I've used Freehand for years, primarily as a print/publishing tool to
assemble theatrical programs to hand out before performances for my
community theatre. These programs contain photos of cast members, bios,
ads, etc. These programs contain several pages that must be set up for
imposition for printing duplex.

It seems to me that if I were to upgrade to an Adobe product I should
be getting InDesign, which will supposedly do what I need it to do.
However, Adobe tells me that there is no upgrade path from Freehand to
InDesign...only to Illustrator. Does this make sense? I thought
Illustrator was primarily a vector graphics design program with little
print/publishing capabilities. Am I wrong? If so, what are the main
differences between InDesign and Illustrator as pertains to
print/publishing?

Thanks,

Charles Newbury

> differences between InDesign and Illustrator as pertains to
> print/publishing?

Illustrator is for, well, ilustration. I make book jackets with it but is there is more text involved I always use InDesign, which is a layout program with a few tools for vector graphics. YOu can of course make a page or two in Illustrator and import into InDesign - as ai files, noo need for exporting eps files.

> I've used Freehand for years, primarily as a print/publishing tool to
> assemble theatrical programs to hand out before performances for my
> community theatre. These programs contain photos of cast members, bios

If the programs have more than four pages this is clearly a job for InDesign and I would not use FreeHand. For good typography FreeHand has quite poor text controls and it still amazes me that people here regard them as good. Character styles and especially nested styles are worth checking out.

Jukka

> differences between InDesign and Illustrator as pertains to
> print/publishing?

Illustrator is for, well, ilustration. I make book jackets with it but is there is more text involved I always use InDesign, which is a layout program with a few tools for vector graphics. YOu can of course make a page or two in Illustrator and import into InDesign - as ai files, noo need for exporting eps files.

> I've used Freehand for years, primarily as a print/publishing tool to
> assemble theatrical programs to hand out before performances for my
> community theatre. These programs contain photos of cast members, bios

If the programs have more than four pages this is clearly a job for InDesign and I would not use FreeHand. For good typography FreeHand has quite poor text controls and it still amazes me that people here regard them as good. Character styles and especially nested styles are worth checking out.

Jukka

On 2008-09-26 06:08:00 -0400, Armadillo <reply@newsgroup.pls> said:

>> differences between InDesign and Illustrator as pertains to
>> print/publishing?
>
> Illustrator is for, well, ilustration. I make book jackets with it but
> is there is more text involved I always use InDesign, which is a layout
> program with a few tools for vector graphics. YOu can of course make a
> page or two in Illustrator and import into InDesign - as ai files, noo
> need for exporting eps files.
>
>> I've used Freehand for years, primarily as a print/publishing tool to
>> assemble theatrical programs to hand out before performances for my
>> community theatre. These programs contain photos of cast members, bios
>
> If the programs have more than four pages this is clearly a job for
> InDesign and I would not use FreeHand. For good typography FreeHand has
> quite poor text controls and it still amazes me that people here regard
> them as good. Character styles and especially nested styles are worth
> checking out.
>
> Jukka

Thank you for the explaination. Still, I'm sure I'm not the only one
who uses Freehand for print-publishing small jobs like brochures and
programs. It's definately better for this than MS Word and less
expensive than Quark. Macromedia seems to toot this program as having a
foot in both camps: illustration and print-publishing and I've always
liked it's ability to flow text around graphics. I will continue to use
it but I wish Adobe would give a prive break from it to InDesign/

Joe

> Thank you for the explaination. Still, I'm sure I'm not the only one
> who uses Freehand for print-publishing small jobs like brochures and
> programs. It's definately better for this than MS Word and less

True, FreeHand is a very good tool for brochures. Only if body text handling were better. However I've heard from printing houses that they sometimes get books with hundreds of pages made with FreeHand. I can imagine it is a nightmare for them.

MS Word is horrid in making layout, even a simple task with styles is a nightmare. In fact MS Publisher would be a better choice but seldom used.

Again InDesign has superior text controls and worth checking out (download a demo). But it is at it's best in making longer documents like books.

Jukka