Adobe Illustrator (1988) 137 Graphics Windows MacOS Unix

Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Adobe Systems. It was often sold as a companion product to the bit-map/photo editor Adobe Photoshop. Illustrator was originally released in 1987 for the Apple Macintosh. Early versions were ported to NexT, Silicon Graphics, and Sun Solaris.

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• 10.0

CorelDraw! (1989) 100 Graphics Publishing Windows OS2

Corel Draw is a vector based drawing and illustration program. It is primarily a Windows application, but was ported to Mac OS, Mac OS X, Linux, CTOS and OS/2. It competed against Aldus Freehand, Adobe Illustrator, and Micrografx Designer.

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• 2.0
• 2.5
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• 7.0

Photoshop (1988) 56 Graphics MacOS Windows

Photoshop is a powerful drawing and photo manipulation program for both Mac and Windows. The Macintosh version was released by Adobe in 1990, although a very small number were bundled with Barneyscan slide scanners prior to that. Photoshop contained many advanced features including layered images, advanced color control, and plug-ins. Prior to its release, many of its features were only found in high end dedicated photo pre-processing systems.

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Autodesk AutoCAD (1984) 53 Graphics Engineering DOS MacOS Windows

AutoCAD, from Autodesk and first released in 1982, is a powerful Computer Aided Design tool. It was, and still is, often considered the standard for CAD tools. Primarily for the IBM PC platform, it was ported to x86 machines with higher video resolutions such as the Zenith Z-100 and NEC APC. Intermittently, versions for the Macintosh appeared. Later versions use a dongle copy protection.

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• r10 (Mac)
• r10 (DOS)
• r11 (DOS)
• r11 (Mac)
• r11 (Win)
• r12 (Mac)

ClarisWorks (1991) 47 Word Processor Spreadsheet Presentations Graphics Publishing Database Windows MacOS

ClarisWorks is an all-in-one Word Processor, Spreadsheet, Database, Graphics Editor, and Presentations tool from Claris. In 1998, after version 5.0.2, ClairsWorks was purchased by Apple and re-branded under the "AppleWorks" name. It is not related to the Apple II AppleWorks product.

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• For Kids 1.0

Adobe Acrobat Reader (1994) 39 Document DOS MacOS Windows OS2

Acrobat Reader is the free software from Adobe used to read, view, and print documents created by the commercial Adobe Acrobat product. Its primary strength is that documents appear and print identically across differing systems.

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Framework (1984) 31 Word Processor Spreadsheet Graphics Communications Database DOS

Originally created by Forefront Corporation for Ashton-Tate and first released in 1984, Framework was an early integrated office suite for DOS. It has a built in word processor, spreadsheet, database, outliner, graphing, and telecommunications.

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• Premier 1.x
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• XE
• IV

Paint Shop Pro (1990) 27 Graphics Windows

JASC Paint Shop Pro is a simple and easy to use bit-mapped graphics editor. It supports a wide variety of file formats, and photo manipulation functions that were comparable to PhotoShop. It has good support for editing 256 color palletized images that made it ideal for editing web graphics. It was first released in 1990 for Windows 3.0 as just "Paint Shop", and early versions gained popularity through the distribution of shareware releases. It lost popularity in 2003 when 8.0 was introduced with a redesigned UI and in 2004, JASC was acquired by Corel.

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3D Home Architect (1993) 27 Graphics Windows

Broderbund's 3D Home Architect is a home-design oriented CAD program. It includes a variety of home decor related objects, and can render the results in 3D.

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• 2.0

AutoSketch (1987) 26 Graphics DOS Windows

AutoSketch is a 2D vector program sold by Autodesk. Unlike artistic drawing programs, AutoSketch is specifically geared towards engineering applications. Although not as powerful as AutoCAD, it can work with 2D AutoCAD files. Autodesk also produced AutoCAD LT, a higher end 2-D drawing program. But unlike AutoSketch, AutoCAD LT was based directly on AutoCAD and worked similarly.

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MacPaint (1984) 25 Graphics MacOS

MacPaint was designed as a simplified, easy to use raster/bit-mapped paint program, and was sold along side the original 1984 Apple Macintosh System. A historically notable feature was its ability to copy and paste images to and from other applications such as MacWrite. The final 2.0 version was released and maintained under Claris.

• 1.x

3D Studio (1992) 24 Graphics DOS

3D Studio, not to be confused with the later "3d Studio Max" product, is a DOS-based tool from Autodesk for creating 3d models and animations.

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• 4.x

Freelance Graphics (1985) 23 Presentations Graphics DOS OS2 Windows

GCI/Lotus/IBM Freelance Graphics is a vector based presentation and graphing package developed for DOS, OS/2, and Windows. It was intended for use alongside Lotus 1-2-3. Later versions were part of SmartSuite. Before it was acquired by Lotus it was known Freelance, from Graphic Communications.

• 1.0 (DOS)
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• 1.0 (OS/2)
• 4.0 (DOS)
• 1.0 (Win)
• 2.x (Win)

Visio (1992) 19 Graphics Windows

Visio is a flow-chart diagramming program for Microsoft Windows originally from Shapeware/Visio Corp. Visio was specifically designed as a flow charting tool rather than a generic drawing tool. It featured easy to use drag-and-drop diagram creation, and shipped with a wide variety of stencils. In 2000 Visio Corp was acquired by Microsoft. It competed with Aldus Intellidraw and Micrografx Snapgraphics and Meta Software's MetaDesign.

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• 2000

Omnipage Pro (1992) 18 Document Windows

Omnipage is an optical character recognition (scanned image) application that can export to a number of document formats. It was often bundled with scanners.

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Picture It! (1996) 17 Graphics Windows

Picture It!, from Microsoft, is a photo image adjustment tool for novice users. It includes a number of standard touch-up functions such as red-eye adjustment, resizing, brightness, contrast, and cropping. It can make direct use of scanners and digital cameras. All functions are presented as a dumbed down step-by step series of tabs and menus. Picture-It competed against Adobe Photodeluxe.

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• 2.0
• 99

Aldus Photostyler (1992) 16 Graphics Windows

Aldus PhotoStyler, developed by Ulead and acquired by Aldus, was an easy-to use photo image editor intended to compete with PhotoShop. The product was dropped when Adobe acquired Aldus.

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• 2.x

Adobe Photoshop Elements (2001) 13 Graphics Windows MacOS

Adobe Photoshop Elements is the successor to Photoshop LE, a somewhat reduced, home-oriented version of Adobe Photoshop.

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• 2.0

Instant Artist / Print Artist (1992) 12 Graphics Publishing Novelty DOS Windows

Instant Artist, later renamed to Print Artist, is a greeting card and sign creation program that uses vectorized graphics. It was created by The Pixellite Group, the original authors of The Print Shop, and published in 1992 by Autodesk. It was later sold by Sierra On-line. It features a high quality set of generic reusable clip art. The clip art uses vector based technology that was also used in BannerMania.

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• 8.0

AppleWorks (1986) 12 Word Processor Spreadsheet Presentations Graphics Communications Database MacOS Mac OS X

AppleWorks is an all-in-one Word Processor, Spreadsheet, Database, Graphics Editor, and Presentations tool. The original product was a text-based product for the Apple II. The Apple Macintosh and Windows versions were forked from ClarisWorks in 1998 by Apple. At the time, Apple was under a lot of pressure to have a direct alternative to Microsoft Office. There were serious concerns that Microsoft might pull Microsoft Office for the Macintosh from development.

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• 6.x

BannerMania (1989) 12 Graphics Publishing DOS

Banner Mania is a banner making program for IBM PC compatible computers, enabling the user to create banners, posters, signs and logos. It can create and print multi-page banners, with 19 different fonts and effects in 16 colors.

• 1.0

ArcView GIS (1996) 12 Graphics Other Database Windows

ArcView, from Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. is a geographical information system program for Win9x/NT.

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• 3.3

TurboCAD (1993) 12 Graphics Engineering Windows

TurboCAD is a low-cost 2D/3D Computer Aided Design program that competed with AutoCAD and Generic CADD. It was first available for DOS, and later Mac, Windows 3.x, and Windows 9x/NT.

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• 3.x

PerfectOffice (1995) 12 Word Processor Spreadsheet Presentations Graphics Database Windows

PerfectOffice is a bundle of office applications that competed head on with Microsoft Office.It bundles WordPerfect and a number of other office applications. This bundle started out as "Borland Office", was briefly known as "Novell PerfectOffice", then "Corel Office", and under Corel it later became "WordPerfect Office". (Not to be confused with the unrelated ~1990 groupware program, also called "WordPerfect Office")

• 3.0

Lotus Magellan (1989) 10 Utility Document DOS

Magellan was a desktop file viewer and search tool. It indexes all files on your hard drive, and you can search for related information across file formats.

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• 2.0