(Adobe Systems, Inc., San Jose, CA) The leading multimedia software company. Adobe products are used primarily by professional designers and editors. Founded in 1982 by Dr. John Warnock, Adobe helped pioneer the desktop publishing industry with its PostScript fonts. Initially developed for the Mac, PostScript became the standard among graphics and printing service bureaus. Adobe enhanced its offerings with the 1995 acquisitions of PageMaker and FrameMaker desktop publishing programs.
Adobe's PhotoShop is the most widely recognized image editing program worldwide, and its Illustrator drawing program is another venerable application. In 2005, Adobe acquired Macromedia, adding Web-based authoring and multimedia tools to the product line (see
Macromedia). See
Adobe Creative Suite,
Adobe Creative Cloud,
Adobe Acrobat Reader and
Adobe AIR.