FontLab is both the name of a company, FontLab Ltd, and the former name of their flagship font editor product, now called FontLab Studio. After Fontographer from Altsys was acquired by Macromedia and the development of the product was stopped, FontLab became the most-used font editor for professional type designers.
FontLab Studio is a complete font editing solution, which can be used for all steps of a font creation process: drawing, OpenType scripting, hinting, converting.
The original make of the software was SoftUnion Ltd of St. Petersburg, Russia with its lead programmer Yuri Yarmola. Pyrus North America Ltd, of the USA was formed in 1992 to distribute and market FontLab 2.0 for Microsoft Windows, which came out in 1993. Eventually Pyrus bought all the rights to FontLab; hired Mr. Yarmola; and renamed the company. FontLab’s first Mac OS product was FontLab 3 for Mac, in 1998.
