Adobe Inc.
Adobe Inc., formerly Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American multinational computer software company based in San Jose, California. It offers a wide range of programs from web design tools, photo manipulation and vector creation, through to video/audio editing, mobile app development, print layout and animation software.
It has historically specialized in software for the creation and publication of a wide range of content, including graphics, photography, illustration, animation, multimedia/video, motion pictures, and print. Its flagship products include Adobe Photoshop image editing software; Adobe Illustrator vector-based illustration software; Adobe Acrobat Reader and the Portable Document Format ; and a host of tools primarily for audio-visual content creation, editing and publishing. Adobe offered a bundled solution of its products named Adobe Creative Suite, which evolved into a subscription-based offering named Adobe Creative Cloud. The company also expanded into digital marketing software and in 2021 was considered one of the top global leaders in Customer Experience Management.
Adobe was founded in December 1982 by John Warnock and Charles Geschke, who established the company after leaving Xerox PARC 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. Adobe later developed animation and multimedia through its acquisition of Macromedia, from which it acquired Macromedia Flash; video editing and compositing software with Adobe Premiere, later known as Adobe Premiere Pro; low-code web development with Adobe Muse; and a suite of software for digital marketing management.
Adobe had more than 26,000 employees worldwide. Adobe also has major development operations in the United States in Newton, New York City, Arden Hills, Lehi, Seattle, Austin and San Francisco. It also has major development operations in Noida and Bangalore in India. The company has long been the dominant tech firm in design and creative software, despite attracting criticism for its policies and practices particularly around Adobe Creative Cloud's switch to subscription only pricing and its early termination fees for its most promoted Creative Cloud plan, the latter of which attracted a joint civil lawsuit from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice in 2024.
History
PostScript (1982–2000)
The company was started in John Warnock's garage. The name of the company, Adobe, comes from Adobe Creek in Los Altos, California, a stream which ran behind Warnock's house. The creek is named because of the type of clay found there. Adobe's corporate logo features a stylized "A" and was designed by graphic designer Marva Warnock, John Warnock's wife. Steve Jobs attempted to buy the company for $5 million in 1982, but Warnock and Geschke refused. Their investors urged them to work something out with Jobs, so they agreed to sell him shares worth 19 percent of the company. Jobs paid a five-times multiple of their company's valuation at the time, plus a five-year license fee for PostScript, in advance. The purchase and advance made Adobe the first company in the history of Silicon Valley to become profitable in its first year.Warnock and Geschke considered various business options including a copy-service business and a turnkey system for office printing. Then they chose to focus on developing specialized printing software and created the Adobe PostScript page description language.
PostScript was the first international standard for computer printing as it included algorithms describing the letter-forms of many languages. Adobe added kanji printer products in 1988. Warnock and Geschke were also able to bolster the credibility of PostScript by connecting with a typesetting manufacturer. They weren't able to work with Compugraphic, but then worked with Linotype to license the Helvetica and Times Roman fonts. By 1987, PostScript had become the industry-standard printer language with more than 400 third-party software programs and licensing agreements with 19 printer companies.
Adobe's first products after PostScript were digital fonts which they released in a proprietary format called Type 1, worked on by Bill Paxton after he left Stanford. Apple subsequently developed a competing standard, TrueType, which provided full scalability and precise control of the pixel pattern created by the font's outlines, and licensed it to Microsoft.
Introduction of creative software (1986–1996)
Starting in the mid-1980s, Adobe entered the consumer software market, starting with Adobe Illustrator, a vector-based drawing program for the Apple Macintosh. Illustrator, which grew out of the firm's in-house font-development software, helped popularize PostScript-enabled laser printers.By the mid-1990s, Adobe would either develop or acquire Photoshop from John and Thomas Knoll, FrameMaker from Frame Technology Corporation, and After Effects and PageMaker from Aldus, as well as develop Adobe Premiere, later known as Premiere Pro, in-house, initially releasing it in 1991. Around the same time as the development of Illustrator, Adobe entered the NASDAQ Composite index in August 1986.
PDFs and file formats (1993–1999)
In 1993, Adobe introduced the Portable Document Format, commonly shortened to the initialism PDF, and its Adobe Acrobat and Reader software. Warnock originally developed the PDF under a code name, "The Camelot Project", using PostScript technology to create a widely available digital document format, able to display text, raster graphics, vector graphics, and fonts. Adobe kept the PDF as a proprietary file format from its introduction until 2008, when the PDF became an ISO international standard under ISO number ISO 32000-1:2008, though the PDF file format was free for viewers since its introduction.With its acquisition of Aldus, in addition to gaining PageMaker and After Effects, Adobe gained control over the TIFF file format for images.
Creative Suite and the Macromedia acquisition (2000–2009)
The 2000s saw various developments for the company. Its first notable acquisition in the decade was in 2002, when Adobe acquired Canadian company Accelio, also known as JetForm. In May 2003, Adobe purchased audio editing and multitrack recording software Cool Edit Pro from Syntrillium Software for $16.5 million, as well as a large loop library called "Loopology". Adobe then renamed Cool Edit Pro to Adobe Audition. It was in 2003 that the company introduced the first version of Adobe Creative Suite, bundling its creative software into a single package. The first version of Creative Suite introduced InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, ImageReady and InCopy, with the 2005 second edition of Creative Suite including an updated version of Adobe Acrobat, Premiere Pro, GoLive, the file manager Adobe Bridge, and Adobe Dreamweaver, the latter of which was acquired from a $3.4 billion acquisition of Macromedia, most notably.In addition to bringing in Dreamweaver, the $3.4 billion Macromedia acquisition, completed as a stock swap, added ColdFusion, Contribute, Captivate, Breeze, Director, Fireworks, Flash, FlashPaper, Flex, FreeHand, HomeSite, JRun, Presenter, and Authorware to Adobe's product line.
By April 2008, Adobe released Adobe Media Player. On April 27, Adobe discontinued the development and sales of its older HTML/web development software, GoLive, in favor of Dreamweaver. Adobe offered a discount on Dreamweaver for GoLive users and supports those who still use GoLive with online tutorials and migration assistance. On June 1, Adobe launched Acrobat.com, a series of web applications geared for collaborative work. Creative Suite 4, which includes Design, Web, Production Premium, and Master Collection came out in October 2008 in six configurations at prices from about US$1,700 to $2,500 or by individual application. The Windows version of Photoshop includes 64-bit processing.
On December 3, 2008, Adobe laid off 600 of its employees citing the weak economic environment. On September 15, 2009, Adobe Systems announced that it would acquire online marketing and web analytics company Omniture for $1.8 billion. The deal was completed on October 23, 2009. Former Omniture products were integrated into the Adobe Marketing Cloud. On November 10, 2009, the company laid off a further 680 employees.
End of Flash, security breach, and employee compensation class action (2010–2014)
Adobe's 2010 was marked by continuing arguments with Apple over the latter's non-support for Adobe Flash on its iPhone, iPad and other products. Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs claimed that Flash was not reliable or secure enough, while Adobe executives have argued that Apple wishes to maintain control over the iOS platform. In April 2010, Steve Jobs published a post titled Thoughts on Flash where he outlined his thoughts on Flash and the rise of HTML5. In July 2010, Adobe bought Day Software integrating their line of CQ Products: WCM, DAM, SOCO, and MobileIn January 2011, Adobe acquired DemDex, Inc. with the intent of adding DemDex's audience-optimization software to its online marketing suite. At Photoshop World 2011, Adobe unveiled a new mobile photo service. Carousel was a new application for iPhone, iPad, and Mac that used Photoshop Lightroom technology to allow users to adjust and fine-tune images on all platforms. Carousel also allowed users to automatically sync, share and browse photos. The service was later renamed "Adobe Revel". Later that same year in October, Adobe acquired Nitobi Software, the maker of the mobile application development framework PhoneGap. As part of the acquisition, the source code of PhoneGap was submitted to the Apache Foundation, where it became Apache Cordova.
In November 2011, Adobe announced that they would cease development of Flash for mobile devices following version 11.1. Instead, it would focus on HTML5 for mobile devices. In December 2011, Adobe announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire privately held Efficient Frontier. In December 2012, Adobe opened a new corporate campus in Lehi, Utah.
In 2013, Adobe endured a major security breach. Vast portions of the source code for the company's software were stolen and posted online and over 150 million records of Adobe's customers were made readily available for download. In 2012, about 40 million sets of payment card information were compromised by a hack at Adobe.
A class-action lawsuit alleging that the company suppressed employee compensation was filed against Adobe, and three other Silicon Valley–based companies in a California federal district court in 2013. In May 2014, it was revealed the four companies, Adobe, Apple, Google, and Intel had reached an agreement with the plaintiffs, 64,000 employees of the four companies, to pay a sum of $324.5 million to settle the suit.