Adobe Illustrator
Encyclopedia
Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor
developed and marketed by Adobe Systems
. Illustrator is similar in scope, intended market, and functionality to its competitors, CorelDraw
, Xara
Designer Pro and Macromedia FreeHand
.
The latest version, Illustrator CS5, is the fifteenth generation in the product line.
in 1986 (shipping in January 1987) as a commercialization of Adobe's in-house font
development software and PostScript
file format. Adobe Illustrator is the companion product of Adobe Photoshop
. Photoshop is primarily geared toward digital photo
manipulation and photorealistic
styles of computer illustration
, while Illustrator provides results in the typesetting
and logo
graphic areas of design
. Early magazine advertisements (featured in graphic design trade magazines such as Communication Arts
) referred to the product as "the Adobe Illustrator". Illustrator 88, the product name for version 1.7, was released in 1988 and introduced many new tools and features.
As of 2011, the Adobe Illustrator '88 file format is used in the MATLAB
programming language as an option to save figures.
, Silicon Graphics
IRIX
, and Sun
Solaris platforms, but they were discontinued due to poor market acceptance. The first version of Illustrator for Windows, version 2.0, was released in early 1989 and flopped. The next Windows version, version 4.0, was widely criticized as being too similar to Illustrator 1.1 instead of the Macintosh 3.0 version, and certainly not the equal of Windows' most popular illustration package CorelDraw
. (Note that there were no versions 2.0 or 4.0 for the Macintosh - although the second release for the Mac was titled Illustrator 88 - the year of its release.) Version 4 was, however, the first version of Illustrator to support editing in preview mode, which did not appear in a Macintosh version until 5.0 in 1993.
With the introduction of Illustrator 6 in 1996, Adobe made critical changes in the user interface with regards to path editing (and also to converge on the same user interface
as Adobe Photoshop
), and many users opted not to upgrade. Illustrator also began to support TrueType
, making the "font wars" between PostScript Type 1 and TrueType largely moot. Like Photoshop, Illustrator also began supporting plug-ins, greatly and quickly extending its abilities.
With true ports of the Macintosh versions to Windows starting with version 7 in 1997, designers could finally standardize on Illustrator. Corel
did port CorelDRAW
6.0 to the Macintosh in late 1996, but it was received as too little, too late. Designers tended to prefer Illustrator, CorelDraw, or FreeHand based on which software they learned first. As an example, there are capabilities in Freehand
still not available in Illustrator (higher scaling percentages, advanced find-and-replace feature, selective round-corner editing, export/print selected objects only, etc.). Corel was never considered a professional level tool by major agencies or design shops. Famously, Aldus did a comparison matrix between its own Freehand, Illustrator and Draw, and Draw's one "win" was that it came with three different clip art views of the human pancreas.
Adobe bought Aldus in 1994 for PageMaker. As part of the transaction, the Federal Trade Commission
issued a complaint of Adobe Systems
on October 18, 1994 ordering a divestiture of FreeHand to “remedy the lessening of competition resulting from the acquisition” because of Adobe's Illustrator software. As a result, Macromedia
acquired FreeHand in 1995 from its original developer, Altsys
, and continued its development through 2004.
The difference in strengths between Photoshop and Illustrator became clear with the rise of the Internet; Illustrator was enhanced to support Web publishing, rasterization
previewing, PDF
, and SVG
(Scalable Vector Graphics.) Adobe was an early developer of SVG for the web and Illustrator exported SVG files via the SVG File Format plugin. Using the Adobe SVG Viewer (ASV), introduced in 2000, allowed users to view SVG images in most major browsers until it was discontinued in 2009. Native support for SVG was not complete in all major browsers until Internet Explorer 9 in 2011.
Version 9 included a tracing feature, similar to that within Adobe's discontinued product Streamline
.
objects.
Illustrator CS2 (version 12) was available for both the Mac OS X
and Microsoft Windows
operating systems. It was the last version for the Mac which did not run natively on Intel processors. Among the new features included in Illustrator CS2 were Live Trace, Live Paint, a control palette and custom workspaces. Live Trace allows for the conversion of bitmap imagery into vector art
and improved upon the previous tracing abilities. Live Paint allows users more flexibility in applying color to objects, specifically those that overlap. In the same year as the CS2 release, Adobe Systems announced an agreement to acquire Macromedia in a stock swap valued at about $3.4 billion and it integrated the companies' operations, networks, and customer-care organizations shortly thereafter. Adobe now owned FreeHand along with the entire Macromedia product line and in 2007, Adobe announced that it would discontinue development and updates to the FreeHand program. Instead, Adobe would provide tools and support to ease the transition to Illustrator.
CS3 included interface updates to the Control Bar, the ability to align individual points, multiple Crop Areas, the Color Guide panel and the Live Color feature among others.
CS4 was released in October 2008. It features a variety of improvements to old tools along with the introduction of a few brand new tools acquired from FreeHand. The ability to create multiple artboards is one of CS4’s main additions from FreeHand. The artboards allow you to create multiple versions of a piece of work within a single document. Other tools include the Blob Brush, which allows multiple overlapping vector brush strokes to easily merge or join, and a revamped gradient tool allowing for more in-depth color manipulation as well as transparency in gradients.
CS5 was released in April 2010. Along with a number of enhancements to existing functionality, Illustrator CS5's new features include a Perspective Grid tool taken from FreeHand, a Bristle Brush (for more natural and painterly looking strokes) and a comprehensive update to strokes, referred to by Adobe as "Beautiful Strokes".
's "The Birth of Venus
" from the Bettmann Archive
and use the portion containing Venus' face as Illustrator's branding image. Warnock desired a Renaissance image to evoke his vision of Postscript as a new Renaissance in publishing, and Adobe employee Luanne Seymour Cohen, who was responsible for the early marketing material, found Venus' flowing tresses a perfect vehicle for demonstrating Illustrator's strength in tracing smooth curves over bitmap source images. Over the years the rendition of this image on Illustrator's splash screen and packaging became more stylized to reflect features added in each version.
The image of Venus was replaced (albeit still accessible via easter egg) in Illustrator CS (11.0) and CS2 (12.0) by a stylized flower to conform to the Creative Suite's nature imagery. In CS3, Adobe changed the suite branding once again, to simple colored blocks with two-letter abbreviations, resembling a periodic table of elements. Illustrator was represented by the letters Ai in white against an orange background (oranges and yellows were prominent color schemes in Illustrator branding going back as far as version 4.0). The CS4 icon is almost identical, except for a slight alteration to the font and the color which is dark gray. The CS5 icon is also virtually the same, except that this time the logo is like a box, along with all the other CS5 product logos. The "Ai" is now bright yellow.
: Inkscape's native format is SVG, and it's also a format supported by AI, but the two implementations are not 100% compatible. Inkscape can also export into PS, EPS and PDF, that Illustrator recognize.
Vector graphics editor
A vector graphics editor is a computer program that allows users to compose and edit vector graphics images interactively on a computer and save them in one of many popular vector graphics formats, such as EPS, PDF, WMF, SVG, or VML....
developed and marketed by Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...
. Illustrator is similar in scope, intended market, and functionality to its competitors, CorelDraw
CorelDRAW
CorelDRAW is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Corel Corporation of Ottawa, Canada. It is also the name of Corel's Graphics Suite...
, Xara
Xara
Xara is a UK-based software company founded in 1981. It has developed software for a variety of computer platforms, in chronological order: The Acorn Atom, BBC Micro, Z88, Atari ST, Acorn Archimedes, Microsoft Windows and Linux. It was originally called Computer Concepts, Ltd.; the company name...
Designer Pro and Macromedia FreeHand
Macromedia FreeHand
Macromedia FreeHand is a computer application for creating two-dimensional vector graphics that are oriented primarily to professional illustration, desktop publishing and content creation for the Web. FreeHand is similar in scope, intended market, and functionality to Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw...
.
The latest version, Illustrator CS5, is the fifteenth generation in the product line.
Versions 1–1.6 (Illustrator 88)
Adobe Illustrator was first developed for the Apple MacintoshMacintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
in 1986 (shipping in January 1987) as a commercialization of Adobe's in-house font
Typeface
In typography, a typeface is the artistic representation or interpretation of characters; it is the way the type looks. Each type is designed and there are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being developed constantly....
development software and PostScript
PostScript
PostScript is a dynamically typed concatenative programming language created by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982. It is best known for its use as a page description language in the electronic and desktop publishing areas. Adobe PostScript 3 is also the worldwide printing and imaging...
file format. Adobe Illustrator is the companion product of Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated.Adobe's 2003 "Creative Suite" rebranding led to Adobe Photoshop 8's renaming to Adobe Photoshop CS. Thus, Adobe Photoshop CS5 is the 12th major release of Adobe Photoshop...
. Photoshop is primarily geared toward digital photo
Digital photography
Digital photography is a form of photography that uses an array of light sensitive sensors to capture the image focused by the lens, as opposed to an exposure on light sensitive film...
manipulation and photorealistic
Photorealism
Photorealism is the genre of painting based on using the camera and photographs to gather information and then from this information creating a painting that appears photographic...
styles of computer illustration
Digital illustration
Computer illustration or digital illustration is the use of digital tools to produce images under the direct manipulation of the artist, usually through a pointing device such as a tablet or a mouse. It is distinguished from computer-generated art, which is produced by a computer using mathematical...
, while Illustrator provides results in the typesetting
Typesetting
Typesetting is the composition of text by means of types.Typesetting requires the prior process of designing a font and storing it in some manner...
and logo
Logo
A logo is a graphic mark or emblem commonly used by commercial enterprises, organizations and even individuals to aid and promote instant public recognition...
graphic areas of design
Graphic design
Graphic design is a creative process – most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form – undertaken in order to convey a specific message to a targeted audience...
. Early magazine advertisements (featured in graphic design trade magazines such as Communication Arts
Communication Arts
Communication Arts is the largest international trade journal of visual communications. Founded in 1959 by Richard Coyne and Robert Blanchard, the magazine’s coverage includes graphic design, advertising, photography, illustration and interactive media. The magazine continues to be edited and...
) referred to the product as "the Adobe Illustrator". Illustrator 88, the product name for version 1.7, was released in 1988 and introduced many new tools and features.
As of 2011, the Adobe Illustrator '88 file format is used in the MATLAB
MATLAB
MATLAB is a numerical computing environment and fourth-generation programming language. Developed by MathWorks, MATLAB allows matrix manipulations, plotting of functions and data, implementation of algorithms, creation of user interfaces, and interfacing with programs written in other languages,...
programming language as an option to save figures.
Versions 2–5
Although during its first decade Adobe developed Illustrator primarily for Macintosh, it sporadically supported other platforms. In the early 1990s, Adobe released versions of Illustrator for NeXTNeXT
Next, Inc. was an American computer company headquartered in Redwood City, California, that developed and manufactured a series of computer workstations intended for the higher education and business markets...
, Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics, Inc. was a manufacturer of high-performance computing solutions, including computer hardware and software, founded in 1981 by Jim Clark...
IRIX
IRIX
IRIX is a computer operating system developed by Silicon Graphics, Inc. to run natively on their 32- and 64-bit MIPS architecture workstations and servers. It was based on UNIX System V with BSD extensions. IRIX was the first operating system to include the XFS file system.The last major version...
, and Sun
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
Solaris platforms, but they were discontinued due to poor market acceptance. The first version of Illustrator for Windows, version 2.0, was released in early 1989 and flopped. The next Windows version, version 4.0, was widely criticized as being too similar to Illustrator 1.1 instead of the Macintosh 3.0 version, and certainly not the equal of Windows' most popular illustration package CorelDraw
CorelDRAW
CorelDRAW is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Corel Corporation of Ottawa, Canada. It is also the name of Corel's Graphics Suite...
. (Note that there were no versions 2.0 or 4.0 for the Macintosh - although the second release for the Mac was titled Illustrator 88 - the year of its release.) Version 4 was, however, the first version of Illustrator to support editing in preview mode, which did not appear in a Macintosh version until 5.0 in 1993.
Versions 6–10
User interface
The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine, and feedback from the...
as Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated.Adobe's 2003 "Creative Suite" rebranding led to Adobe Photoshop 8's renaming to Adobe Photoshop CS. Thus, Adobe Photoshop CS5 is the 12th major release of Adobe Photoshop...
), and many users opted not to upgrade. Illustrator also began to support TrueType
TrueType
TrueType is an outline font standard originally developed by Apple Computer in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript...
, making the "font wars" between PostScript Type 1 and TrueType largely moot. Like Photoshop, Illustrator also began supporting plug-ins, greatly and quickly extending its abilities.
With true ports of the Macintosh versions to Windows starting with version 7 in 1997, designers could finally standardize on Illustrator. Corel
Corel
Corel Corporation from the abbreviation is a computer software company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, that specializes in graphics processing, similar to Adobe Systems...
did port CorelDRAW
CorelDRAW
CorelDRAW is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Corel Corporation of Ottawa, Canada. It is also the name of Corel's Graphics Suite...
6.0 to the Macintosh in late 1996, but it was received as too little, too late. Designers tended to prefer Illustrator, CorelDraw, or FreeHand based on which software they learned first. As an example, there are capabilities in Freehand
Macromedia FreeHand
Macromedia FreeHand is a computer application for creating two-dimensional vector graphics that are oriented primarily to professional illustration, desktop publishing and content creation for the Web. FreeHand is similar in scope, intended market, and functionality to Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw...
still not available in Illustrator (higher scaling percentages, advanced find-and-replace feature, selective round-corner editing, export/print selected objects only, etc.). Corel was never considered a professional level tool by major agencies or design shops. Famously, Aldus did a comparison matrix between its own Freehand, Illustrator and Draw, and Draw's one "win" was that it came with three different clip art views of the human pancreas.
Adobe bought Aldus in 1994 for PageMaker. As part of the transaction, the Federal Trade Commission
Federal Trade Commission
The Federal Trade Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, established in 1914 by the Federal Trade Commission Act...
issued a complaint of Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...
on October 18, 1994 ordering a divestiture of FreeHand to “remedy the lessening of competition resulting from the acquisition” because of Adobe's Illustrator software. As a result, Macromedia
Macromedia
Macromedia was an American graphics and web development software company headquartered in San Francisco, California that produced such products as Flash and Dreamweaver. Its rival, Adobe Systems, acquired Macromedia on December 3, 2005 and controls the line of Macromedia...
acquired FreeHand in 1995 from its original developer, Altsys
Altsys
Altsys Corporation was a Texas-based software company founded by James R Von Ehr II. It was an early Apple Macintosh developer and publisher.Three major products from Altsys for PC / Macintosh and NeXT were:*Fontographer for Windows and Mac OS - font editor...
, and continued its development through 2004.
The difference in strengths between Photoshop and Illustrator became clear with the rise of the Internet; Illustrator was enhanced to support Web publishing, rasterization
Rasterisation
Rasterisation is the task of taking an image described in a vector graphics format and converting it into a raster image for output on a video display or printer, or for storage in a bitmap file format....
previewing, PDF
Portable Document Format
Portable Document Format is an open standard for document exchange. This file format, created by Adobe Systems in 1993, is used for representing documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems....
, and SVG
Scalable Vector Graphics
Scalable Vector Graphics is a family of specifications of an XML-based file format for describing two-dimensional vector graphics, both static and dynamic . The SVG specification is an open standard that has been under development by the World Wide Web Consortium since 1999.SVG images and their...
(Scalable Vector Graphics.) Adobe was an early developer of SVG for the web and Illustrator exported SVG files via the SVG File Format plugin. Using the Adobe SVG Viewer (ASV), introduced in 2000, allowed users to view SVG images in most major browsers until it was discontinued in 2009. Native support for SVG was not complete in all major browsers until Internet Explorer 9 in 2011.
Version 9 included a tracing feature, similar to that within Adobe's discontinued product Streamline
Adobe Streamline
Adobe StreamLine is a discontinued line tracing program by Adobe Systems. A test of the native Illustrator 9 auto-trace function by Creative Pro in 2002 concluded: "The premier tracing utility is StreamLine, which is infinitely controllable and very accurate." Adobe Illustrator CS2 introduced a...
.
Versions CS–CS5
Illustrator CS was the first version to include 3-dimensional capabilities allowing users to extrude or revolve shapes to create simple 3D3D computer graphics
3D computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images...
objects.
Illustrator CS2 (version 12) was available for both the Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
and Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
operating systems. It was the last version for the Mac which did not run natively on Intel processors. Among the new features included in Illustrator CS2 were Live Trace, Live Paint, a control palette and custom workspaces. Live Trace allows for the conversion of bitmap imagery into vector art
Raster to vector
In computer graphics, vectorization refers to the process of converting raster graphics into vector graphics.- Popular applications :*In computer-aided design drawings are scanned, vectorized and written as CAD files in a process called paper-to-CAD conversion or drawing conversion.*In geographic...
and improved upon the previous tracing abilities. Live Paint allows users more flexibility in applying color to objects, specifically those that overlap. In the same year as the CS2 release, Adobe Systems announced an agreement to acquire Macromedia in a stock swap valued at about $3.4 billion and it integrated the companies' operations, networks, and customer-care organizations shortly thereafter. Adobe now owned FreeHand along with the entire Macromedia product line and in 2007, Adobe announced that it would discontinue development and updates to the FreeHand program. Instead, Adobe would provide tools and support to ease the transition to Illustrator.
CS3 included interface updates to the Control Bar, the ability to align individual points, multiple Crop Areas, the Color Guide panel and the Live Color feature among others.
CS4 was released in October 2008. It features a variety of improvements to old tools along with the introduction of a few brand new tools acquired from FreeHand. The ability to create multiple artboards is one of CS4’s main additions from FreeHand. The artboards allow you to create multiple versions of a piece of work within a single document. Other tools include the Blob Brush, which allows multiple overlapping vector brush strokes to easily merge or join, and a revamped gradient tool allowing for more in-depth color manipulation as well as transparency in gradients.
CS5 was released in April 2010. Along with a number of enhancements to existing functionality, Illustrator CS5's new features include a Perspective Grid tool taken from FreeHand, a Bristle Brush (for more natural and painterly looking strokes) and a comprehensive update to strokes, referred to by Adobe as "Beautiful Strokes".
Branding
Starting with version 1.0, Adobe chose to license an image of Sandro BotticelliSandro Botticelli
Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance...
's "The Birth of Venus
The Birth of Venus (Botticelli)
The Birth of Venus is a painting by Sandro Botticelli. It depicts the goddess Venus, having emerged from the sea as a fully grown woman, arriving at the sea-shore...
" from the Bettmann Archive
Bettmann Archive
The Bettmann Archive is a collection of 19 million photographs and images, some going back to the United States Civil War and including some of the best known U.S. historic images. The Archive also includes many images from Europe and elsewhere....
and use the portion containing Venus' face as Illustrator's branding image. Warnock desired a Renaissance image to evoke his vision of Postscript as a new Renaissance in publishing, and Adobe employee Luanne Seymour Cohen, who was responsible for the early marketing material, found Venus' flowing tresses a perfect vehicle for demonstrating Illustrator's strength in tracing smooth curves over bitmap source images. Over the years the rendition of this image on Illustrator's splash screen and packaging became more stylized to reflect features added in each version.
The image of Venus was replaced (albeit still accessible via easter egg) in Illustrator CS (11.0) and CS2 (12.0) by a stylized flower to conform to the Creative Suite's nature imagery. In CS3, Adobe changed the suite branding once again, to simple colored blocks with two-letter abbreviations, resembling a periodic table of elements. Illustrator was represented by the letters Ai in white against an orange background (oranges and yellows were prominent color schemes in Illustrator branding going back as far as version 4.0). The CS4 icon is almost identical, except for a slight alteration to the font and the color which is dark gray. The CS5 icon is also virtually the same, except that this time the logo is like a box, along with all the other CS5 product logos. The "Ai" is now bright yellow.
Language availability
Adobe Illustrator contains the following languages: Arabic (Middle Eastern version), Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, French (Canadian), German, Greek, Hebrew (Middle Eastern version), Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Spanish (Latin American), Swedish, Turkish, Indonesia, Ukrainian.Compatibility
Compatible with InkscapeInkscape
Inkscape is a free software vector graphics editor, licensed under the GNU General Public License. Its goal is to implement full support for the Scalable Vector Graphics 1.1 standard....
: Inkscape's native format is SVG, and it's also a format supported by AI, but the two implementations are not 100% compatible. Inkscape can also export into PS, EPS and PDF, that Illustrator recognize.
Release history
| Version | Platforms | Release date | Code name Code name A code name or cryptonym is a word or name used clandestinely to refer to another name or word. Code names are often used for military purposes, or in espionage... |
Notable Features |
| 1.0 | Mac OS Mac OS Mac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface... |
January 1987 | Picasso Pablo Picasso Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the... |
|
| 1.1 | Mac OS | March 19, 1987 | Inca | |
| 88 | Mac OS | March 1988 | ||
| 2.0 | Windows | January 1989 | Pinnacle | |
| 3 | Mac OS, NeXT NeXT Next, Inc. was an American computer company headquartered in Redwood City, California, that developed and manufactured a series of computer workstations intended for the higher education and business markets... , other Unix Unix Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna... es |
October 1990 | Desert Moose Moose The moose or Eurasian elk is the largest extant species in the deer family. Moose are distinguished by the palmate antlers of the males; other members of the family have antlers with a dendritic configuration... |
|
| 3.5 | IRIX IRIX IRIX is a computer operating system developed by Silicon Graphics, Inc. to run natively on their 32- and 64-bit MIPS architecture workstations and servers. It was based on UNIX System V with BSD extensions. IRIX was the first operating system to include the XFS file system.The last major version... |
1991 | ||
| 4 | Windows Microsoft Windows Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal... |
May 1992 | Kangaroo Kangaroo A kangaroo is a marsupial from the family Macropodidae . In common use the term is used to describe the largest species from this family, especially those of the genus Macropus, Red Kangaroo, Antilopine Kangaroo, Eastern Grey Kangaroo and Western Grey Kangaroo. Kangaroos are endemic to the country... se |
|
| 3.5 | Solaris | 1993 | ||
| 5 | Mac OS | June 1993 | Saturn Saturn Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the Solar System, after Jupiter. Saturn is named after the Roman god Saturn, equated to the Greek Cronus , the Babylonian Ninurta and the Hindu Shani. Saturn's astronomical symbol represents the Roman god's sickle.Saturn,... |
layers, live editing in preview mode |
| 5.5 | Mac OS, Solaris | June 1994 | Janus Janus -General:*Janus , the two-faced Roman god of gates, doors, doorways, beginnings, and endings*Janus , a moon of Saturn*Janus Patera, a shallow volcanic crater on Io, a moon of Jupiter... |
spell checker, find/replace text |
| 5.5.1 | IRIX IRIX IRIX is a computer operating system developed by Silicon Graphics, Inc. to run natively on their 32- and 64-bit MIPS architecture workstations and servers. It was based on UNIX System V with BSD extensions. IRIX was the first operating system to include the XFS file system.The last major version... |
1995 | ||
| 4.1 | Windows | 1995 | Pavel | |
| 6 | Mac OS | February 1996 | Popeye Popeye Popeye the Sailor is a cartoon fictional character created by Elzie Crisler Segar, who has appeared in comic strips and animated cartoons in the cinema as well as on television. He first appeared in the daily King Features comic strip Thimble Theatre on January 17, 1929... |
gradients, eye dropper, paint bucket |
| 7 | Mac/Windows | May 1997 | Simba Simba Simba is a lion character and the protagonist of Disney's most successful animated feature film, The Lion King. He is the son of Mufasa and Sarabi, nephew of Scar, mate of Nala, and father of Kiara. He has golden fur and when he grows into an adult, he has an auburn mane... |
tabbed dockable palettes, transform palette, align palette, Photoshop pixel filters, rasterize, punk, bloat, free distort, layout grid, vertical text tool |
| 8 | Mac/Windows | September 1998 | Elvis Elvis Presley Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King".... |
pencil tool, bounding box handles, smart guides, actions palette, bitmap eyedropper, gradient mesh, live brushes, links palette |
| 9 | Mac/Windows | June 2000 | Matisse | Flash & SVG output, pixel preview, release to layers, drop shadows, transparency, feathering, opacity & layer mask, native PDF support |
| 10 | Mac/Windows | November 2001 | Paloma | live pathfinder shapes, symbols, slicing, css layer support, ODBC data link, variables palette, save for web, live distortion, warping, envelopes (warp/mesh/top object), liquify tools, grid/line/arc/polar grid tools, flare tool, magic wand |
| CS (11) | Mac/Windows | October 2003 | Pangaea Pangaea Pangaea, Pangæa, or Pangea is hypothesized as a supercontinent that existed during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras about 250 million years ago, before the component continents were separated into their current configuration.... /Sprinkles |
3D effect, OpenType support, character & paragraph styles, template file format, scribble effect, columns & rows, optical kerning, optical margins, every-line composer, custom tab leaders, WYSIWYG font menu, Japanese type support, path type option, save for Microsoft Office |
| CS2 (12, 12.0.1) | Mac/Windows | April 27, 2005 | Zodiac Zodiac In astronomy, the zodiac is a circle of twelve 30° divisions of celestial longitude which are centred upon the ecliptic: the apparent path of the Sun across the celestial sphere over the course of the year... |
live trace, live paint, colorized grayscale, Photoshop layer support, expanded stroke options, control palette, Adobe Bridge support, Wacom tablet support, SVG-t export, PDF/X export |
| CS3 (13) | Mac/Windows | April 2007 | Jason Jason Voorhees Jason Voorhees is a fictional character from the Friday the 13th series of slasher films. He first appeared in Friday the 13th , as the son of camp cook-turned-murderer, Mrs. Voorhees, in which he was portrayed by Ari Lehman. Created by Victor Miller, with contributions by Ron Kurz, Sean S... |
live color, Flash integration, eraser tool, document profiles, crop area, isolation mode |
| CS4 (14) | Mac/Windows | October 2008 | Sonnet | multiple artboards, transparency in gradients, blob brush, live gradient editing, separations previews, in-palette appearance editing |
| CS5 (15, 15.0.1, 15.0.2) | Mac/Windows | May 2010 | Ajanta | perspective drawing tools, variable-width strokes, control over opacity in points on gradient meshes, shape builder tool (similar to pathfinder tools) and a bristle brush, which enables users to imitate real life brush strokes while maintaining vector format. |
See also
- List of vector graphics editors
- Comparison of vector graphics editorsComparison of vector graphics editorsA number of vector graphics editors for various platforms exist. Potential users of these editors will make a decision based on factors such as the availability for the user's platform, the feature set, usability of the user interface and the focus of the program. Some programs are more suitable...
- .AI file formatAdobe Illustrator ArtworkAdobe Illustrator Artwork is a proprietary file format developed by Adobe Systems for representing single-page vector-based drawings in either the EPS or PDF formats...