R.I.P. FreeHand
Yesterday, John Nack posted on his blog confirmation of what I have been fearing ever since Adobe bought out Macromedia. FreeHand will be developed no further.
FreeHand was the very first graphics application I learned to use. At the time, it was Aldus FreeHand—some flavor of version 3. It has been my tool of choice for over 14 years. It’s going to be extremely difficult to move on for a number of reasons.
1. Legacy Files - I have 14 year’s worth of FreeHand files. Some of them will open up just fine in Illustrator. Others may open, but what good is opening a multi-page document in an application that doesn’t support multi-page files?
2. Multiple Pages - This is the single most important feature that has made FreeHand so versatile, and makes Illustrator seem limited and useless to me. I’m not claiming that FreeHand is a great page layout application. It can’t do automatic page numbering. It won’t automatically split spreads up so that they print on the right page. However, I don’t do enough serious page layout to make InDesign worth purchasing and learning. FreeHand does enough to allow me to produce great design documentation and the occasional printed brochure or booklet.
3. Learning Curve - Back when I was a student, I had time to learn new software. I could spend a weekend working through tutorials. I learned as I worked on projects in class. I don’t have that luxury anymore. I can’t afford to learn new software while working on a project, because my projects are under time constraints. And as for my weekends, I’m a father of two, I own a house, I’m active in my community, I teach…. You get the picture. Illustrator is significantly different. Even something as simple as selecting a point on a bezier curve and adjusting the handles is fundamentally different. Consider me an old dog. Change is hard.
4. Cost - To “upgrade” to Illustrator CS3 will cost me $199. That wouldn’t be so bad if that’s all it took. However, Illustrator isn’t a replacement for FreeHand. It will fulfill my drawing needs, but it will not fulfill my page layout needs. That will require InDesign, which I don’t have an upgrade path to. For that, I’m looking at $699. Ouch! Now I’m looking at $900 to replace FreeHand, but I don’t do enough page layout to justify the cost. Furthermore, my company is not going to be happy about purchasing new software for me, and may not.
There are certainly things that I don’t like about FreeHand. The last two versions have been particularly buggy. The way they handle display of object properties is poorly conceived. But I think I’m going to have to continue using it for the time being. It’s an important part of my process. Hopefully, Illustrator will add multiple pages. That would be enough to get me to switch.
So, here’s to FreeHand! It was a truly great application. It will be missed.
