a snap. Through your Help menu, locate your sound recording device and just follow the step-by-step instructions.

You can digitize much larger sound files by using a software program like Cool Edit Pro (syntrillium.com) or RealAudio (realnetworks.com). With these programs, you can record, play, convert, and edit gigabyte-sized files as well as save them as WAV files or other popular audio formats.

These software programs can be downloaded from the Internet and range in price from $79 to $250 depending on how extensive their editing capabilities are. Many of these programs also allow you to digitize video as well.

In no time, you'll be a digital master.

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