Adobe System is a software company that operates in graphics, animation, video, and web development. Adobe is also one of the largest software companies in the world. The company was founded in 1982 and based in San Jose, California, United States. The famous and worldwide Adobe products are Photoshop, Flash, and Acrobat. The development of Adobe is very advanced and fast in recent years. In 2005 the Macromedia Company was successfully acquired by Adobe.

Adobe was founded by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in December 1982. They developed the Adobe Company after leaving the Xerox PARC company located in Palo Alto, California in order to sell and develop PostScript page description languages.

The name of the Adobe Company was taken from “Adobe Creek” in Los Altos, California which means 14.2 miles across the north from Black Mountain in Santa Clara Country, California, United States.

John Warnock                    Charles Geschke

( Source: Google Image )

Adobe’s company logo was created by John Warnock’s named Marva Warnock, who is also a graphic designer. Adobe’s first product after PostScript was a digital font called Type 1. Then Apple made a competitive product, the True Type, which provides full stability, precise control, and licensing for Microsoft.

Adobe responded by publishing Type 1 specifications and launching Adobe Type Manager. But to stop the True Type the movement is too slow although Type 1 remains the standard in the publishing market. True Type keeps its position as the standard business and most of Windows users.

Marva Warnock (John Warnock’s Wife)

( Source: Google Image )

In 1996, Adobe and Microsoft informed the Open Type Format Font. Then, in 2003, Adobe completed Type 1 Libraries, the Open Type Font.

In the mid-1980s, Adobe entered the software market user with Adobe Illustrator (a vector-based drawing program) for Apple Macintosh. Illustrator which grew from a font development software company helped popularize the Enabled PostScript Laser Printer. Unlike MacDraw which is a standard vector drawing program, Illustrator is a more flexible definition with a bezier curve shape. The Macintosh QuickDraw library would not be replaced by PostScript until Adobe released Adobe Type Manager.

In 1989, Adobe introduced superior products from the company. A graphics editing program from Macintosh is called Photoshop which has complete features and stable. Photoshop 1.0 will soon be marketed and certainly dominate the market.

In 1993, Adobe introduced PDF (Portable Document Format). It becomes an International Standard: ISO 32000-1: 2008 which is also adopted as a media for electronic documents worldwide.

One of Adobe’s strategies at the Macintosh program was failed to develop the DTP (Desktop Publishing) program. In opposite, Aldus in 1985 with Page Maker and Quark in 1987 with Quark Xpress successfully led the DTP market. Adobe is also slow in overcoming the performance of Windows on the DTP market. However, Adobe made a big step by released InDesign, which was bundled with Creative Suite. Then Adobe released the full version of Illustrator for Steve Jobs’ NEXT System.

In December 1991, Adobe released Adobe Premiere Pro in 2003. In 1994, Adobe acquired Aldus and added Adobe Page Maker and Adobe After Effects as products at the end of the year.

In 1995, Adobe added Adobe Frame Maker, old documents were applied to DTP and Adobe also acquited the Technology Corp.

In 1999, Adobe introduced Adobe InCopy as a competitor to Quark Copy Desk.

In 2010, Adobe Company had 9,117 employees. About 40% of them work in San Jose, Costa Rica. Adobe also has major development operations in Orlando, Seattle, San Francisco, Lehi, Utah, Minneapolis, Waltham, Massachusetts, San Luis Obispo, California, Ottawa, Canada, Hamburg, Germany, Noida and Bangalore, India, Bucharest, Romania, Basel, Switzerland and Beijing, China.