Comments on: FreeHand no longer updated; moving to Illustrator

By: Shin Yee

Shin Yee — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 13:42:20 +0000

John, It's almost a year already. I followed much of the debate here, and I feel that you still do not understand why designers love Freehand. You wanted concrete suggestions, yet you question the relevant ones. [I think there are plenty of good suggestions, plenty of things that FH does better than AI. I've responded to those ideas and have discussed them a number of times with the Illustrator team. They *are* listening, and you *will* see changes you'll like. By the same token, you're not going to see Illustrator turn into some FreeHand clone. --J.] I'm sorry it's not your fault. But if you really want to help, bring back Freehand one way or another. You can call it what you want – Freedraw, Smarthands etc. Bring back a program with common sense. [The idea that putting a team onto a product that was killed five years ago by another company, thereby splitting resources between two very large 20-year-old codebases, would produce better results for customers than focusing efforts on a single best-of-breed solution is absurd. Sorry, but I've grown tired of pulverizing the same very dead horses. No new ideas have been generated here in a very long time, so I'm now turning off comments on this thread. Thanks for all the feedback. --J.]

By: Christian Lenaerts

Christian Lenaerts — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 06:38:51 +0000

As a CEO of a international brand development agency for over 15 years, I have worked with many designers using Freehand and/or Illustrator. Freehand users were to me always more intuitive AND more precise in their work methodology. They just delivered faster and better jobs (using FH looked like a game and not a quest) Sorry AI users but my best designers ALL converted to Freehand after a while.
Having experienced incredible frustrations of learning new interfaces over all these years with many different software applications I must say that Freehand always was a superior exception: every new version of FH felt, better, more logic, one could feel a collaboration of top level graphic designers, interface designers and coders.
I do understand all the sadness in this forum: losing FreeHand means to a lot of leading designers going “back” in time. Knowing that a more effective tool is taken of the market and having to convert to counterproductive tool is against all logic.
Thank you Freehand for all these great years with the best vector tool
Courage to all actual FH users! We understand your sadness.

By: mcs in usa

mcs in usa — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 03:30:19 +0000

I knew all along that Adobe would kill Freehand.
[Please. Read. The. Thread. Posting the same uninformed statement over and over isn't going to make it true. FreeHand development was killed at least two and a half years before Adobe acquired the program. --J.]
Freehand was too much of a threat to Illustrator and Illustrator is “their” program. While I will give Illustrator it’s credit, Freehand just works better. Things make sense in Freehand. Adobe’s interface has just gotten worse and worse and Illustrator always has (and still is) SLOW.
Also what is with the lack of multiple pages? I mean come on, this is 2008 and they can’t get multiple pages in Illustrator?
Instead of FORCING people to move over to Illustrator (yes, this is what they’re doing), why not just update Freehand? Give us full Vista compatiblity, more reliability, faster performance and update all the file importers (like the Illustrator file importer). Instead of pissing off customers, Adobe would have won over loyal Freehand customers who would pay for upgrades.
I will never buy Illustrator unless they make it run and operate JUST like Freehand. I won’t be holding my breath…
[Neither will I, thankfully. --J.]

By: jc

jc — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 08:17:31 +0000

I’ve been using both Illustrator and Freehand for a number of years, but mostly FreeHand since the interface is so intuitive, and I can work extremely fast in it. It takes much longer to do the same work in Illustrator. As an illustrator/designer, I can ‘sketch’ quickly in FreeHand, and work spontaneously…not so in Illustator. Features like style sheets (I know they’re made much-needed improvements for type control in Illustrator), multi-page capability (great when designer trade-show panels, exhibits, etc…), and the excellent masking and selection controls, all make it a better option for me. I wish they could incorporate multi-page funtionality in Illustrator; why is this so difficult? Also, they need to fix the inadequate selection commands…you should be able to ‘drill down’ through a stack of objects (even InDesign does a better job at this) rather than use the Illustrator key command that selects objects in layer order all over the page; a frustrating waste of time. And they need to fix the masking tool so that clicking outside of the mask DOESN’T select the contents; equally frustrating. But sadly, FreeHand is being eclipsed and is becoming outdated. Some printers now regard it as a non-standard application because of compatability issues and inefficient rip times, and may charge extra if we use it.

By: serena

serena — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 13:49:06 +0000

With all the incredible input seen and understood here and elsewhere, in the past and in the future, one day there WILL be ONE beautiful, sublimely simple, intuitively rich programme that combines everything great that has ever been developed across the board in digitial design – not possible! Anything is possible. It won’t be called by any name we have come to love and know it will be called PHOENIX! Out of the ashes of great things comes one beast even greater, it won’t be perfect, there’s no such thing, what’s perfect today isn’t necessarily tomorrow. But it will be the collective global creative community who will work constantly, together, to ensure that it gets better and better.
No I am not a businesswoman, yes this is simplistic thinking.I am a realist but I am also a dreamer and Dreams can come true!

By: Graeme Chambers

Graeme Chambers — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 05:50:36 +0000

I’ve used FH for the past 12 years in medical illustration for publishing, but recently my publisher, (one of the UK/world’s largest), have been hinting that global directives on pdf work flows etc may leave me and my beloved FH artwork out in the cold.
As a result I’ve been struggling all week to get a hook on Illustrator. Something that is going to make me want to get out of my bed in the morning and look forward to my day.
It’s Friday morning and once again I feel I’ve tried and failed. All week I’ve perservered with tutorials and books showing me how to find/do this and that. Lots of the Illustrator’s features I like and could very happily use in the creation of my illustrations.
However, there always comes a point in the day when I scream at my mac and totally lose the plot. This regularly happens following any use of the pen/selection/clipping masks, the list does go on! (Please see Alex’s superb list-May07- of additional trigger points that will enduce this state of mind).
Add to this a new annoyance. When I set up a page, change the font/size, line weight I’d like to use, unlock the guides etc and then save, I’d like to believe that the next time I open that file all will be as I left it. But no, it’s all change back to the defaults.
Dear J, please do your best to see to it that as many as possible of Alex’s suggestions are realized in CS4. I agree that most of this could be done via preferences and why not just call them ‘Freehand’ preferences. After all who else would possibly be interested in them …..only FH converts…..or anyone interested in efficiency and speed.
Thanks in anticipation of a storming CS4.
G
Co Down. Ireland

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 05:31:53 +0000

@Steve
indeed
@Caleb
oh my god, what a usability!

By: Steve Thrall

Steve Thrall — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 17:47:24 +0000

I’ve searched and googled for two days trying to find out if anyone else feels as I do. I’ve used Freehand since its inception and it wipes Adobe out…by doing all the things I need to do in one program. I just hope it goes open source some day. Remember, beta was better than VHS but it was killed, too. Sometimes good things just don’t last.

By: caleb

caleb — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 08:36:26 +0000

Part of my rant was missing:
Create a number of rectangles(less than 520) and spread them across the artboard, leaving room for bleed/extra space outside your drawing. Select ALL and lock selection. Now save file as a template for future use.

By: Caleb Vainikka

Caleb Vainikka — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 09:46:04 +0000

I will offer some clarification on the multiple page layout issue that seems to be the most important problem faced by FreeHand users:
The maximum size allowable in AI is 16,383px. by 16,383px. Recall that a letter sized artboard is 612px by 792px. SO: realistically it is possible to create 26.76 pages horizontally by 20.69 pages vertically. Lets work with whole numbers: 26 times 20 is 520 pages!!!
AI has a wonderful tool called the KNIFE which can slice a drawing into multiple saved files; so….USE IT!
I keep reading repeated problems about creating 20-30 page layouts, which is miniscule in comparison to the available space on the artboard.
I understand the need/desire to have bleed area surrounding each page of a project, and this is still possible! Create a number (

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 06:15:31 +0000

I absolutely agree with Tony – how to handle professional packaging design with 30-page layouts? making 30 Illustrator PDF taking 10 times longer, connecting them in Acrobat or getting nasty in the Printer Menue of Illu CS2 ??
Neither Illustrator nor Indesign
(that does not open Freehand Vectors) can replace Freehand MX/9 in any case.
That’s not only unlucky, it’s a desaster for a truly professional company like Adobe that normally develops excellent software.
Illustrator is also well programmed, but absolutely essential features are missing, and the usability compared to FH (multipage, pasting inside, creating vectors/drawings is horrific!
I could use Illustrator, Freehand,…
I would not care, but Freehand MX does not display several foreign languages as greece, Central European.. correctly, so those Multipage artworks must be developed in Freehand 9 – and that works only in Mac OS Classic mode – and that only works on Motorola Macs that aren’t developed anymore … noticed anything ?!
I appreciate the (buggy) Freehand import feature, but
have you ever thought about that? have you ever tried to convert thousand of multipage layouts to Illustrator? come on, that’s sick, really sick, to provide really professional software in that market, there must be a either THIS or THAT software, but Adobe forces us into a desaster, a neither nor!
There was a professional Tool called Freehand for more that a decade now, an all in one product – and even it was one for all, it did and still does a far better job that the highly specialized and some cases really unusable Illustrator. Well, theres another application, Indesign & Illu, and BOTH are not able to replace Freehand – that’s a shame.
As stated: normally i would not care a second if i could continue to use FH on a newer Macintosh, but the facts are that if the support of FH will be completely dead, can’t we expect at least the features that provide the ability to continue our work?

By: Tony Hunter

Tony Hunter — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 00:56:08 +0000

Thanks for that Caleb – That does work actually better that dragging direct from the colour palette twice – would still like a third toggle though!
My point about the third toggle giving indications about differences between two different but similar looking colours in the stroke and fill panels still stands, I feel.
Sometimes you have to stumble on these things by trial and error (like being able to change measurements on the fly by control-clicking the document rulers – I only found that by accident!)
Many thanks again, Caleb!
Tony, UK

By: Caleb

Caleb — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 11:48:25 +0000

I hope I’m not the first one to realize that it is not necessary to drag and drop from the color palette TWICE like you claim, Tony. Try dragging a color into the ‘fill color’ now, move your mouse a FRACTION of an inch and go ahead and drag that ‘fill color’ right into your stroke color. I’ve tried many combinations of Ctrl+Shift+Alt, etc. to no avail; pitch the unnecessarily long click-and-drag.

By: Tony Hunter

Tony Hunter — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 07:00:50 +0000

John, you wrote:
[I don't mean this sarcastically, but why don't you go back, then? All those programs should run just fine & integrate with one another just as they always have. Why did you spend time and money making the switch if you're so unhappy? I'm genuinely curious. --J.
Ooo... a challenge! I'd roll up my sleeves if I wasn't wearing a Tee...
Right then - I'll answer your actual query first, John, though it'll take a bit of rambling...
We can't go back to FreeHand simply because of the nature of our business. The company I work for is a pre-press outfit which has the often awkward task of working with files supplied to us from various other sources and preparing them for final print - this can include files from a huge range of different programs and applications.
As a result we often have to deal with brand new electronic artwork - or electronic artwork recovered from previous editions - all supplied to us by various freelancers, publishers and external artists, all of whom have their own way of working and supplying files, and are quite often people with surprisingly limited understanding of how digital print actually works - even the differences between supplying in RGB and CMYK. Flight-checking artwork and resolving problems, rogue elements and colour issues in EPS files is an important part of our work, and FreeHand 8, coupled with a proper preflight application, has always proved to be a much better tool for doing this than Illustrator (and worryingly, it still is. This isn't bias - it's a fact).
As time has gone by, the suppliers have upgraded to newer versions of the apps they were using (often just for the sake of credibility with publishers, so their websites could boast they used the latest software). Of course our older dated programs were no longer capable of opening the files they supplied, should the publishers and authors have any amendments needed to be made. Usually there isn't time to get the original creators of the artwork to do the amendments and resupply because of print deadlines, so we have to be able to make changes in-house. And in order to do that, we have to have the ability to work in the programs the files were created in.
As a result, we've always had to have at least one up-to-date version of the most often used software so we can access the files, whether it be Illustrator, Freehand, Photoshop, Word, Quark, InDesign etc. However, because of some of the more advanced features in newer programs (i.e transparencies, drop-shadows), it often isn't possible to save them back down to a format usable in older applications. And of course, as time goes on, more and more files are going to be supplied in the latest version of Illustrator, for example.
By choosing to move to Illustrator in the last few months, we're trying to be proactive and tackle a major problem for our company, which is in fact only going to escalate with the discontinuation of FreeHand, and the last version of Freehand's inevitable inability to open more and more recent versions of Illustrator EPS files.
If it was simply a case of drawing and supplying artwork ourselves, we WOULD have stuck with FreeHand 8 (we've already stuck with it for ten years after all) - however, we've tried to make the jump before we're pushed too hard by misinformed publishers who, sadly, believe the very latest software somehow guarantees excellence (many are jumping on the Certified PDF bandwagon, for example, without even an understanding of what it actually entails).
The hope was that working for an extended period in Illustrator would give us the chance fully familiarize us once-and-for-all with the program, and to find hidden, equivalent tools to the ones we enjoyed in FreeHand. Sadly, we haven't, and Illustrator is constantly letting us down with it's limitations.
We had an Illustrator trainer in a few months back and gave him a list of things we'd found we couldn't do anymore, and he could give us no alternatives. In fact, he even went as far as saying that, now he'd seen them, he wished many of them were things Illustrator could do as well. And he's head of a design company.
The thing is, our own company is in a fairly unique position in that we can legitimately compare the pros and cons of both Illustrator and FreeHand - we had to be capable of working in both on a regular basis, and unfortunately, the program we found best for our uses is the one that is now going to become outdated, redundant and unusable to us in the near future.
At the end of the day, Illustrator CAN do a lot of the things FreeHand could, but sometimes it just can't - and often, even if it does, it takes a damn sight longer to do.
Illustrator CS2 has simply proved a poor replacement in terms of productivity and usefulness, and CS3 seems little better according to my studio colleague who has been working with it for a month.
Unfortunately, from this point in time onwards, it looks like we're firmly stuck with it. All we can do is point out what doesn't work as well as it should and hope for the best that someone will ever care.
Speaking of which...
----
You said:
[So you'd like to change the stroke and fill simultaneously to be the same color? I'm having a hard time thinking of a case where that would be useful. --J.]
Well, that’s maybe just because you don’t do our job, John – but quite frankly, that response totally astonished everyone in our studio.
This isn’t the only use, but it is one – If we have to standardize artwork in Illustrator to work to a new colour scheme for, say, a new edition of a book, and the previous artist who created the artwork from the last edition didn’t bother naming and using global colours in his artwork, we have to create a new swatch in EACH artwork and apply it to ALL the lines and fills, ESPECIALLY if the job is now a duotone (black and one PANTONE colour).
A box may have a fill and a stroke exactly the same colour regardless if it needs a stroke or not, especially if it’s been converted from an external program like Excel or Word. To change the colour of both, I’ve got to drag-and-drop from the colour palette TWICE. In FreeHand, just once, because of the ‘third toggle’. Multiply that for say, 100 artworks throughout a job, then the same operation takes at the very least a hundred more clicks. And obviously, you have to do this more than once in a single artwork… and all this clicking adds up during a workday.
(The third toggle in FreeHand also has a bonus use, in that if both stroke and fill are the same colour, it flags it that way. If not, it displays a dash to indicate they have been assigned different colour values. This can help identify a RGB black sitting alongside a dark grey in the same object – again, helpful during flightchecking issues.)
Regardless, we have to do all this manually now because Illustrator has no option to simply name every colour that’s lurking in an open document and list it in the colour palette. FreeHand 8 did, and once all the colours are named there, it would let us select one of these colours, and then chose ANOTHER colour from the list to globally replace all instances of that colour with.
At present, we haven’t found a way for Illustrator to do the initial colour naming. As a pre-flight option… well, it’s frankly a huge miss for us.
I can go on and point out other niggles with tools and their limitations if you like, but I’ve not the time right now… let me know if you want to hear them.
Tony, UK
—-

By: Tony Hunter

Tony Hunter — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 01:21:35 +0000

Me again – I feel I should back up my claim about ‘getting simple stuff right first’ with a proper example.
The Fill and Stroke toggles – why isn’t there a third toggle? A toggle that allows you to drag and drop a colour change to BOTH fill and stroke colours at once? That’s REALLY basic.
[So you'd like to change the stroke and fill simultaneously to be the same color? I'm having a hard time thinking of a case where that would be useful. --J.]
If I need to change the unnamed colours in 20 artworks from a previous edition of a book from CMYK to, say, a PANTONE Duotone, I don’t want to have to drag and drop twice umpteen more times than I have to in all 20 files.
(Of course, if Illustrator had advanced ‘name all colours’ and ‘replace colour’ options like FreeHand 8 onwards, I wouldn’t actually have that much dragging and dropping to do in the first place, but that’d obviously be too much to ask… wouldn’t it?)
[I don't know all the find-and-replace options Illustrator offers. I do know that the Live Color features in CS3 offer some extremely powerful ways to map colors to specific outputs. --J.]
Why can’t this third toggle just sit with the other two on the toolbar, or even just in the colour pallete, like it used to in FreeHand, where it would make sense?
—-
I can’t help but feel that a big reason for such odd absenses is Adobe’s ridiculous pursuit of so-called ‘cross-appplication integration’ for the last few years now.
Can I just point out something important…?
InDesign is meant for DTP.
Photoshop is meant for Raster.
Illustrator is meant for Vector.
So why did anyone think we NEEDED to have identical tools in all three? They aren’t intended for the same jobs anyway!
[Correct. But are you saying that it shouldn't be possible to draw a shape in Photoshop or to define a path in InDesign, or to place images in Illustrator? It's not as if PS or ID have strong vector-drawing tools, or as if ID or AI offer bitmap editing. --J.]
I remember back several years when our company used FreeHand, Photoshop and Quark for ALL our needs – and all had different tools (and parent companies, come to think of it, until Adobe bought Macromedia) – yet at no point did any of us think our lives would be any easier if they all had identical toolbars and shortcuts.
We’re now in Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign – and our lives are genuinely much tougher, not easier.
[I don't mean this sarcastically, but why don't you go back, then? All those programs should run just fine & integrate with one another just as they always have. Why did you spend time and money making the switch if you're so unhappy? I'm genuinely curious. --J.]
God forbid anything that might make the toolbar in one application look different from the rest it’s Creative Suite brethren.
[So, just to get this straight, you're beating us up for being *too consistent*? That's at least refreshing, as normally complaints are about not being consistent enough. --J.]
I’m sure the new Eraser tool in CS3 was only developed purely because there was already one in Photoshop. But why bother?
[It's there because the the AI team wanted to make it easier to carve out pieces of vector graphics without having to think about their structure first (as it is, FWIW, in Flash). If FreeHand didn't have it, though, it must suck. --J.]
After all, most of us don’t go home to our own Macs and PCs and expect the same mouse clicks in, say, World of Warcraft and Warcraft III, to do exactly the same thing. Different apps, same company – and yet we cope with the differences quite easily.
[Damned when we do, and damned when we don't. --J.]
Let’s have a return to common sense, eh?
Tony, UK