Freehand dead, discount crossgrade to Lineform

@Brady J. Frey
Yep - I guess we should just be grateful "discount" is not linked to every TUAW post with that word in it!

It seems like a "not invented here" syndrome to drop one acquired product only to introduce another product that's similar. It's good that it doesn't affect me, if the file format was orphaned or something like that, then it would bug me that my work is in a format that's no longer readable.

It's one right move from Adobe. Although I started out with Freehand, I slowly migrated my way to Illustrator for its excellent integration with other Adobe apps, even before the Creative Suite day.

I mean, dragging the artwork into Indesign and it works perfectly. It even does auto update when the original file is updated. When I need to apply complex coloring, I draw the vectors in Illustrator and drag-and-drop them into Photohsop. Painless. No need to convert to EPS.

The biggest advantage to Freehand is that it is closely tied to Dreamweaver, so the no-convert, drag-n-drop was a big convenient for people who use Macromedia Studio. I was a freelancer doing both print and web-design jobs. I had a dilema choosing between the full Creative Suite + Dreamweaver or Macromedia Studio + InDesign. I finally settled on the CS for ~$600 total. No regret ever since.

Are all the writers still going to link to their own internal searches? I've gone over this numerous times, it's old hat. When you have the word Lineform, instead of linking to your own internal category - Link to the source site that references the term! All it does is pose user confusion, and it doesn't increase your search engine ranking; it's an old SEO trick that the major systems have known for years, does nothing to improve your ranking, and it's a usability 101 no-no.

Freehand will be sadly missed. Really sadly. I know the more recent versions had some oddities, but still - mostly I managed to finish tasks quicker in Freehand than so calle Illustartor specialists (OK - it always depends on the tasks...). But 'Paste Into' was definitely one of the best ways to work. Especially since masked elements were hidden, and did not constantly flash up as outlines. And it was a lot easier to align elements by locking one, and aligning the other - that is - if I can still select the locked item.

I also doubt that Adobe would sell Freehand. They would not allow someone else to generate new competition.

Shame.

damn, this makes me sad. i've used freehand since 1.0 (you heard me right), and i am still incredulous that illustrator became the industry standard. no multiple pages in a single document at all?? jeez, adobe, what year is this? (never mind pages of differing sizes!).

long life freehand!

Canvas for OSX is also dead. Mark Franklin, executive vice-president of ACDSee, the company that now owns Canvas, posted this a few days ago:

"While we will not be incrementally releasing new versions of Canvas for the Mac platform, our R&D department is exploring opportunities to develop new cross-platform products that support and streamline our users’ workflow."

http://forums.acdsystems.com/index.php?showtopic=3845&st=20

I bought Lineform shortly after it was sold to Freeverse. I highly recommend this app for anyone looking to work with vector graphics for the first time. Lineform is very easy to use, and is very stable. Anyone looking for great pixel editing should also take a look at Seashore, a free Cocoa port of GIMP. The recent universal version is very stable and has about everything I needed from photoshop. I used both these programs in creation of the graphic elements in my app, YummySoup!.

Ken Humbard
http://hungryseacow.com

Oh and I used Freehand for over 10 years and LOVED it too. I migrated (kicking and screaming) to Illustrator a few years ago only because it was bundled competitively with Photoshop CS and InDesign. I still miss many of the features that AI still doesn't include such as paste inside and multiple page layouts of different sizes within the same document.

For professional graphic design I would suggest migrating to Illustrator instead of Lineform simply because of litho print shop support. That is the one thing that kept me from developing my Canvas skills--the lack of print shops (or other serious designers for that matter) that even had Canvas. For the occasional or hobby graphic enthusiast Lineform is great, but for someone who makes a living at the helm of their graphics workstation I wouldn't put my eggs in that basket. At least not until they have been around for a few years.