Adobe developed the Acrobat PDF software and Photoshop image editor.
Adobe was founded in 1982 by John Warnock and Charles Geschke, who had left Xerox PARC. Its first major technology was PostScript, a page-description language that helped drive desktop publishing and high-quality printing.
Adobe released Photoshop in 1990 after acquiring the program from its original developers. Acrobat followed in 1993, helping users create, view, and exchange documents in the Portable Document Format, commonly called PDF.
Adobe is not the same company as Microsoft or Apple, although its software runs widely on both platforms. Its Creative Cloud family includes applications such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere Pro, while its Document Cloud includes Acrobat. Adobe’s transition from boxed software to subscriptions reshaped its revenue model.