Adobe polishes its image

Adobe polishes its image

By Richard Morochove

First published February 12, 1998

Adobe Systems Inc. is proof you need not follow Microsoft's methods to create a successful software company.

Hard-nosed Bill Gates is seemingly unconcerned about the toes he steps on. But Adobe CEO John Warnock looks like a friendly uncle and he prefers a more co-operative approach to doing business.

It hasn't hurt the San Jose-based company's financial success. Adobe's annual sales should top $1 billion (U.S.) this year, huge by software company standards. Yet it's relatively little known by most PC users.

In part, that's because many of the customers for Adobe's software are either large computer companies such as Hewlett-Packard and Apple Computer or printing and graphics professionals.

Yet chances are you've heard of the PostScript inside your laser printer and many of the graphics you see in newspapers, magazines and movies are created by Adobe programs such as Illustrator, Photoshop and After Effects.

After Effects was used in last summer's blockbuster "Men In Black" to create the memorable opening sequence of the dragonfly buzzing along the highway. More recently, the program enhanced the movie "Starship Troopers", transforming 20 Troopers into 400 and adding giant bugs to the scene.

Although its roots are in the print world, Adobe was quick to recognize the potential of the Internet and invested in Netscape Communications before it went public.

Adobe is also strong in Web software, with its PageMill site development tool and WebType, a package of its print type fonts optimized to look good at the low on-screen resolution of a Web page.

Many Web sites provide documents in Adobe's Acrobat PDF (Portable Document Format). Standard Web pages written in HTML (HyperText Markup Language) can vary in appearance, depending upon your browser and the way you've configured it. PDF files, on the other hand, look the same no matter which browser or computer you use.

Over 20 million copies of the free reader software necessary to view PDF documents have been downloaded. Adobe makes its money selling the Acrobat program that creates the PDF documents.

Warnock and Adobe president Chuck Geschke first met at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center), the birthplace of so many great computer inventions. It was at PARC that Warnock first learned about typography and the role it plays in communicating information.

They founded Adobe in 1982 to tackle high-end document production for large companies. But the advent of an inexpensive laser printer engine made by Canon changed their plans.

Apple Computer's Steve Jobs persuaded the pair to develop software for the Macintosh that could fully exploit the high-quality printing capabilities of these inexpensive laser printers. The result was the Apple LaserWriter. Desktop publishing was born.

Even today, Adobe has close ties to Apple, although the software developer now sells more applications for MS Windows (56 per cent of revenues in the latest quarter) than for the Mac.

"We haven't seen much migration from the Mac to the PC. They hang in there," said Warnock. "So the growth that we've seen in the professional market in the Windows side has been new customers."

While Warnock still uses a Mac, he's clearly concerned about recent developments at Apple.

"The Mac over the last year has been fairly unstable, not from the platform point of view as much as the company," said Warnock. "My perception is users make a day to day decision on whether this company is going to survive or not and whether the next machine they buy should be a Mac."

Adobe made its name in software for graphics professionals, but it's now eyeing the far larger, and potentially more lucrative, consumer market.

"We took the Photoshop code base and we re-architected it so that we could separate off the user interface," said Warnock.

Adobe then developed a new interface for the Photoshop code. The result was imaging software for home PC users, PhotoDeluxe, that's bundled with many digital cameras. According to Warnock, the company has sold over 7 million copies of PhotoDeluxe and found it does not cannibalize the market for its Photoshop big brother.

Warnock said we'll see more consumer versions of Adobe's professional programs coming out over the next year.

This spells bad news for money-losing Corel Corp. One of the Ottawa-based company's remaining strongholds is the graphics program CorelDraw. An inexpensive, Windows version of Adobe Illustrator married to an easy-to-use interface could be the final nail in Corel's coffin. CW

Richard Morochove, FCA, is a Toronto-based computer consultant.

Click here to visit a guide to hundreds of financial links!

Visit the ComputerWatch Archive to see more columns

Post any questions or comments about this article to Computer Watch WriteBack.