There is no doubt that using Adobe Creative Suite has HUGE advantages. It does
everything that Freehand used to do (the past tense is deliberate - it surely
can't survive forever), and a whole lot more... plus more and more.

We moved over to Creative Suite five years ago as most of our work is for the
UK, and Indesign was giving Quark a run for its money. Illustrator, Photoshop
and Indesign make a great team - and since all artwork could be proofed with
Acrobat Pro - our artwork time is a tiny percentage of a job.

We're now doing a lot more South African work, and specifically packaging. We
create our all-singing-all-dancing designs and impress the pants off our
clients. We check our plates and colours in Acrobat Pro - and all is OK with
our artwork and ready for print.

Understandably, the label or packaging printer needs to do some technical
production on the artwork specific for their machines (step-ups, bleeds, dot
gains etc). But because they have been using Freehand forever, they want
everything converted back. Not because Illustrator can't do what they need, but
because they just don't know how to use it yet.

Now I can guarantee one thing. If the artwork process takes an hour in Adobe
CS, it will take 4 to 8 hours in Freehand. Hence agencies having to have large
artwork departments! Freehand is like a blinkered horse when it comes to
artwork - it only has one way - and you can't cheat like you can in CS.

"Is your file PostScript friendly" they ask. Of course it bloody is! Adobe
invent PostScript!
"You PDF is corrupt, it has blocks all over it" they say. Turn on your
overprint preview (and read the Acrobat Pro manual)... and whilst you're
there... check out those amazing plates in the output preview (no printing
hundred of pages to check plates)!

Can't the printers see the benefits?
Who is going to teach the production departments of printers that Freehand is
not the only program that can do what they need?

When printers start using CS as well, design agencies can start to produce
better work and stop wasting time with friggen Freehand.

> There is no doubt that using Adobe Creative Suite has HUGE advantages.
> It does
> everything that Freehand used to do (the past tense is deliberate - it
> surely
> can't survive forever), and a whole lot more... plus more and more.

This applies partly to Illustrator not to whole CS including InDesign and
Photoshop. I used to hate Illustrator but now I use it all the time
although I know it was a shotgun wedding.

The best program is the one you feel comfortable working with. It is that
simple. Most likely I would not wear your shirt. ;-)

Jukka

>> There is no doubt that using Adobe Creative Suite has HUGE advantages.
>> It does
>> everything that Freehand used to do (the past tense is deliberate - it
>> surely
>> can't survive forever), and a whole lot more... plus more and more.
>
> This applies partly to Illustrator not to whole CS including InDesign
> and Photoshop.

Did I miss the point or what? Anyway it is a bit strange to compare
FreeHand with CS package.

There are still many things that are difficult to do with multiple
programs that could be done just in FreeHand. Although FreeHand has quite
poor body text controls (there are layout program like options but they do
not really work) making for example a book jacket was more simple and
faster. This is simply because area text in Illustrator is very slow and
buggy as hell. Even the amount of text in the backcover can take a lot of
time to adjust. Not to mention that Illustrator reflows text in random
paragraps while making changes in just one.

I could use InDesign and import all the images and graphic but that would
be even slower.

Like said I use Illustrator a lot and kinda like it sometimes, but the
bugs are driving me nuts. Some of the bugs, still not fixed, appeared in
version 10!!!!

Jukka