Adobe Illustrator is one of the most popular software inside Adobe’s Creative Cloud platform. It is widely preferred by the people who are into the field of graphic designing.
Adobe Illustrator is used by people all over the world for making logos, banners, brochures, graphs, charts, diagrams, illustrations, drawing, and cartoons etc.
Because of its huge popularity and an efficient working, this software has a big impact in the graphic design industry.
That is the reason why I am sharing some stats and facts about this software.
I have already discussed its effectiveness for logo designing in another article. You can read that too.
Now, without any further discussions, let’s start revealing all those amazing facts, tips, history, and statistics of Adobe Illustrator.
Historical Facts of Adobe Illustrator
1. Adobe Illustrator is the oldest player in the field
According to Wikipedia, the development of Adobe Illustrator started back in 1985. It was originally designed for Mac computers at that time. They called it Illustrator Version 1-1.6. Illustrator was the first software in this domain at that time. Macromedia FreeHand was the next product from Adobe after Illustrator.
2. The first Windows version of Adobe Illustrator was a big flop
Adobe Illustrator’s first Windows version 2.0 was launched in 1989 and it flopped with a huge loss for the company. In fact, the next version which was 4.0 also collected a huge criticism by the users because of its identical functions like Illustrator 1.1.
At that time, people used to compare this software with Microsoft’s CorelDraw software. But, Illustrator was not able to stand in front of that software because of its limited functioning and unstable features.
3. 3D Capabilities were added in 2003
With the launch of Illustrator’s version CS-CS6 in October 2003, they introduced some features and tools to create 3D shapes and modify them as per their needs.
4. Version CS6 is known to be the most featured update
With the launch of Illustrator CS6 in 2012, the software got equipped with various advanced features including layer panels, color ramps, RGB codes, etc. FreeHand, Live Color, Blog Brush, and various other features were already added in the earlier releases.
5. Illustrator improved a lot with its CC release strategy
Illustrator was growing continuously with regular updates by offering new features to the users. But, when they come up with its 17th version in June 2013, the software started to sell on a subscription basis. This was the time when it started to grow more rapidly with more frequent updates.
Cloud saving, fonts/program setting sync, Behance integration were some of the most popular features of that time.
Technical Stats and facts of Adobe Illustrator
1. Maximum Zoom Capability of Adobe Illustrator is 64000%
Although Illustrator has scripting support and color management features, you can zoom your graphics only up to 64000%. This is a decent zoom amount but when you look at Corel Draw, it can zoom up to 260000% (approx).
2. Lots of people hate its subscription-based model
According to Statista, Adobe Creative cloud had about 12 million Creative Cloud subscribers as of 2017. But, still, there is a big bunch of people who think Adobe has a sick subscription model for the users.
The price of Illustrator per month is 19.99$ with a One year Contract. However, if you want to purchase it for one or a couple of months, you will have to pay 29.99$ per month.
Also, Illustrator has only 7 days of the trial period which some people think is not enough to test software. Various free software like Krita, GIMP, Vectr, and Inkscape is preferred by the users whenever they have a simple designing task in hand. However, Illustrator is known to be a weapon for the professionals.
3. Illustrator can export graphics in 15 different formats
Adobe Illustrator has its support for numerous file formats. But, if we talk about the output formats, it can help you to export your work in 15 formats. These formats are as follows.
- BMP (bmp)
- Enhanced Metafile (emf)
- CSS (css)
- Flash (swf)
- AutoCAD Drawing (dwg)
- AutoCAD Interchange File (dxf)
- JPEG (jpg)
- Macintosh PICT (pct)
- SVG (svg)
- Targa (tga)
- Photoshop (psd)
- PNG (png)
- Text Format (txt)
- Windows Metafile (wmf)
- TIFF (tif)
4. Illustrator 2021 saves your work automatically in the background
Spelling checker, fast rendering, path simplification are some of the major updates you would see in Illustrator’s 2021 version. But, the main highlight of its new version is its ability to save your work in the background. So, you can now keep doing whatever you want without saving your work over and over again.
5. Adobe Illustrator is available for iPads
Adobe revealed that Illustrator’s iPad version will be launched in 2020. And, it’s now available to download. You can get it here.
Final Verdict
The article will be updated regularly whenever a new update about Illustrator is there.
Also Read: 15 Interesting Fact and Stats About Adobe Photoshop