Postscript is a programming language that describes the appearance of a printed page. Postscript describes the text and graphic elements on a page using mathematical shapes and curves. This results in higher resolution on the printed page than is achieved using the ASCII characters and bit-mapped images.

Adobe Systems developed Postscript and first released it with the Apple LaserWriter printer in 1985. It has since become a printing and imaging standard and has been designated by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as the standard page-description language.

Postscript is used by many desktop and midrange printers as well as commercial printing presses. It is device-independent, meaning that a single specification can take advantage of the resolution of multiple devices. For a printer or other output device to support Postscript, it must have a specialized interpreter with sufficient memory to support the execution of Postscript instructions. To print a page, a Postscript file is sent to the output device and executed within the Postscript interpreter. The Postscript interpreter creates the requested page image, and the drawing engine prints the image.