Aldus Corporation
Fate	Merged
Successor	Adobe Systems
Founded	February, 1984
Defunct	September, 1994
Location	Seattle, WA, USA
Industry	Software
Key people	Paul Brainerd, Founder

Aldus Corporation (named after the 15th-century Venetian printer Aldus Manutius) was the inventor of the groundbreaking PageMaker software, a program that is generally credited with creating the desktop publishing (DTP) field. Adobe Systems Incorporated (pronounced a-DOE-bee əˈdoʊbiː ( is an American Computer software company headquartered in San Jose California Year 1984 ( MCMLXXXIV) was a Leap year starting on Sunday (link displays the 1984 Gregorian calendar) Year 1994 ( MCMXCIV) was a Common year starting on Saturday (link will display full 1994 Gregorian calendar) The United States of America —commonly referred to as the Paul Brainerd (born 1947) is a pioneer in the field of computer-aided editing design and publishing Venice ( Italian: Venezia, Venetian: Venesia or Venexia) is a city in Northern Italy, the capital of the Aldus Manutius (1449/1450 – February 6, 1515) the Latinized name of Teobaldo Mannucci, sometimes called Aldus Manutius the Elder to distinguish PageMaker was the first Desktop publishing program introduced in 1985 by Aldus Corporation, initially for the Apple Macintosh but soon after also Desktop publishing (also known as DTP) combines a Personal computer and WYSIWYG page layout Software to create Publication Documents The company was founded by Jeremy Jaech, Mark Sundstrom, Mike Templeman, Dave Walter, and chairman Paul Brainerd. Paul Brainerd (born 1947) is a pioneer in the field of computer-aided editing design and publishing ^[1] Aldus Corporation was based in Seattle, WA.

PageMaker was released in July 1985, and relied on Adobe's PostScript page description language. Adobe Systems Incorporated (pronounced a-DOE-bee əˈdoʊbiː ( is an American Computer software company headquartered in San Jose California PostScript ( PS) is a dynamically typed concatenative Programming language created by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982 For output, it used the Apple LaserWriter, a PostScript laser printer. The Apple LaserWriter was one of the first Laser printers available to the mass market A laser printer is a common type of Computer printer that rapidly produces high quality text and graphics on plain paper PageMaker for the PC was released in 1986, but by then the Mac was already the de facto DTP platform, with Adobe Illustrator (released in 1987) and Adobe Photoshop (released in 1990) completing the suite of graphic design software. IBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT. Adobe Illustrator is a vector-based drawing program developed and marketed by Adobe Systems. The term graphic design can refer to a number of artistic and professional disciplines which focus on visual communication and presentation

Aldus went on to offer its Illustrator-like program, FreeHand, licensed from Altsys (who also developed Fontographer). "Freehand" redirects here For the Australian production company see Freehand Group. Altsys Corporation was a Texas -based software company founded by James R Von Ehr II. Fontographer, sometimes abbreviated to FOG, is a software application used to design fonts available for both Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh platforms FreeHand and Illustrator competed with each other for years, through multiple releases, until Adobe acquired Aldus. FreeHand was not included in the deal (FreeHand was acquired by Macromedia at that point). Macromedia was a North American graphics and Web development Software house headquartered in San Francisco, California producing such products

In early 1990, Aldus bought Silicon Beach Software, acquiring a number of consumer titles for the Macintosh, including SuperPaint, Digital Darkroom, SuperCard, Super3D, and Personal Press (later renamed Adobe Home Publisher). Silicon Beach Software was an influential early developer of software products for the Macintosh Personal computer SuperPaint was for its time a quite powerful Graphics program capable of both bitmap painting and vector drawing, published by Silicon Beach Software See also Digital darkroom. Digital Darkroom was an innovative award-winning Apple Macintosh Graphics program for editing SuperCard is a high-level development environment that runs on Macintosh computers under OS 8 and 9, and OS X. Silicon Beach was located in San Diego, and became the Aldus Consumer Division.

In 1993, Aldus bought After Hours Software and incorporated its products, TouchBase Pro and DateBook Pro, into the Aldus Consumer Division.

During the 1990s QuarkXPress steadily won ground from PageMaker, and it seemed increasingly odd that Adobe — who had created PostScript, so vital to the working of DTP — still did not offer its own page layout application. The 1990s collectively refers to the years between and including 1990 and 1999 QuarkXPress ("Quark" is a computer application for creating and editing complex page layouts in a WYSIWYG environment This was resolved in September 1994 when Aldus merged with Adobe. Today, Adobe's competition to QuarkXPress is Adobe InDesign. Adobe InDesign is a Desktop publishing (DTP software application produced by Adobe Systems. PageMaker remains available but is no longer marketed; existing PageMaker customers are now urged to switch to InDesign. FreeHand is now also maintained by Adobe after the merger with Macromedia in 2005.

Aldus developed the TIFF and OPI industry standards. The three founders of the Visio Corporation left Aldus in 1990 to create the product that later became known as Microsoft Office Visio. Visio Corporation was a software company based in Seattle Washington.

Products

Print Publishing

• PageMaker — A desktop publishing program

Prepress

• ColorCentral — An OPI server
• PressWise — A digital imposition program
• PrintCentral — A print output spooler
• TrapWise — A digital trapping program

Graphics

• FreeHand — A vector drawing program
• Gallery Effects
• Persuasion — A presentation program
• PhotoStyler — A bitmap image editor
• TextureMaker — A program for creating textures/patterns
• SuperPaint (Macintosh) — Painting program
• Intellidraw — A powerful yet simple drawing program

Aldus Interactive Publishing/CoSA

• After Effects — A digital motion graphics and compositing program
• Hitchcock — A professional non-linear video editor, with titling and A/V transitions
• Fetch — A multimedia database

Aldus Consumer Division

(formerly Silicon Beach Software and After Hours Software)

• Digital Darkroom photo enhancement software
• Personal Press consumer desktop publishing software
• DateBook Pro — Calendar management software
• IntelliDraw — A vector drawing program
• Super3D — 3D modeling software
• SuperCard multimedia authoring environment
• TouchBase Pro — Contact management software

References

External links

• Adobe website
• Seybold Report on the merger with Adobe
• The Vintage Mac Museum: Aldus FreeHand