Well, it’s pretty much official. As John Nack has posted on his blog, FreeHand will no longer be updated, if you haven’t already it’s now time to move over to Illustrator:
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.
As I posed the question almost a year ago if the writing was on the wall for the fate of FreeHand. It appears that it’s finally true. I know after posting this story and follow up stories, that there are a lot of FreeHand users out there. Many of Iconfactory’s designers used to swear by it. So I offer all my condolences to all the FreeHand users who were hoping against hope this wasn’t true. But since the illustration tool hasn’t been updated in over four years and Adobe has been posting their FreeHand to Illustrator Migration Guide for over a year, we can’t say that the clues weren’t out there. Adobe now has a dedicated Top Reasons to Switch page that links off the Illustrator product page.
Personally, I switched to FreeHand 3 from Illustrator 88 because it offered the ability to work in preview (in color I might add) and use layers. I know I’m dating myself here, but those were ground-breaking features at the time. And features that took quite a bit of time to find their way onto a Mac version of Illustrator. Masking in FreeHand has always been more intuitive than in Illustrator with it’s Paste Inside command. Something Adobe is moving towards in Illustrator but still not really there yet. Lets just hope Adobe listens to longtime FreeHand users of what they love in the application and decide to fold them into Illustrator where it makes sense. I mean, it took us two version to get some of the features of Dimensions and Streamline into Illustrator, why not some FreeHand-inspired features now?
For those ready to bite the bullet and switch over to Illustrator, Adobe is offering a special FreeHand Upgrade Path to Illustrator CS3 for $199. Of course if you own Macromedia Studio, you may want to just upgrade to a CS3 package. Lastly, I’d also suggest taking a look at Fireworks if you haven’t yet. I feel it behaves a bit more like FreeHand than Illustrator in a lot of ways.
You can download 30-day trials for both Illustrator CS3 and Fireworks CS3 here.
For those interested, here are my reviews of FreeHand MX and Macromedia Studio MX 2004:
FreeHand MX Integrates and Innovates (4/15/2003)
Macromedia Studio MX 2004 Reviewed (10/28/2003)
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(Sigh.) This isn’t news, of course, but it gives me (a Freehand lover) another opportunity to whine. I force myself to use Illustrator more and more these days, because it’s been obvious since Macromedia’s demise that eventually I’ll lose access to Freehand. So far, I seem to do as much eye-rolling in Illustrator as I do actual work.
Sooner or later, I’ll have to bite the bullet and stop working in Freehand entirely. But for now, it’s still well worth my trouble to do my design and comp work in Freehand, then migrate it to Illustrator/InDesign for production/revs/prepress.
(Heavy sigh.)
Yeah, although I haven’t used FreeHand in quite a while, I did review its last version for creativepro.com. I can appreciate the power and flexibility it offers but never cared for the hodge-podge UI it seemed to take on over the years.
It might be worthwhile to collect what features the FreeHand lovers miss most along with what really makes you roll your eyes in Illustrator and perhaps we can send it along to Adobe to consider adding it into the next release of Illustrator.
No arguments on the UI — elegant it ain’t. The thought of Freehand with an Adobe interface would put a smile on my face.
I’d love to see the best of Freehand rolled into Illustrator, but that’s about as likely as (insert favorite no-chance-in-hell example), and not worth my time to contemplate. Most obvious “best of”: multi-page support. Not in a million kajillion years would Adobe risk cannibalizing sales of InDesign. But don’t you DARE posit that Adobe is a marketing-driven company!
(No, I’m not bitter! Heh.)
Illustrator is big and clumsy. I downloaded the trial of CS 3 and it takes up 1.6 GB of disc space while Freehand takes about 50 MB.
Windows users can switch to COREL DRAW. While us Mac users are left with …… a big clumsy thing. Maybe you spent a few more bucks to buy Adobe Indesign. So Illustrator + Indesign = Freehand.