Adobe

American software company. Creator of such well-known programs as Photoshop и Illustrator, also page description language postscript and the popular Portable Document Format - PDF, which is read using a ubiquitous program such as Adobe Reader.

It all started right postscript, which began to be developed by John Warnock, a former employee of Evans & Sutherland. In 1978 he moved to XEROX - a company that created the first laser printer and was in dire need of a standard for printing images. There he met Chuck Geschke, with whom he founded in 1982 Adobe Systems ^*. Initially, the company was engaged only in the refinement postscript, the final and extremely successful version of which was presented in 1984.

PostScript becomes popular thanks to Apple, which used it for the Apple LaserWriter printer. The Apple Company was then in its prime, and its choice played a huge role in the development Adobe ^**. After Apple others pulled up. It allowed Adobe get back on your feet quickly.

In October 1988, another significant event in the history of the company takes place - the program appears Adobe Photoshop. Initially, it was produced only for macOS Classic; version for Windows appeared in November 1992. To date Photoshop is the absolute leader in the field of raster graphics processing. On the territory of the former USSR, where piracy is not only the norm, but a way of life, this program (officially worth almost 1000 US dollars) is installed on probably every second computer, the owner of which sometimes needs to resize photos. Many users do not even realize that something else can be used for image processing.

Somewhat less popular with us is a program for working with vector graphics - Adobe Illustrator. Here, for unknown reasons, more fortunate CorelDRAW!, which, however, is already slowly but surely starting to lose ground. Illustrator appeared a year earlier than Photoshop, and also initially only for computers Apple.

In 1998, Adobe narrowly escaped being bought out by its main competitor, the leading desktop publishing company - Quark Inc..

Today, the company's software is distributed mainly in the form of packages. Creative Suite, which include a set of programs for design, layout or web development. The cost of such a package is extremely high, but still its purchase is much cheaper than buying the programs included in it separately.

Very popular in the world and desktop layout program InDesign (appeared in 1999), which gradually managed to push even such an indisputable standard as QuarkPress.

Throughout its existence, Adobe Systems acquired many competitors, such as Aldus Corp., creator of the program Page Maker (the transaction took place on September 1, 1994) or GoLive Systems, a web development software developer (1999 deal). But her most significant purchase occurred on April 19, 2005, when she was bought Macromedia Inc., which created the now most popular Flash technology, on the basis of which sites, programs and cell phone menus are built. As a result, Adobe Systems now - the absolute leader in everything related to graphics and many aspects of web development.

The company's headquarters is located in San Jose, California, USA (San Jose, California, USA). The number of employees is in the thousands, and the income is in the billions of US dollars.

*) According to the official version, the name was given in honor of the small Californian river Adobe Creek.

**) And a decade later, products Adobe helped Apple avoid inevitable bankruptcy. After all Adobe produced software for design and printing, that is, a market that was considered the patrimony Apple. The paradox is that initially the leadership Apple looked at this market only with indulgence, believing that the main emphasis should be placed in the direction of business users. But time has put everything in its place - today the share of computers with an apple as an emblem in the business environment is negligible, while it is very problematic to find something else on the designer's desk.