Adobe: The Story of Changing the Graphic World
No one related to technology or computing devices can be found who has not heard of Adobe. From Photoshop to PDF, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, and more, Adobe is managing a huge part of the tech industry with a variety of software. Today, Adobe’s headquarters measure 9,60,953 square feet, but it started with a simple garage. We will talk about adobe the story or changing the graphic world.
The beginning of Adobe
Adobe Inc. was founded in December 1982 by John Warnock and Charles Geschke. Previously, they both worked for Xerox Parc. The name Xerox Parc may seem familiar to many. This is because they were the first to invent a graphical user interface and to design the modern computer.
Enter the world of software
Adobe entered the software world in 1987 with the illustrator software for Apple’s Macintosh. This further accelerated the popularity of PostScript. The same year, John and Thomas Knoll started creating Photoshop. Thomas was a Ph.D. student at the University of Michigan at the time, writing a program to display greyscale paintings on Macintosh. After listening to his brother’s words, he took 6 months’ leave from his studies in 1988 and started making software with his brother. They first thought of giving the name of the software as Image Pro but later gave the name Photoshop. In the meantime, John showed Apple and Adobe the software they had created. They really like it and get the Adobe software licensed by John and Thomas for sale.
On February 19, 1990, Adobe Photoshop was released for Macintosh only. It soon gained much popularity and became the main field of color photo editing. This was a significant development at that time. When Photoshop 1.0 was released, a simple photo edit cost about 300$ an hour!
However, the price of Photoshop was not low. The price per copy of the license was 695$. But it was for life, that is, once purchased, you can use as much as you want. As a result, it was a revolutionary change in the digital image industry.
Beginning of PDF
In 1991, John Warnock introduced a document system that later became known as the PDF or Portable Document Format. The purpose of creating this format was to make it easier to transfer, view and print files via the Internet. After 2 years, Adobe Acrobat Reader was launched for reading and using PDF. But now it’s free, but at the time it cost 50. It was opened to the public in 2008. The popularity rate of PDF was a bit slow as it was not free. Thus, as Adobe’s success rate increased day by day, so did the hostility.
Uninterrupted progress
Adobe also launched Photoshop for the Windows platform in 1993. As a result, the entire market for digital image editing goes to Adobe. After Photoshop, Adobe’s next target is video. Video editing software Premier was launched in 1991 and was renamed Premier Pro in 2003. Millions of dollars worth of movies are now edited with Premiere Pro, starting with simple content videos!
In the years that followed, Adobe began acquiring a significant amount of software. These include After Effects, Cool Edit Pro (now Adobe Audition) and their rival Macromedia. Adobe later got into an argument with Apple over Flash. Steve Jobs is reluctant to use Flash on his iPhone. In an article in April 2010, he highlighted the bad aspects of Flash and finally won. Flash support for mobile devices was discontinued later that year.
In 2012, Adobe faced a hack. As a result, it is feared that the data of about 36 million users will be spread. They also had to face lawsuits over the incident, which cast a shadow over the company’s overall image.
But despite all this, Adobe’s profit growth rate was noticeable. There is a lot of criticism from people about Adobe. In particular, there are allegations that their products price is sold at a higher rate than the desired price in different countries.
Charles won the National Medal of Technology in 2009 and both Charles and John won the Marconi Prize in 2010, which is considered the greatest honor for contributions to information technology. Their contribution has made people’s lives easier and created new possibilities. Despite all the controversy, there is no denying that Adobe has changed people’s lives.