Adobe Illustrator (1988) 131 Graphics Windows

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.

• 1.x
• 4.x
• 7.0
• 8.0
• 9.0
• 10.0

Photoshop (1988) 70 Graphics Windows MacOS

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.

• 1.x
• 2.x
• 3.x
• 4.x
• 5.x
• 6.x

Paint Shop Pro (1990) 63 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.

• 1.x
• 3.x
• 4.x
• 5.x
• 6.x
• 7.x

Windows Media Center (2004) 63 Video Audio Media Player Windows

Windows Media Center was a full-screen media player and video recorder designed for use on home theater PCs. It competed against digital recording devices like the Tivo.

• 6.1 (7)
• 2005 (XP)

CorelDraw! (1989) 62 Graphics Publishing Windows

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.

• 1.x
• 2.0
• 3.0
• 4.0
• 5.0
• 6.0
• 7.0

Visio (1992) 46 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.

• 1.0
• 2.0
• 3.0
• 4.0
• 5.0
• 2000

ArcView GIS (1996) 41 Graphics Other Database Windows

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

• 3.0
• 3.3

Autodesk AutoCAD (1984) 37 Graphics Engineering 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.

• r11 (Win)

Ulead iPhoto (1991) 31 Graphics Windows

iPhoto is a Microsoft Windows based image editor bundled with scanners. It features the ability to adjust scanned photographs in many ways, convert to different color depths, and export to a number of different file formats.

• 3.x
• 1.x Plus
• 4.x Plus

ClarisWorks (1991) 26 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.

• 1.x
• 2.x
• 3.x
• 4.x

3D Home Architect (1993) 25 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.

• 1.0
• 2.0

KeyCAD Complete (1993) 19 Graphics Windows

KeyCad Complete, from Softkey, is a low-end computer aided design and drawing tool.

• 3.0 for Windows

Instant Artist / Print Artist (1992) 17 Graphics Publishing Novelty 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.

• 1.0
• 2.0
• 3.0
• 4.0
• 6.0
• 8.0

Harvard Graphics (1986) 17 Graphics Windows

Harvard Graphics, from Software Publishing Corporation and initially called Harvard Presentation Graphics, is a graphing/plotting/presentation creation application for DOS. It was extremely popular in the late 1980s. At release, it competed against many graphing products such as PFS:Graph (AKA IBM Graphing Assistant ), Microsoft Chart, ChartMaster, and Cricket Graph, just to name a small few. A Windows port was released in 1991, but it lost out to Microsoft Powerpoint.

• 1.0 for Windows
• 2.0 for Windows
• 3.0 for Windows
• 4.0 for Windows

Adobe Photoshop Elements (2001) 17 Graphics Windows MacOS

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

• 1.0
• 2.0

Micrografx Designer (1988) 16 Graphics Publishing Windows OS2

Micrografx Designer, originally released as IN-A-VISON for Windows 1.x, is a vector based drawing and design program. It features ease of use, multiple layers, and dimensioning. Micrografx also sold large libraries of clip art. It competed against Corel Draw.

• 1.1
• 2.0
• 3.0
• 3.1
• 4.0

Micrografx Windows Draw (1986) 16 Graphics Windows

Micrografx Draw is a free-form vector based drawing program with a collection of clipart. The earlier versions are especially notable as being among the few programs produced for Microsoft Windows 1.x.

• 1.04
• Plus 1.1
• 3.0
• 4.0
• 5.0
• 6.0

AutoSketch (1987) 14 Graphics 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.

• 2.x (Win)
• 5.x (Win)

In-a-Vision (1986) 13 Graphics Windows

In-a-Vision is a vector based drawing program that was one of the first commercial programs written for Microsoft Windows. It runs under Windows 1.x. Later versions of this software were called Micrografx Designer

• 1.x

Adobe Premiere (1991) 13 Video Windows

Originally developed for the Mac, Adobe Premiere is a tool for editing videos.

• 1.x (Win)
• 4.0
• 4.2
• 5.0

Microsoft Fine Artist (1994) 11 Graphics Novelty Windows MacOS

Microsoft Fine Artist is a dumbed down Microsoft Bob-like drawing program targeted at children. It was sold alongside, and later bundled with, a word processor called Microsoft Creative Writer.

• 1.x

Vistapro (1992) 11 Graphics Other Windows

Vistapro is a three-dimensional landscape simulation program. Using U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Digital Elevation Model (DEM) files, Vistapro can accurately recreate real world landscapes in vivid detail. It can also create fractal based landscapes, and provides many customizations. Vistapro originated on the Amiga and also had a Macintosh port.

• 3.x (Win)
• 4.x (Win)

PC Paintbrush (1984) 10 Graphics Windows

ZSoft PC Paintbrush is a bitmap drawing program visually similar to MacPaint. The earlier DOS versions were often bundled with Microsoft and Microsoft compatible mice, and were notable for supporting a huge variety of video adapters. It competed against Mouse Systems PC Paint (not related despite the similar name). ZSoft PC Paintbrush eventually became Microsoft Paintbrush included in Windows 3.x. For Microsoft's rebranded version see Microsoft Mouse and Microsoft Paintbrush

• 1.05 (Win)
• Plus 1.x (Win)

FreeHand (1988) 10 Graphics Publishing Windows

FreeHand is a vector based drawing program used to create illustrations. It is similar to CorelDraw and Adobe Illustrator. Initially it offered more features and flexibility than illustrator. It was created by Altsys, sold through Aldus, then sold to Macromedia, and then finally was assimilated by Adobe. Later versions repositioned itself as a content creation system for the web through Flash. The final version was Freehand MX (version 11) in 2003.

• 3.1
• 4.0
• 5.0

Flash (1999) 10 Graphics Video Windows

Macromedia Flash is a vector animation package originally developed by FutureWave and later acquired by Adobe. Flash can export animation as video files or in its own proprietary interactive vector animation format playable by the Flash Player. Flash versions prior to 5 do not include the ActionScript scripting language. The interaction is instead scripted using drag-an-drop "actions".

• 4.x
• 5.x