Recently Divorced Freehand users searching for romance with another Vector application…
Now that Freehand is officially dead I figure it’s time I start playing the field again and look for a new love. Here’s the list of potential candidates I’m aware of. Has anyone had a fling with any of these options? If so, please share your thoughts. And please add any that I’ve missed.
- Adobe Illustrator. Of course, this is the one Adobe is trying to hook us all up with. “AI has a great personality” they say. I’m not buying it*. It’s just the ugly, mean step-sister of Freehand, IMHO. (* And by that, I mean, yea, I probably will buy it at some point. Can’t live with out the CS suite, right?)
- Inkscape. Open source! I want to love this one, and have been fooling around with it on the side even while I was committed to Freehand. It has a lot of potential. It’s no where near Freehand’s level at this point, but seems to have a lot of momentum–some great features on the horizon based on the Inkscape Roadmap include: PDF export, AI import, CorelDraw import, CMYK support (!!), multi-page (not sure what that means, but hope it’s like Freehands multi-page support), and some tech-drawing enhancements.
- LineForm. LineForm is a new player on the field, and seems to have a lot of Buzz and a robust feature set (according to their handy chart). OSX only.
- Stone Works’ Create. Stone Design was one of the first companies to offer OSX-native DTP applications. Alas, I’ve never heard much about their programs. They do suffer from some horrendous application icons, but the promise of ‘free upgrades for life’ seem to outweigh that minor issue.
- Corel Draw. Corel Draw was always the 3rd place finisher behind AI and FH. That said, it seems to have a very loyal fan base. They no longer offer OSX versions (maybe the death of FH will get them to reconsider?) but it’s definitely a mature product. It also comes with a large font library, which is always nice. It also seems to have a little-mentioned ability to create fonts. Huh.
- Xara Xtreme. I don’t know a lot about Xara, other than I hear it suggested often when the topic of alternatives to Freehand pop-up. Windows only.
- Canvas. Another application I don’t know much about, but hear mentioned quite a bit. Comes in both OSX and Windows flavors. It also appears to have custom feature sets targetting cartographers and tech illustrators.
If you’ve used any of the above, please share your thoughts. If I’ve missed any, please mention them!
Update:Â Thanks for the comments thus far. I have a few more potential options to add:
- Cenon. Jesse mentioned this open source option in the comments below. It appears to be a bit more CAD/CAM centric moreso than DTP centric, but, that said, it does have a Desktop Publishing module, so it’s likely worth a look-see. Interestingly, it also has a dedicated Astrology tool. I imagine that’s fairly unique in the vector illustration world. ;o)
- Microsoft Expression Design. I had completely forgotten about Microsoft new weapon in the Adobe vs. Microsoft wars. The Expression line of products is based on software MS aquired about 2 years ago. It comes in a couple of flavors (’Web’ being DreamWeaver’s opponent) and Design is the one focused on vector illustration (amongst other features).
10 Comments
I worked with a designer about 7 years ago that swore by Xara.
You missed Cenon. Also open source, and built on top of GNUstep (meaning it should run on Linux, BSD, Windows and OS X). I do a lot of work with the GNUstep folks, and the other day an email hit the mailing list about trying to move Cenon into a more DTP-friendly role, a la Freehand. Not sure if it will happen, but it would be great to see!
PDF export already works acceptably in Inkscape. PDF (and therefore AI) import should be ready by the end of this Summer of Code.
Right now taking a look at AICS3, looks oke for the import so far for 50% of the file without “problems”. Did find a replacement for the lens export in Freehand: crop area…. does the work and you can save them too…all my styles are lost, layers are intact, selecting things is a pain in the…, all the text is left lined so had to do a lot of correction work… Still trying out AiCS3 because of the “freehand import” functionality.
tried all the (mac) ones, neither one of them could import freehand files with layers, or styles etc. and that’s one of the first needs for me, otherwise i have to create all my from scratch. (city maps with lots of text and elements)
Thanks for all the comments. I’ve added Cenon to the list above, Jesse. Good find.
daniel…I imagine that is going to be the major disadvantage to all of the above applications outside of AI. Importing FH documents is obviously a necessity for anyone with a legacy library of FH documents.
I wonder if exporting your FH file as an AI file first might help?
Interesting that some of the apps are aiming for AI import, when perhaps they really should be focusing on FH import first to win over some folks discouraged by Adobe.
…are you seriously asking this question b/c you want an answer, or because you want to swap the names of obscure vector drawing programs with others on this site?
If you are seriously a designer of some sort that knows and uses a vector drawing tool, then I think you know the answer to this question.
Jimmy:
If you are implying that we just bow down in front of Adobe with our $500 upgrade check and suck it up and use whatever they tell us to use, then yea, I implied the same in my post. ;o)
But I’m sincere in finding quality alternatives. I’m tired of having to fork over money to one vendor for all my design software. I think some alternatives are only a good thing for all of us. That and Illustrator just *isn’t* Freehand.
And yea, I like finding obscure software too.
I took the liberty of quoting you here at donationcoder forums
http://www.donationcoder.com/Forums/bb/index.php?topic=8841.msg65788;topicseen#new
There’s been a couple of other alternatives suggested there.
I’m also making this as a test post cause someone was saying it wasnt working earlier today..
I’ve been illustrating with Freehand for years now, and I’m considering Illustrator CS3.
My main beef with it is that the pen tool STILL doesn’t have all of the options of Freehand. (I’m talking about the option-drag when you’re laying down beziers.)
Other than that, I can live with the wonkiness and better integration of AI.
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