ERDAS Imagine was demonstrated in October 1991 and released as ERDAS Imagine 8.0 in February 1992.[7] It was released on a Sun Workstation using SunOS providing a graphical user interface (GUI) to assist in visualizing imagery used in mapping, vector GIS data, creating maps, and so forth. Much of the ERDAS 7.5 product was provided for several years through intermediate product releases of ERDAS 8.01 & 8.02 until the ERDAS Imagine product replaced all the ERDAS 7.5 ability in 1994 with the release of Imagine 8.1.
The relationship between the ERDAS and ARC/INFO products began with the "ERDAS-ARC/Info Live Link" and was expanded in ERDAS Imagine 8.2 (Feb 1993), when ERDAS released the Imagine Vector Module. This add-on was fully developed by ERDAS, but licensed the Arc Coverage data format from ESRI.[8] The vector module is one of the most popular modules within the Imagine product suite through the 9.3 release (Sept 2008).
The processing of radar data in ERDAS Imagine began with the development of the Radar Module, first released in Nov. 1992. The abilities have been upgraded many times since with the original tools now named Radar Interpreter.[9]