Adobe Systems Incorporated (NASDAQ: ADBE) ( /əˈdoʊbiː/ ə-doh-bee) is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States. The company has historically focused upon the creation of multimedia and creativity software products, with a more-recent foray towards rich Internet application software development.
Adobe was founded in December 1982[2] by John Warnock and Charles Geschke, who established the company after leaving Xerox PARC in order to develop and sell the PostScript page description language. In 1985, Apple Computer licensed PostScript for use in its LaserWriter printers, which helped spark the desktop publishing revolution. The company name Adobe comes from Adobe Creek in Los Altos, California, which ran behind the house of one of the company's founders.[2] Adobe acquired its former competitor, Macromedia, in December 2005, which added newer software products and platforms such as Coldfusion, Dreamweaver, Flash and Flex to its product portfolio.
As of 2010, Adobe Systems has 9,117 employees,[2] about 40% of whom work in San Jose. Adobe also has major development operations in Orlando, Seattle, San Francisco, Orem, Minneapolis, Waltham, San Luis Obispo in United States; Ottawa, Canada; Hamburg, Germany; Noida, Bengaluru, India; Bucharest, Romania; Beijing, China.
Adobe's products are the gold standard for the toughest of critics: creative professionals. Its Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere programs are must-haves for this group; for the rest of us, there's Adobe's ubiquitous Flash Player and Acrobat PDF reader.
Adobe has long held a dominant position for online video and PDFs, but it's starting to face more competition (not to mention a serious headache in the form of Steve Jobs' rants against Flash, which Apple refuses to support on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad). Microsoft Office 2007, for example, allows users to create PDFs and Microsoft's Silverlight video player is being used for the Winter Olympics and March Madness basketball tournament.
In the mid-1980s, Adobe entered the consumer software market with Adobe Illustrator, a vector-based drawing program for the Apple Macintosh. Illustrator, which grew from the firm's in-house font-development software, helped popularize PostScript-enabled laser printers. Unlike MacDraw, then the standard Macintosh vector drawing program, Illustrator described shapes with more flexible Bézier curves, providing unprecedented accuracy. Font rendering in Illustrator, however, was left to the Macintosh's QuickDraw libraries and would not be superseded by a PostScript-like approach until Adobe released Adobe Type Manager.
In 1989, Adobe introduced what was to become its flagship product, a graphics editing program for the Macintosh called Photoshop. Stable and full-featured, Photoshop 1.0 was ably marketed by Adobe and soon dominated the market.
Desktop software
Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Fireworks, Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Soundbooth
Server software
Adobe ColdFusion, Adobe Content Server and Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite
Formats
Portable Document Format (PDF), PDF's predecessor PostScript, ActionScript, Shockwave Flash (SWF) and Flash Video (FLV)
Web-hosted services
Adobe Kuler, Photoshop Express, and Acrobat.com
Web design programs
Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Contribute, Adobe Flash Builder, Adobe Flash Catalyst and Adobe Flash
Video editing and visual effects
Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects
eLearning software
Adobe Captivate
Organizational software
Adobe Extension Manager and Adobe Bridge
Adobe was founded in December 1982[2] by John Warnock and Charles Geschke, who established the company after leaving Xerox PARC in order to develop and sell the PostScript page description language. In 1985, Apple Computer licensed PostScript for use in its LaserWriter printers, which helped spark the desktop publishing revolution. The company name Adobe comes from Adobe Creek in Los Altos, California, which ran behind the house of one of the company's founders.[2] Adobe acquired its former competitor, Macromedia, in December 2005, which added newer software products and platforms such as Coldfusion, Dreamweaver, Flash and Flex to its product portfolio.
As of 2010, Adobe Systems has 9,117 employees,[2] about 40% of whom work in San Jose. Adobe also has major development operations in Orlando, Seattle, San Francisco, Orem, Minneapolis, Waltham, San Luis Obispo in United States; Ottawa, Canada; Hamburg, Germany; Noida, Bengaluru, India; Bucharest, Romania; Beijing, China.
Adobe's products are the gold standard for the toughest of critics: creative professionals. Its Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere programs are must-haves for this group; for the rest of us, there's Adobe's ubiquitous Flash Player and Acrobat PDF reader.
Adobe has long held a dominant position for online video and PDFs, but it's starting to face more competition (not to mention a serious headache in the form of Steve Jobs' rants against Flash, which Apple refuses to support on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad). Microsoft Office 2007, for example, allows users to create PDFs and Microsoft's Silverlight video player is being used for the Winter Olympics and March Madness basketball tournament.
In the mid-1980s, Adobe entered the consumer software market with Adobe Illustrator, a vector-based drawing program for the Apple Macintosh. Illustrator, which grew from the firm's in-house font-development software, helped popularize PostScript-enabled laser printers. Unlike MacDraw, then the standard Macintosh vector drawing program, Illustrator described shapes with more flexible Bézier curves, providing unprecedented accuracy. Font rendering in Illustrator, however, was left to the Macintosh's QuickDraw libraries and would not be superseded by a PostScript-like approach until Adobe released Adobe Type Manager.
In 1989, Adobe introduced what was to become its flagship product, a graphics editing program for the Macintosh called Photoshop. Stable and full-featured, Photoshop 1.0 was ably marketed by Adobe and soon dominated the market.
Desktop software
Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Fireworks, Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Soundbooth
Server software
Adobe ColdFusion, Adobe Content Server and Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite
Formats
Portable Document Format (PDF), PDF's predecessor PostScript, ActionScript, Shockwave Flash (SWF) and Flash Video (FLV)
Web-hosted services
Adobe Kuler, Photoshop Express, and Acrobat.com
Web design programs
Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Contribute, Adobe Flash Builder, Adobe Flash Catalyst and Adobe Flash
Video editing and visual effects
Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects
eLearning software
Adobe Captivate
Organizational software
Adobe Extension Manager and Adobe Bridge
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