Step 1 of 4 · 1982–87

PostScript: one device-independent page language, licensed into every printer

Adobe's innovation was a single language for describing a page. PostScript treated text and images alike as geometry, with type drawn as curves rather than stored as bitmaps, so the same page printed at whatever resolution a device offered, from a desktop laser printer to a professional typesetter AD9 AD8. Every layout program, QuarkXPress included, would later print through this layer, and Adobe owned it.

The founders knew the problem from the inside. At Xerox PARC, Warnock and Geschke had designed Interpress, a device-independent printing language, and watched Xerox keep it inside the company AD9. They started Adobe in 1982 to build publishing systems, until Steve Jobs told them to supply only the language, with Apple as the first customer AD8. Apple signed the LaserWriter contract in 1983; Linotype, alone among typesetter makers, then adopted PostScript, and both shipped in 1985 AD8 AD1. IBM and Hewlett-Packard followed, and PostScript became a standard AD8. Licensing spread it through other companies' hardware without Adobe manufacturing any: growth ran above 100% a year in 1986 and 1987 AD8.

Rivals Quark was founded in 1981 by Tim Gill and Mark Pope to sell a word processor for the Apple III QRK-5. QuarkXPress, released in March 1987, was an application that printed through PostScript devices and Adobe's PostScript fonts QRK-5 QRK-4. The integrated system vendors, such as Interleaf, sold the larger purchase Adobe chose not to make AD8.

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Step 2 of 4 · 1987–98

Designers' own tools on the same page model: Illustrator, then Photoshop

With every resource on PostScript, the founders feared a one-product company would die, so they set up a group barred from working on it AD8. Its first product, Illustrator (1987), went to a market that did not yet exist: "absolutely no graphic artist on the planet used a computer," Warnock says AD8. A smooth curve had meant inking by hand with a technical pen; Illustrator gave the designer handles on each curve AD8. Geschke says most buyers were newcomers without conventional training, and Warnock puts the graphic design market at about 250,000 people then against about six million later AD8.

Photoshop followed in 1990 at $600, promoted to professionals through Russell Brown's demonstrations and broadened by Windows support and layers AD10. By 1998 it was the standard for image editing QRK-6. Designers were building years of skill in these tools, which step 4 comes back to AD12. Layout was the missing piece: Adobe bought Aldus and PageMaker in 1994 AD1, but professionals were moving from PageMaker to QuarkXPress QRK-7 QRK-3.

Rivals Quark sold one product, page layout, which placed images and drawings made in other tools; in August 1998 it sought a large stake in Adobe at a premium, and Adobe declined QRK-6. In image editing, Letraset ColorStudio and Aldus PhotoStyler were the early alternatives AD10.

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Step 3 of 4 · 1999–2005

InDesign sold inside the suite designers already bought

InDesign launched in August 1999 against QuarkXPress, which held 85 to 90% of high-end layout in 2000, and few customers would switch their main tool for a few better features QRK-7 QRK-1. Timing helped: in January 2002 InDesign 2 ran natively on Mac OS X, while QuarkXPress 5, released the same week, did not QRK-7 QRK-4.

The suite did the rest. Creative Suite (2003) combined Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign with a shared interface and Version Cue file management AD11. Customers bought it for Photoshop and Illustrator and got InDesign with them, for little more than half the price of QuarkXPress alone QRK-4 QRK-3. Adobe's 2003 filing still called Quark the leader in professional layout and reported rising InDesign adoption at major newspapers, publishers and agencies AD11. Macromedia (2005) extended the bundles to web work AD15.

PDF on the same page model

Acrobat (1993) carried the page model to documents that must look the same on any computer. Adoption was slow while it was paid; Adobe later made Reader free, so only the sender needed Adobe software AD13. InDesign exported PDF from 2000, and the Premium suite included Acrobat Professional QRK-7 AD11. PDF became an open ISO standard in 2008; Adobe sells Acrobat for the work around the document AD14 AD6.

Rivals QuarkXPress first ran on OS X in version 6 (2003), at $945 against $699 for InDesign CS; Quark's CEO had told unhappy Mac users they could switch to something else QRK-4 QRK-2. Quark cut its price by almost 50% in 2006 QRK-3.

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