Illustrator CS (v11) – Introduced 3D effects (extrude/revolve) and OpenType support.

Focus: . This version gave us Visual Font Browsing (see font previews in the character panel), Align to Glyph (precise alignment of objects to the edge of a letter), and the Font Selfie feature (create custom fonts from sketches). It also added Quick Actions (one-click vectorization or color adjustment).

The era. This version added transparency effects (drop shadows, opacities) but required a "flattener" for older printers. It also introduced the Art Brushes (painting along a path) and the Symbol Sprayer tool. For web designers, it added SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) export—a format that would become the standard for the modern web two decades later.

Focused on multi-artboard workflows with multiple artboards per document, blob brush (drawing like a marker but creating editable shapes), and a smoother gradient tool .