Table Image Desin Help

I've started thinking about a new design
I drew out an idea real fast in an imaging program (just a little layout image for an idea)



I've worked it out in my head pretty well (we'll see how it goes) but when I was trying to make some of the images needed for the angles im going to use.


http://mikeshell.afraid.org/images/temp/rightdiag.gif


http://mikeshell.afraid.org/images/temp/leftdiag.gif

**hard to see some edges w/o pure white background...

I realized they looked horrible. I decided I was going to color it later (if I did) but the image edges look like crap. I've noticed tons of other designes with angled images and such, they all look much cleaner and sometimes look like they've had effects such as shadowing done to them. What imaging program is being used for these kinds of things? And if anyone could be so kind as to tell me how to go about creating cleaner, better looking, images of this type that'd be so incredibly helpfull.

Adobe Photoshop w/ anti-aliasing. As for shadows, just use layer styles for drop shadows etc.
You can download the demo from <a href="http://www.adobe.com">Adobe's Site</a>. You can do it with other programs, but thats my 2 cents.