Freehand MX or Illustrator CS?
Out of context: Reply #12
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- fruitsalad0
I tried illustrator and then freehand probably 20 years ago and found immediately Freehand made sense. Then I was forced into using Illustrator at work over the years... with Adobe sadly then killing off Freehand.
In the past few years I've not needed to create vector illustrations, and so my time spent using Illustrator has mostly been for type and layouts.
But.. having spent all day in Illustrator trying to do what it says on the tin, Illustrate... I'm now spending all evening seeing if I can get a cracked version Freehand to work, and trying demos of alternative vector softwares.
Came across this:
http://www.freehandforum.org/ima…
and it's this specifically that I miss:
Yeah, you can get a $70 plugin to add that sort of feature to illustrator, but I hate relying on 3rd party plugins for such simple functions. Especially when I'm paying a monthly subscription already.
What strikes me most about using Illustrator so close to the year 2017 is firstly it's core code architecture seems to be based on 20+ year old code. It's GUI / UI /UX is also antique and inconsistent.
If you were to list out all the users end requirements currently met by Illustrator, and then UX/UI out the process to get there you would not produce Illustrator as it stands today. If you suggested UX/UI features found in todays version of Illustrator you'd be laughed at.
Align to:
There's only 3 options in the drop down. Why not have 3 buttons in all that empty space taken up by that dropdown button.
And why not have it act a bit smarter - if you only have one object selected, it should default to align to artboard, as align to selection doesn't do anything with only one item selected.
Then there's this:
want to change a stroke weight? well Adobe have three UI methods:
A drop down of predefined widths.
A text entry box incapable of parsing out numbers and units from arbitrary text,or doing calculations as seen in Cinema4D.
And two teeny tiny up/down arrow buttons. Which on a 27" monitor are seemly impossible to quickly or repeatedly click on.
What a mess. Why not just a slider and text box? Or text box you can slide up or down like in AE with different modifying keys to tone down the increments?
In 2017 you wouldn't create such software UI. So why am I forced to use it and pay a monthly subscription for it. Seriously hate Adobe. can they give Freehand out as open source to the Freehand community that want to keep using it for them to update and keep going? Adobe won't lose revenue as most people are on a subscript for the full suite of adobe crap.
Meanwhile Adobe release a 3D app about 5 people will professionally use for Bleach bottle ads.
Come on Adobe, focus on UX and Ui and get your software into 2017, make them super intuitive and a aid to the user, instead of antique clunky pieces of bloatware.