Anyone out there remember FreeHand?
Aldus FreeHand, at one time, was the vector drawing application of choice for most of us in the newspaper world. Then it became Macromedia FreeHand. And then Adobe FreeHand.
Adobe actually bought FreeHand twice. The second time was obviously to kill FreeHand, leaving Adobe Illustrator as the only real choice for vector drawing.
Which, of course, is what this suit is about.
Free FreeHand — a nonprofit group of more than 5,500 FreeHand fans — has filed a federal antitrust class action suit in San Jose against Adobe Systems, reports the Courthouse News Service.
The class claims Adobe acquired FreeHand in 2005 when it bought Macromedia, “effectively removing FreeHand from the market by failing to update the program.” Since then, Adobe has “significantly raised the price of Illustrator,” and in 2007 Adobe announced it would stop developing FreeHand, the class claims.
…In 2004, before Adobe acquired FreeHand, Illustrator cost $399. The price increased to $499 in 2005, and to $599 in 2008, when Adobe released a new version of Illustrator, the class says.
Instead of developing new features for Illustrator, Adobe has “simply been incorporating existing FreeHand features into Illustrator, instead of innovating and developing features not already developed for FreeHand,” including “perspective tool, paste/draw inside, blob brush, and multiple pages,” the complaint states.
The complaint says that Adobe cornered the market unfairly on both the Mac and PC platforms.
So what does Free FreeHand hope to get out of the suit? The story says:
Plaintiffs seek class certification, declaratory judgment and treble damages.
Whatever that means.
Find Courthouse News Service story here.
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And now, my take on this…
FreeHand was by far the most popular vector drawing tool for visual journalists. But it ceased to be the best drawing tool years before.
Like everyone else my age, I started out back in the mid-1980s with MacDraw and then moved to MacDraw II and Adobe Illustrator. Illustrator was very slick but very difficult to use. When I first saw FreeHand — during a Poynter session taught by Jeff Goertzen back in April 1989 — I fell in love with it and immediately began using it full-time.
That came to a halt with FreeHand version 4.0 in 1994. The folks at Aldus really screwed up the application by making it slower and clunkier. Operations that used to take one click suddenly took three or four clicks. Oh, and the screen redraw time was terrible. I suffered through a couple of full-page projects in 4.0 and then dumped FreeHand for Illustrator.
“Bridges at Risk,” a project I executed in February 1994
in Freehand 4.0 for the Raleigh, N.C. News & Observer.
In fact, this piece earned my first SND Award of Excellence.
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For the next ten years it seems like, most of the newspaper world continued to use FreeHand. Yet, certain newspapers used Illustrator exclusively. I spent more than three years at the Chicago Tribune, for example. We used only Illustrator. I spent a week visiting the New York Times in 1997. They used only Illustrator.
When I left the Tribune and got into management — in 1999 at the Des Moines Register — I told my staff they could continue to use FreeHand if they wished. But I was going to use Illustrator. And that’s what we did. And we had no major problems with that.
However, I did notice that occasionally, a large FreeHand graphic would glitch up in our DTI front-end system. A number of times I was called in late at night to troubleshoot. What I discovered was that I could open the FreeHand file in Illustrator, save it as an Illustrator document and it would sail right into DTI with no problems. That told me a lot about the differences between the two apps.
When I moved to the Virginian-Pilot in 2003, I made the same deal with my staff. Use FreeHand if you like; I’ll use Illustrator. It was only a problem, really, when we used wire graphics. Eventually, though — as the apps were updated — opening FreeHand graphics with Illustrator became a problem. Finally, the IT department of the Pilot a) switched my entire department from Macs to PCs and b) dumped FreeHand.
A year or so later, Adobe announced it was no longer supporting FreeHand and the rest of the industry transitioned to Illustrator. But it was no longer an issue for us.
So I’ve used Adobe Illustrator software for 24 years and I’ve used Illustrator exclusively for 17 years. For the life of me, I don’t understand why folks love FreeHand so much.
And good luck with that class-action suit. But if the courts can’t nail Microsoft, I doubt they’ll do much to Adobe.
I was one of those that loved Freehand back in the day. We struggled through the 4.0 phase and kept on until 10.0 when we finally switched to Illustrator (and from Quark to InDesign). We also had Illustrator on the side and I could use it, but was faster in FH. But now that I’m fully integrated into Illustrator, and love the interactivity within the products of the suite, and I’d never go back. Just seems like all they want is money. Or maybe they just aren’t thinking clearly. I don’t see FH ever making a comeback.
And I do remember those heady days of early Freehand, and workshops at Poynter and SND in the late 80s and early 90s.
Freehand 3.1 had the work in preview and people loved the paste into function of FreeHand. It sure beat the Illustrator option of masking. Remember if you drew a box as a mask, you had to ungroup it and delete the center point? Terribly clunky.
Your back and forth path from Freehand to Illustrator mimics mine to a certain extent, Chuck. I started out using Illustrator 88 (remember when there was a separate app Adobe used for printing stuff from Illustrator), but then made the jump to Freehand when a colleague and I at the Gainesville Sun decided to produce a graphic for Super Bowl 28 in Atlanta, Ga.
Mike Morgan (my colleague in question) used Freehand. I was an Illustrator man. I decided it would just be easier if we both used Freehand since we were working on the project together.
Once I started using FH, there was no turning back for several years. FH just beat the pants of AI (with the exception of the horrendous FH 4.0 as you mentioned, Charles).
I always kept my AI skills sharp though, and once Adobe really started integrating the workflow through all their apps and leveraging that advantage, I switched back to AI. That was probably in 1999 or 2000 I guess.
Adobe got their act together and made the whole suite of software a pleasure to use, and FH was pretty much done at that point.
The only thing I miss about FH is the “paste inside” command. AI’s mask function today, though not as clunky as it was in the version Chris mentioned, still doesn’t hold a candle to the simplicity of FH’s paste inside.
I am glad that someone is taking the charge to sue Adobe. Illustrator would not be where it is today without the heated rivalry against Freehand. Think back on all of the features that Freehand introduced and Adobe had to play catch up: multiple pages, color preview, toolbar customization, etc. These rivalries only made the programs better.
Now, we’re only seeing tiny incremental changes to Illustrator. How long do we have to wait for the ability for area type to switch to point type (like Freehand), color tint palette (like Freehand), or better layer management (like Freehand)? And do you think Illustrator will ever update its charting tool — it hasn’t changed for more than 10 years!
My exerience is quiet the opposite of yours. I have been an Illustrator user first and fell in love with FreeHand in 1989. It was way ahead of Illustrator. I also was not happy with what Macromedia did to FreeHand and I switched back to Illustrator again – where I worked by then for 2 years I had to anyways – but I hated it every second. After I was free to use what I wanted, I got back to FreeHand and did never regret it. Lets face it: Illustrator is a Dinosaur, old code that never was really good, patched with effects and features to make it look better. The basic tools are so clunky compared with FreeHand’s. And everything needs twice as much clicks. Now they put in some features of FreeHand, it only makes Illustrator even slower and even more complicated. There is no question, Adobe made the wrong decision. They should have buried Illustrator and make FreeHand their tool of choice. Even after 8 years without updates, FreeHand still beats Illustrator comparing the basic tasks.
Charles,
Of course you can’t understand the why folks love FreeHand so much.
1. The discipline of page layout MUST be produced in PageMaker (late 80s), Quark, or InDesign. That’s what they were intended for. Not vector based programs as FreeHand and Illustrator. It’s not their strengths or the discipline they were designed for. I’m sorry, but the whole publishing industry had it wrong.
2. You jumped ship at 4.0?! Enough said. You have no idea what the last FreeHand edition offers or how it performs.
3. When it comes down to shear seat of the pants, intuitive, think and operate like a creative FreeHand blows Illustrator out of the water. Oops…did I just say that?
4. I’m a Graphic Design professional myself being in the business for almost 30 years now. This is 2011 and I continually produce graphics i.e logos, packaging, signage, graphics for packaging, and illustrations that are produced and printed in the U.S. as well as, China using FreeHand software.
5. Confusing and unintuitive software does not equate to superior. When did that happen that if it’s more complicated to learn, it must better?! I suppose for some egos it can.
6. True competition. If Illustrator is so good what are it’s users afraid of? Look if I want to drill a hole I have a choice between a plethora of manufacturers that produce drills. Choices.
5. I don’t by into the sheeple, elitist, attitude that many designers have. I love Adobe products! I recently jumped from Quark to InDesign because it was the right thing to do. PhotoShop, there is nothing like it! Illustrator…not so much. When I can paste inside in (One) simple operation, or have one line of copy attached to the top AND bottom of a circular path (both facing upward)in one simple move, I will start to think about switching to Illustrator. Yes, I use those functions all the time. In the end I don’t care if the name of the software is called (Fried Pickles) if it can perform and think the way a designer does and allows the designer to do their job instead of operating software. That’s where I am.