Adobe Illustrator (1988) 129 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.

• 1.x
• 3.x
• 4.x
• 5.5

Ulead iPhoto (1991) 57 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

Paint Shop Pro (1990) 50 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

Instant Artist / Print Artist (1992) 47 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.

• 1.0 (DOS)
• 1.0
• 2.0
• 3.0

CorelDraw! (1989) 36 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.

• 1.x
• 2.0
• 2.5
• 3.0
• 4.0
• 5.0

3D Home Architect (1993) 34 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

Photoshop (1988) 31 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.

• 0.x (beta)
• 1.x
• 2.x
• 3.x

3D Studio (1992) 28 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.

• 2.0
• 3.0
• 4.x

Autodesk AutoCAD (1984) 16 Graphics Engineering DOS MacOS Unix 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.

• 1.x (DOS)
• 2.x (DOS)
• r10 (Mac)
• r10 (DOS)
• r10 (Unix)
• r11 (DOS)
• r11 (Mac)
• r11 (Win)
• r12 (Mac)

The Draw (1988) 10 Graphics DOS

The Draw was a popular shareware ANSI graphics and animation editor used to make graphics for BBSes and DOS programs.

• 3.x
• 4.x

DeluxePaint (1988) 9 Graphics DOS

DeluxePaint, from Electronic Arts, is a bitmap pixel graphics editor that was ported to DOS from the Amiga.

• 1.x
• 2.x

Visio (1992) 8 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

KeyCAD Complete (1993) 8 Graphics DOS

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

• 6.0 (DOS)
• 1.0 for Windows

Harvard Graphics (1986) 7 Graphics DOS 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.

• A.00
• A.01
• 2.x
• 3.x
• 1.0 for Windows
• 2.0 for Windows
• 3.0 for Windows
• 4.0 for Windows

Autodesk Animator Pro (1993) 6 Graphics DOS

First released in 1989, AutoDesk Animator was a DOS-based professional animation tool. It could create full motion animations using VGA 320*200 256 color resolutions. It supports a number of animation techniques, and includes a freely redistributable animation player. It saves animations to the .FLI or "QuickFlick" format. This format was extremely popular during the very early 90s, and was one of the few that could do 256 colors, including pallet manipulation.

• 1.x

Micrografx Windows Draw (1986) 6 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

PerfectOffice (1995) 6 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

Dr Halo (1985) 5 Graphics DOS

Dr Halo, by Media Cybernetics, is a DOS based image editor. It was sometimes distributed as a value-added tool with mice or video cards. Its image editing capabilities were fairly weak, and its main strength came from its adaptability to new hardware, positioning it mainly as an entry-level product provided with new hardware.

• II
• III
• IV

Corel Photo-Paint (1995) 5 Graphics Windows

Corel Photo Paint is a bit-mapped graphics editor optimized for photo manipulation. It competed against Adobe Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro, and was often a companion product to the vector based CorelDRAW. It includes a large number of special effects, a color management system, brushes, layers, and scanner support.

• 5.0

MacPaint (1984) 5 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

DR Draw (1983) 5 Graphics DOS CPM

DR Draw is a shape-based drawing program that uses Digital Research's GSX graphics library, making it portable across CP/M and DOS architectures with different video systems.

• 1.x

4 Point Graphics (1983) 5 Graphics DOS

First released in 1983 by IMSI (International Microcomputer Software, Inc), 4 Point Graphics was one of the earliest drawing and animation programs for the IBM PC. It competed against a drawing program called PC Crayon.

• 1.x

Design It! 3-D (1995) 5 Graphics Windows MacOS

Design It! 3D is an easy to use budget 3D modeling tool. It is suitable for creating home arrangement designs, and features a 3D preview that lets you "walk" through your creation.

• 1.0

Microsoft Paintbrush (1987) 4 Graphics DOS

Microsoft Paintbrush is Microsoft's OEM version of Zsoft PC/Publisher's Paintbrush for MS-DOS. It was commonly bundled with Microsoft mice in the late 80s and early 90s.

• 2.0
• 4.0

AppleWorks (1986) 4 Word Processor Spreadsheet Presentations Graphics Communications Database Other

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.

• 2.x (Apple II)