Adobe Ventures L.P. Invests in Fractal Design

Business Wire, August 8, 1995

APTOS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 8, 1995--Fractal Design Corporation and Adobe Ventures L.P. today announced that Adobe Ventures invested $2 million in Fractal Design.

Neither company disclosed the percentage of ownership or per share price.

Fractal Design, developers of award-winning natural-media(R) paint, imaging and graphic software, plans to use the funds for working capital. "Adobe Venture's investment further solidifies our financial position," said Les Wright, Fractal's Chief Operating Officer.

"We are pleased that Adobe Ventures has become a member of the Fractal team," said Mark Zimmer, co-founder and president of Fractal Design. "With Fractal Design Painter(R), we created a product that is highly synergistic with Adobe Photoshop(TM) and Adobe Illustrator(TM) software. In fact, these programs are used side-by-side in many design shops. Adobe Venture's investment in Fractal will help us build recognition for our products even faster in the graphic arts community."

Fractal Design Painter is a natural-media paint program which offers a rich set of creative tools to enhance the process of design. In contrast, Adobe Photoshop excels in preparing images for production, offering advanced capabilities in retouching, compositing and color separation. As such Fractal Design Painter and Adobe Photoshop are very complementary programs. For example, Painter supports the reading and writing of image data in Adobe Photoshop format, providing easy, two-way conversion of Adobe Photoshop "layers" and Painter "floaters."

"Adobe Ventures invests in companies with significant technologies which are complementary to Adobe's own," said Standish O'Grady, Adobe Ventures fund manager. "Fractal's leading position in the natural-media software category; its numerous awards; and the remarkable character of its technology make it a great fit for this fund."

"Fractal has pioneered the development of natural-media tools on the desktop," echoed John Warnock, Adobe System's chairman and CEO. "We're really pleased to be able to participate in the growth of a company that shares the same innovative spirit and dedication to the publishing community as Adobe."

About Adobe Ventures

Adobe Ventures L.P. was established in June, 1994 and is currently a $40 million venture capital limited partnership between Adobe Systems Incorporated and Hambrecht & Quist Group chartered to invest in innovative companies strategic to Adobe's software business. Hambrecht & Quist Group is a venture capital, investment banking and securities brokerage firm specializing in emerging growth companies in chosen areas of industry focus, including technology and life sciences.

About Fractal Design Corporation

Fractal Design Corporation is a major force in multiple-platform graphics software, creating and marketing next-generation paint, photo-design and image-retouching software for Apple(R) Macintosh(R) and Microsoft(R) Windows computers. Additionally, all Fractal Design products are written to support the new Power Macintosh(R) computers. Fractal Design develops and markets the award-winning natural-media paint and image-processing applications: Fractal Design Painter, Dabbler(TM), Poser(TM), ColorStudio & Shapes, and Fractal Design Sketcher. Fractal Design Products are available through distributors including Douglas Stewart, Ingram, Merisel and Tech Data, as well as superstores, major resellers and mail order. The company is headquartered at 335 Spreckels Drive, Aptos, CA 95003. Telephone: 408/688-5300. Fax: 408/688-8836. -0-

Note to Editors: (C) 1995 Copyright Fractal Design Corporation. All rights reserved. Fractal Design Painter and natural-media are registered trademarks and Poser and Dabbler are trademarks of Fractal Design Corporation. Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator are trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. Apple, Macintosh and Power Macintosh are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. Microsoft and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. All other brand names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

CONTACT: Adobe Systems

Carol Sacks, 415/962-4989

csacks@adobe.com

or

McLean PR, San Mateo

Eileen Ebner, 415/513-8800

ebner@mcleanpr.com

or

Fractal Design Corporation, Aptos

Leslie E. Wright, 408/688-5300

l_wright@fractal.com

or

Steve Guttman

steve_guttman@fractal.com