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Adobe Systems is not quite in the same corporate league as Apple or Microsoft, but in terms of influence, it is a giant. The company has been instrumental in the development of page description language (Postscript) that dominates the printing and design industry, typeface formats (Type 1, and in conjunction with Microsoft, OpenType) used on tens of millions of computers, and the ubiquitous Portable Document Format (PDF) used to create platform independent documents. Hence, when Adobe strikes off in a new direction, many will take a keen interest.
Adobe Air was launched in 2007, and is described as a “rich internet application”. While programs that use Adobe Air are installed to a user’s computer and can run offline, they also add functionality via the Internet. For example, the Adobe Air-powered New York Times Reader allows users to download the entire paper, then access it even if offline. Adobe encourages software developers to write applications for the Air environment, and the Air Marketplace contains several hundred offerings. Productivity oriented examples include a job time log, task managers, software shortcuts for all Adobe packages, Colour combination finder, and a surprisingly addictive graphics program specialising in dynamic brushstrokes.
Adobe Air will have to build up a significant user and app base in order to survive. Web technologies need to have a critical mass behind them, or they tend to fade very quickly. Adobe claims 100 million downloads for Adobe Air apps, so perhaps the technology has a bright future.
Portable Document Format (PDF) files are a common feature of the modern Internet. Generated by Adobe’s Acrobat software, PDF files carry with them all image and font information, and do not have to be reconstructed by the receiving computer. The format was devised by Adobe as a way of bringing the invariant nature of print on paper to the variable world of computer-based documents. By giving away the Acrobat Reader as a free download, Adobe ensured that the PDF format spread widely and has become an unofficial Internet and corporate standard. Graphic designers also use the format when finalising a job, embedding all image, typeface and colour information in a single PDF file and optimising it for printer workflows.
However, creating a PDF is not free. At the time of writing, users can purchase the full family of Acrobat software for AUD$555. This allows them to create, edit, add comments to and authorise others to comment on, PDFs. Users of Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Photoshop, InDesign, Quark Xpress and a host of other packages are able to either ‘print’ to PDF, or create a postscript file that can be then ‘distilled’.
For businesses that only occasionally create or edit PDFs, the cost of this software is quite high. Adobe is aware of this part of the market, and offers an online PDF creator for approx USD$9.99 a month or USD$100 per year. However in the everything-should-be-free world of Web 2.0, numerous alternatives have arisen that cost absolutely nothing.
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Multiple Master (MM) typefaces were an interesting experiment in digital typography. Created by Adobe, MMs dispensed with the usual system of font weights (bold, semibold, regular, bold, etc) in favour of smooth variation in the axes of weight, width and optical size. Many more variations were therefore available than could be achieved with a standard family of typefaces.
Adobe released several attractive and useful typefaces in this format: Cronos (see image below), Bickham Script, Chapparal, Myriad, Minion, Ocean Sans and others. However, the sheer time and expense involved in creating MM typefaces meant that other type designers were slow to come on board, and eventually Adobe allowed the format to lapse in favour of Open Type (in the context of the bigger debate surrounding the harmonisation of True Type and Type 1). Adobe has released a collection of ‘equivalent’ Opentype typefaces with a slew of additional characters, but they don’t fully recapture the range of subtle variations that characterised the MM format.
 Not all digital images are equal. Some are so small that they are adequate for web purposes only, while others are suitable for the more rarified heights of print. There are a few simple rules of thumb to be employed when judging which is which and how much an image can be enlarged without ruining it.
Image Building Blocks
The ancient Greeks were the first to guess that if you cut matter into small enough pieces, you would eventually end up with the fundamental particles from which all things are composed. Digital images are similar. Peer closely enough, and every photograph resolves into a grid of tiny dots. On a computer screen, each point of colour (or pixel) is composed of three tiny image elements. The three elements are red, green and blue, and when each is illuminated in various combinations at one of 255 levels, give rise to one of many millions of potential colours. Back out at the human scale, viewers see a seamless blend of colour, detail and motion.
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