I thought I would share my experience using FreeHand in an
InDesign CS2 workflow for the first time,
first a little history: I have almost exclusively used trusty old FreeHand for 95% of my layout work for the last 10 years up till now, only tackling the crappy old dinosaur that is Quark when the job size just got too big for Freehand,
one of my regular annual jobs is to produce a 52 page full colour catalogue for a local company, too big for FH and a real pain in Quark, so this year I took the plunge and bought the Adobe CS2 Design Suite with the intention of only using InDesign CS2 for long format jobs like this catalogue and sticking with FH for my regular work.
Sorry folks but I have to tell you, I won't be using Freehand for any of my layout work from now on, InDesign CS2 is no less than Awesome!! I finished the whole job in record time, and due to the great tools, honestly a better design.
just being able to use native photoshop psd files with transparency directly in Layout is fantastic, not to mention selectable hide and show layers from within the psd, I could go on and on about the features that blew me away but many of you already know about them, (nested style sheets anyone!?)
needless to say from now on I will only be using FreeHand to produce my vector logo's etc, however if this is the situation then there's a good case for learning Illustrator as .ai files can also be used natively in InDesign.
I still think FreeHand is a great all rounder, but I have to say I now feel more confident that I could live without it if that's the way the cookie crumbles!
first a little history: I have almost exclusively used trusty old FreeHand for 95% of my layout work for the last 10 years up till now, only tackling the crappy old dinosaur that is Quark when the job size just got too big for Freehand,
one of my regular annual jobs is to produce a 52 page full colour catalogue for a local company, too big for FH and a real pain in Quark, so this year I took the plunge and bought the Adobe CS2 Design Suite with the intention of only using InDesign CS2 for long format jobs like this catalogue and sticking with FH for my regular work.
Sorry folks but I have to tell you, I won't be using Freehand for any of my layout work from now on, InDesign CS2 is no less than Awesome!! I finished the whole job in record time, and due to the great tools, honestly a better design.
just being able to use native photoshop psd files with transparency directly in Layout is fantastic, not to mention selectable hide and show layers from within the psd, I could go on and on about the features that blew me away but many of you already know about them, (nested style sheets anyone!?)
needless to say from now on I will only be using FreeHand to produce my vector logo's etc, however if this is the situation then there's a good case for learning Illustrator as .ai files can also be used natively in InDesign.
I still think FreeHand is a great all rounder, but I have to say I now feel more confident that I could live without it if that's the way the cookie crumbles!