R.I.P. FreeHand
If you’re not already using Adobe Illustrator for your vector drawing needs, you’d better hurry up and make the switch.
As the SND Update blog noted overnight: FreeHand is no more.
Adobe posted Wednesday on its blog page:
After a long and storied career, Adobe (neé Altsys, Aldus, and Macromedia) FreeHand has reached the end of its development road. The application has not been revised since Macromedia released MX nearly four years ago, after which the company removed FreeHand from the Studio product line.
…Adobe does not plan to develop and deliver any new feature-based releases of FreeHand, or to deliver patches or updates for new operating systems or hardware. Adobe will, however, continue to sell FreeHand MX, and will offer technical and customer support according to our support policies.
…A special upgrade to Illustrator CS3 is available to all registered owners of FreeHand for $199.
I’m continually amazed at the number of folks who still use FreeHand. I loved FreeHand, back when it was an easy-to-use, elegantly-designed application. Which pretty much ended with the release of version 4.0, way back in 1994. After the infamously disasterous FreeHand 4 quickcourse at Poynter in April of that year — Ask Terence Oliver or Molly Swisher about it sometime — I and my associates at the Raleigh News & Observer ditched the app and I never used it again. Although I supervised folks in Des Moines and here at the Pilot who did.
So it’s about time. In my opinion.
Read the Adobe blog post here:
http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2007/05/freehand_no_lon.html
Bookmark the totally excellent SND Update blog here:
http://www.snd.org/update/
May 17th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
I know it’s coming (having to switch). We’re in denial in this department. I would like to say that Freehand 4.0 was something of a fluke however, versions afterward have indeed been easy-to-use and elegant.
This argument really has been played out and there is a clear loser (which has nothing at all to do with the best software winning), but those of us who are holding on to Freehand are likely to do so until it’s just no longer possible to get the job done in an Illustrator world.
May 17th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
Oh Charles, Charles… now honestly, can you really be that hyped up about Illustrator’s fabulously intuitive masking process (as I remember, three steps AND tons of extra stuff cluttering up your workspace)? Or better, it’s gradient tool (move one part and it’s all hosed), point and line-selection, annoying grouping functions, the need to use three keys for every command?
Please. Freehand is (was, I guess) a far superior tool, and much more user-friendly. I’ve used both over the years, and Freehand was always my choice. If only Adobe could have used paste-inside, there might have been a chance.
I mourn it’s passing. Seriously, this sucks.
May 17th, 2007 at 9:47 pm
Well, we all knew it was bound to happen. No way Adobe was going to support both apps. One thing’s for sure — this probably ends the “my drawing program’s better than yours” debate, at least until Corel Draw can match Illustrator!
For the record, I prefer Illustrator.
May 18th, 2007 at 4:28 am
why the hate? is illustrator really that horrible??? ninja please. i loooooove illustrator. can someone make me a list of all the things freehand can do that illustrator can’t? what can it do better? eh nevermind, guess it really doesn’t matter.
try transitioning from indesign to layout champ. now THAT sucks. at least you’ll still be able to do your job and not want to bash your head against the wall when you can’t do the most simple things. so stop your whining. =) *hugs*
May 18th, 2007 at 9:23 am
I’d have to second Martin’s love for AI. I just found it much more intuitive to pick up than Freehand. But to each their own. Going off on a tangent: When I worked at an advertising agency (last year), we once got some files from a freelancer in Freehand, and every designer in the place was appalled and amazed that somebody was still using FH. Of course, they had similar reactions when I told them that a lot of newspapers were still using Quark instead of InDesign … and then I told them that the paper I worked at had used Quark 4 up till two years ago. They were astounded that anybody could do anything in such an antiquated program. And at that moment I thought of the fact that there were designers in newspapers who’d probably kill for just Quark (even Quark 4) instead of whatever second-rate pagination software is wired into their system. Keeping current with technology is definitely not a strength in the newspaper biz.
May 18th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
freehand lovers tears bring me joy. i will submit a design for freehands tombstone using illustrators pen tool- to this day the most elegant software tool ever conceived by man.
May 18th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
and another thing-
hey amanda, hope all is well.
May 18th, 2007 at 10:16 pm
Everyone I know who loves Freehand seems to just want that darn paste inside function. Learn to love layers and learn to group responsibly and smartly and you won’t have so many problems. Chris Soprych taught me the art of organizing your graphics and to use layers smartly. I can’t say I’ve mastered it, but I know it’s made it easier to repurpose graphics, that’s for sure. If you want to be efficient, you need to be able to create things that other members of your staff can use as well. If you group things and then do a clipping mask, if you want to change it later you can just open up the layers and find what you want and select only that and move it, resize it, etc. without having to undo the clipping mask.
MP
May 19th, 2007 at 1:55 am
I am old. Too old. I remember when AP graphics came as MacDraw files.
I remember when Illustrator ONLY worked outside the preview mode. You drew something, and then you refreshed the screen with the preview to make sure what you did what was you wanted. It was slow and cumbersome if you didn’t live your whole life in an AI universe.
Yeah, it was 15 or more years ago, but the software Adobe took too many years to catch up with what Aldus/Macromedia was doing. Freehand licked all of the type issues early, and you could work in a preview mode. Paste inside is still a good tool, and it works with boxes, type or freeform shapes.
The reason the wire services (AP and KRT) adopted Freehand was because Illustrator created too deep a learning curve for anyone who didn’t do graphics all day long. And just because a graphic came from a wire service didn’t mean it was well-organized or ready for publication.
The only reasonable alternatives at the time were MacDraw II and Coreldraw. Both stunk.
I used Freehand before Quark as a layour software. I was used to it, and I had far more control that I could have seen in the then current forms of Illustrator.
In the end software is just a tool. It really doesn’t matter which tool you use if you can use it correctly.
May 21st, 2007 at 11:43 am
Margo’s points are exactly the reason I’ll miss Freehand. I guess unless you’ve spent a lot of time with both programs, you won’t get it. Clearly anyone who doesn’t use layers “smartly” in any application is headed for trouble. I’ll make the jump back to Illustrator, I’ve done it before.
You’re right Martin, there’s no sense making a list what Freehand does better. It’s easier and more accurate to just list the only thing Illustrator handled better, the anti-alias screen viewing. Things really do look better while working, I’ll give it that.
John’s correct. The Agencies and design studios I’ve worked at have always been Illustrator users. I’ve never run into one that wasn’t. I could be wrong but it seems like the newspaper industry and possibly web-graphics were all that was propping Macromedia up for the last few years. One positive note is that soon these types of arguements will soon disappear because we’ll all be using the same piece of S#!@ software.
May 21st, 2007 at 1:36 pm
Fred’s Quote:
“One positive note is that soon these types of arguments will soon disappear because we’ll all be using the same piece of S#!@ software.”
LOL–Yes, I’ll have to make the switch for good now. I’ve used FH & Illo since the beginning of time (well, their time) and FH would always win out–the ability to multipage was a big plus. And I noticed someone mentioned the ‘elegance’ of the Illo pen tool, and frankly, I have never thought it superior to the FH version. It seems much much clumsier to me. But it’s all subjective–although I understand where the acrimony came from; print houses that had kitten fits when I would mention I built a file in FH (they would subsequently discover that the stupid files would rip fine), the snark I occasionally encounter(ed) in conversation with design peers, ridiculous snobbery as if choosing Adobe or Aldus/Macromedia/whatever somehow defined our individual coolness factor.
A tool is a tool–as mentioned, it’s what you do with it.
I just hope that some of the good features that FH has (had) will be folded in to future Illo releases. The program really does have some superior tools & commands, and I hope that the programmers at Adobe can step back and non-judgementally (I know—it’s not a word) recognize that. But I don’t hold too much hope. Programmers seem even more opinionated than we design weenies! ;-D
May 27th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
Hey Steve! Nice comments there! Har! Tombstones… :D Hope you are well and happy too!