Why freehand is better than illustrator

Both programs are capable of creating and exporting bitmap files for Web delivery in a variety of formats. Each performs these tasks admirably, but Illustrator has a slight advantage. Interestingly, it's Illustrator's preview option that separates it from FreeHand, rather than the output of the graphics themselves. The final Internet enhancements focus on producing PDF documents, and again, there's no clear winner. Both programs can output PDF files without the slightest difficulty and, with continued refinements, could give Acrobat itself some competition.

FreeHand has long been the leader when it comes to page layout. Although Illustrator has tried to narrow the gap, Macromedia appears solidly ahead. Probably its greatest advantage is FreeHand's ability to deal with multiple pages of various sizes within a single document. The new Symbols library, a feature borrowed from Flash, significantly enhances this feature. Basically, the symbol panel works by allowing you to conveniently store and globally update design elements.

Modifying a symbol causes all instances of the symbol to update, which is ideal for designs that reuse page elements. Illustrator doesn't offer a competing feature, although developers have added the ability to set the workspace to any size. They may have been hoping to offset the FreeHand advantage by allowing a designer to theoretically create the effect of multiple pages. Theoretically is the key here; although possible, it's an involved process that needs another upgrade or two before it's in the same class as FreeHand.

FreeHand and Illustrator have been popular for so long because of their key vector-drawing abilities. Macromedia and Adobe largely maintained status quo in this area, focusing the majority of their attention on the Web. The main differences between the two are in freehand drawing. In the previous release, Illustrator offered a new Pencil tool. The pencil is a superb tool, allowing a beginner to draw freehand. That ability isn't impressive by itself, but it's cool that Illustrator actually converts your drawing to a Bezier curve.

The resulting curves are editable like any other curve. On the other hand, FreeHand also provides the FreeHand Tool, but it's not as well developed as Illustrator's counterpart. Envelope distortions are nothing new, but the unique qualities of the Macromedia offering are more sophisticated and flexible than previous versions.

It lets you design or use a prebuilt envelope to shape almost any object. One particularly nice feature is that text remains editable even after the envelope has been applied, although this is true only when a single distortion has been applied. Illustrator provides no equivalent built-in function, but various third-party tools can do similar things.

FreeHand and Illustrator appear to be borrowing many of their features from bitmap editors like Adobe Photoshop. Both provide new lasso tools for selecting objects.

The FreeHand implementation is superior because it allows for a variety of options. You can choose to include only objects entirely within the selection, or include partially selected objects as well.

And although I use Flash, I find that it's just as easy to bring in Illustrator vector stuff Search In. Share More sharing options Followers 0. Posted June 16, Would they be better for drawing from scratch than Photoshop? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options Recommended Posts. Schmoove Posted June 16, I use Photoshop, so I prefer Illustrator Otherwise, I have no idea what you're talking about.

One can be just as disorganized in Illustrator. FreeHand has had layers since version 1. On maps, I routinely use more than layers. FreeHand is geared towards organized work. In Illustrator, it's a version 5 afterthought. These too are IL5.

I do not regard graphical styles as a "feature". It's incredibly essential for anyone doing any kind of technical illustration. When you're handling masses of data, you cannot afford to be unorganized. FreeHand's styles are implemented at the very core of an object oriented data model. Sounds great, James. What are you talking about?! You mean, like keyboard input, or magnification levels? Please be specific, because on my score sheet, FH wins by a mile.

Oh, you mean the ability to open and export other file formats? FH imports and exports all Illustrator formats, Illustrator opens Illustrator - period. OK, I'll give you that one, happy launching! I'll bet Illustrator quits quicker too! I don't see how slower screen draw, limited file formats, clumsy editing tools, etc.

The only problems I've ever had outputting FH files were during debugging of custom PostScript code that I created and linked to objects in the illustration. Of course, then I couldn't have rendered the complex algorithmic linestyle I needed either.

As for service bureau preference, they prefer what they're most used to. Just as we all do. I guess it's still a sticking point for me. No matter how hard I try, I cannot reconcile myself to it. FreeHand 5. Jim writes that FreeHand's "much slower" than Illustrator. I love this. Admittedly, I was incorrect on this item, my profuse apologies.

Even version 4. I own FH 4. AI opens the same file Illustrator 3. It also redraws faster and saves faster. Illustrator saves smaller too. Beg pardon, but Yep! Well, this isn't strictly true. When you re-save it, by default it is saved as a FH-only file - to get an editable EPS you have to re-export it. The ability is there, but it's nowhere near as easy to use as Illustrator. Awaiting your flames, Graham. Do you guys actually use these products Or do you just talk about it?

Or is it you never read the manuals? The Illustrator Mac selection tools work the same as before Cranky but cheerfully yours Paul. With Illustrator, you will spend all : : No way!

I agree. FH is good at other things, though. I don't really accept many : client files Thus, compatibility's not an : issue Sure, Mike. As a die-hard Illustrator head, I can recommend FH. On a PowerMac, FH's screen redraw is so much faster then Illustrator's that I often bring Illustrator files into it just for the speed. One nice feature of FH is that you can grab in the middle of a group somewhere and snap its edges to guides wish this worked in reverse though, i.

FH's ability to print separations is invaluable to us -- there is no way to overprint a bitmap in Illustrator. If you make a rectangle, then need it to be a different dimension, you just type in the new size or you can drag a corner and it remains a rectangle. Same with circles. FH's coordinate system works that way too. It's like Quark, where you can reset the zero point sure wish Illustrator could do that! Of course, tiff support is a nice feature too.

High-resolution tiff display lets you align a bitmap to a postscript object better than any other program I've used. Looking forward to Illustrator 6 for this Mark, you write emphatically that Illustrator is faster than FreeHand. Check the latest version of FreeHand 5.

I have never seen a straght comparison of file opening time, but I know it was speeded up dramatically in FreeHand 5.

Check it out. One thing everyone should know is that we are fully aware that a very significant percentage of all our customers and Adobe's use both. We'll both keep upgrading. They will both get cooler. Competition is good. Of course, FreeHand will win in the end : -David works for Macromedia. I just came from Seybold where Adobe launched Illustrator 6. Their product sheet says that it will ship "in the first quarter of I'd agree that the Illustrator upgrade will be more significant in terms of where it's coming from, but check the specs on it Rasterization and Photoshop filters will be in FH5.

It's got drag'n'drop to Photoshop, and also a nice "path patterns," but it still needs to catch up on speed, inline graphics, antialiasing, text handling and such.

I don't have the best view on this, and so would like to hear from others. It's a significant upgrade from current Illustrator, true, but does the new version puzzle you as much as it does me? The vector-to-bitmap conversion in FreeHand 5. Higher antialiasing takes longer time, but you can still get crisp images if you want them, too.

Point is that more options are under your control in FH5. It's possible to rasterize down with low antialiasing and then to use a Blur-type filter in FreeHand on the bitmap, but that would not contain as much info as sampling directly from the curves. One thing FH5. If going from FreeHand to Director I'd rasterize in bit or bit, import to Director at high color, and then dither down to an arbitrary palette from there.

You could always just go through the Clipboard if crisp edges were desired. In-line graphics allow graphics on a curve, too I suspect that this discussion is devolving into a religious discussion, which I have no intention of joining. However, I will make the following comments, which will be my last word on this subject: I have been working in the service bureau business since early days of Mac DTP.

I have a core group of applications that I use for in-house designed work, chosen for many reasons -- speed, reliability, flexibility, and integration. Other factors also come into the picture when evaluating a product for inclusion in the core group -- service from the publisher, user-interface style, and other intangibles. Because customers use a wider range of tools than we do in-house based on factors other than performance -- price point, platform, etc. I have had to work with a lot of applications not in our core group.

Most of these applications are inferior in many ways. Corel Draw, for example, is an extremely popular product on Intel platforms, but is widely regarded in service bureau circles as an utter piece of crap a technical term for bad software. It is popular because it is cheap -- often purcashed at bargain basement prices by unknowledgable customers based on the misinfomation of fast-buck salesmen who would know a killer app if it, well, came up and killed them.

So it can be readily demonstrated that the popularity of a product is no measure at all of its fitness for a particular purpose. Therefore, measures of sales of Freehand over Illustrator demonstate nothing other than sales performance, and possibly says nothing at all about how fit the product is for its purpose. In a direct comparison between Illustrator and Freehand, Illustrator's tool set shines.

Redraw speed is inconsequential if the bezier curve tool is poorly or clumsily implemented. My contention is that all of the speed advantages of the software are illustory and based only on redraw speeds, not on the actual usability of the software, interface, feature set, or tools. I have been forced to used Freehand on and off for years, and I find the implementation of simple bezier curve editing to be poor, overly complex, slow, and clumsy.

Similar concerns with other features in Freehand keep this software on the hard drive only for the times that customers supply Freehand files, and then it is only used to convert them to Illustrator where they can be fixed and printed properly. As for usability, an application is hard drive filler if the files it produces cannot be printed reliabily.

I received E-Mail from a representative of Macromedia after my last posting on this subject, concerned that there was the impression that Freehand files did not print reliably. As well they should be concerned.