Adobe Inc.

Adobe Inc. (/əˈdoʊbi/ ^ⓘ ə-DOH-bee), 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 (PDF); 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 (CXM).

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.

As of 2022,^[update] 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.

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 being a Spanish word for Mudbrick). 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 (through the Linotron 100). 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.