[Aric]

Being in the screenprinting industry for t-shirts, I like Freehand over Illustrator. Don't get me wrong, I'm not an Illustrator hater, I have to keep up and use both programs, I just like Freehand better....maybe it's because it's the program I learned first. But anyways, here it is..
1.Find & Replace-this option saves so much friggin time, especially when getting artwork from customers that doesn't know much about the seperating process. If you don't know what this does, you can search for almost anything in your document (overprints, colors, strokes, fill types, closed objects, type, etc.) and change it in a click. Very good for production work, and the main reason why I like Freehand better.
2.The rest seem like nothing compared to my first reason, they're just simple things that make a difference for me. Which brings me to the the Selection tool (the arrow). I like how in Freehand there's only one selection tool and I think its more powerful than both in Illustrator. Why?....cause I can select a group, an object in a group(by holding down the option key), selecting an object that's underneath another object (holding down the control key, or, option + control depending on what you're trying to select), and if you have a complex group (i.e. groups within groups) you can select one object in that group, hit the tilde key ~, and it'll select the....hmmmm..hard to explain, easier to just do it and you'll see for yourself.
3.The ability to have it show a pattern for overprinting objects. If you print out seperations, you'll know why I like this feature.
4.The ability to lock objects, but still be able to select it, just not move it. Here's why, sometimes you want to align a few objects together but not move one object. So you can lock the piece you want as the center and align the other objects to it.
Thats all I can think of for now. I know that there's ways to do the same things in Illustrator, but I'm so used to Freehand that I'm faster in it. Also, using an Ecopro, there was a glitch in Illustrator that would kill the firmware in the printer. Now I have a beta driver for the ecopro that fixed it, but for a while I had to do without it.
I'd like to see why people choose Illustrator over Freehand. It seems I'm outnumbered by Illustrator users.

[jeffhot]

That's funny, I just switched to Illustrator. I was just frustrated by the layers management in Freehand. I may go back to Freehand for 10 in OS X. But somehow I prefer Adobe all of the sudden. That's a change for me.

[jeffhot]

I gotta admit that is is a bit of a pain to keep switching back to that weird little pointer to make the handles appear in Illustrator. Freehand has the upper "hand" there for sure. But I really think layers are handled much better in Illustrator. Maybe even better than in Photoshop.

And sorry about the terrible pun.

[bluehz]

I originally learned illustration software with Freehand several years ago. Since that time I have switched to Illustrator. The main reason I switched was that I was having trouble printing colorseps, especially spot color, from Freehand, yet I could take the exact same file into AI and it printed great. Haven't used Freehand much since those days though I always liked it a lot. Like you - I kind of dabble with Freehand about 10% of the time and Illustrator the rest. Starting to rethink now that the Freehand Mac Os X is out. Does anyone know if the colorseps printing has been improved?

Also - my number ONE pet peeve about Freehand that could be so EASILY fixed by Macromedia......why can't I zoom in/out with cmd +/-??? It's a simple request but something that drives me NUTS!

[graphics84]

I like Illustrator...

I think most people will tend to like and use the program they "grew up with."

I also use both Freehand and Illustrator and will freely admit that each program has pros and cons... and I'm glad there are options for consumers. Hopefully they also push each other to become better programs not just higher version numbers with each release (LOL).

I like how AI seams cleaner and smooth... even thought freehand has the capabilities to do this to it seams to slow it down a lot.

also the transparency options are awesome and for anybody that goes back and forth between Illustrator and PhotoShop they know how cool it is for two programs meant for totally different things to understand each other pretty well.... ( I know that's pretty recent)

one last thing I do a lot of drawing in Illustrator with the pen and brush tool.... freehand didn't have that until 10 (that I know of) and I couldn't do my job without them...

lets hope they both stay around.... competition is good

[This message has been edited by graphics84 (edited 05-30-2001).]

[Aric]

Oh well.......I'm not sure what your problem in color seps is, I've been doing spot color seps from Freehand since it was Aldus and have never had a problem printing out my films. And as for the layers, I do like that better in Illustrator, but I just turned off the "Remember layer info" in the preferences and I like it better that way. Anyways, I'm not trying to convert anyone, just wanted some opinions.