Moving On From FreeHand.
FreeHand is dead.
In May of 2007 Adobe finally admitted what we’ve known all along — FreeHand is no more. There will be no future development. It has been left to fade away.
If you've designed in FreeHand for years, you are not alone. We’ve received a lot of calls and emails from designers who’ve relied on FreeHand for years.
One Seattle designer wrote us this week:
“I’ve been using Freehand for nearly 20 years. In the last 10 years, it’s become my main program for both page layout and vector art. It has been great to have a program do both so well.So now I’m grieving for my dying program and wondering where I go from here. I have done some work over the years in Illustrator and don’t really care much for its interface. I have never used InDesign but I’m told it is better to work in than Illustrator.
Are there any classes that will help me make this strange and challenging transition? I’m very concerned about many years of archives that I need to access.
Thanks for your listening ear... (I’m pretty freaked out by all this).”
The last version, FreeHand MX, was released over four years ago. Since then it has not aged gracefully. Today's new Intel-based Macs are leaving it behind. Printers are increasingly viewing FreeHand files with suspicion.
Is it time to finally make a change?
Why should you set aside a tool you know so well? If you are like so many other designers, FreeHand has become so intuitive and easy-to-use that you don't have to think about what you are doing. You create layouts effortlessly.
By comparison working with Adobe Illustrator can feel baffling. The tools feel awkward. Everything is mixed up from what you are used to. Creating layouts is difficult compared to Freehand.
One long-time FreeHand user summed up their experience like this:
"When I forced myself to make the jump to Illustrator and InDesign several years ago everything felt kludgy at first. I'm embarrassed to admit it now, but for a couple months I would mock-up pages in Freehand first while I was still figuring out what I wanted things to look like, and then force myself to rebuild them in Illustrator or InDesign for the final art."
The good news. Relief in sight.
Today I read a note from a designer that summed up how a lot of people feel:
"I LIVE in FreeHand! Guess I'll die there too."
The good news is that you can make the jump to something new. Once you start learning new ways of working, the awkwardness only lasts a short while. With a little support, you'll soon be designing and creating as naturally in Adobe's new Creative Suite as you did in FreeHand.
Even better, once you get past the awkward stages of learning new software, you'll discover a whole new world of features in the latest version of Adobe's Creative Suite 3.
Moving Away from FreeHand — The Class.
Join CreativeTechs' Jason Hoppe for a special 1-day seminar at Seattle's School of Visual Concepts. You'll learn how to transfer your knowledge of FreeHand into the newest versions of Adobe Illustrator and InDesign.
[Offer Needed Here.]
This is not an Illustrator class!
[I've just added this section after talking with Jason. It is not read yet.]
Most of the other classes we've seen for struggling FreeHand users are really just traininig sessions for Adobe Illustrator with a few extra screenshots.
But if you've spent the last ten years designing and working in FreeHand, Illustrator may be the absolutely wrong place for you to move to. Most of the horror stories we've heard from ex-FreeHand users involve trying to make Illustrator into something it's not.
Here is one example: If you love FreeHand's Paste-Inside feature for cropping photos, you'll probably be horrified at the the convoluted approach that Illustrator requires with it's clipping-mask approach. Yet most FreeHand to Illustrator classes continue to push that approach as the correct way to migrate out of FreeHand.
But over in Adobe InDesign, there is a "Paste Into" feature that works virtually identically to FreeHand's Paste-Inside. In fact, for many designers, InDesign is a better fit than Illustrator for many projects.
We'll help you understand which tools
Plus the Rest of Creative Suite
A lot has changed over the last several years. We'll gently walk you through where to go next.
