Adobe Illustrator
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Adobe Illustrator CC running on OS X Mavericks
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| Developer(s) | Adobe Systems |
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| Initial release | 19 March 1987 |
| Stable release |
CC 2017 (21.0.0) / 2 November 2016
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| Written in | C++ |
| Operating system | macOS, Microsoft Windows |
| Type | Vector graphics editor |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | www |
Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Adobe Systems. The latest version, Illustrator CC 2017, is the twenty-first generation in the product line.
Adobe Illustrator was first developed for the Apple Macintosh in December 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.
BYTE in 1989 listed Illustrator 88 as among the "Distinction" winners of the BYTE Awards, stating that with it Adobe had "pulled ahead" of Aldus Freehand.
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 NeXT, Silicon Graphics, 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. And there was no version 6 for Windows.) 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. Version 6 was the last truly Macintosh version of Illustrator. The interface changed radically with the following version to make it more Windows-friendly and consistent between the two platforms. The changes remained until CS6 when some small steps were taken to restore the app to a slightly more Mac-like interface.
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