Freehand/Illustrator Switcher Guide from Adobe

April 26th, 2006 at 3:00 PM - News by Jeff Gamet

Adobe recently added a Freehand to Illustrator Migration Guide to its Web site, adding to speculation that there is no future for Freehand. The guide is comprehensive, and includes a lot of useful information for Freehand users planning to switch to Illustrator CS2, and Illustrator users that are looking for a nice overview of the application.

According to Creative Toolbox, Adobe also added a shorter technical resource paper that discusses Freehand to Illustrator migration to its Design Center Web site.

The future of Freehand has been in question even before Adobe purchased Macromedia. After Macromedia released Freehand MX, the product languished without updates while other applications, like Dreamweaver and Flash continued to receive regular improvements and enhancements.

Adobe has not officially commented on the demise of Freehand, and may even keep the product alive for some time, which is something it has also done with PageMaker. Itis not likely, however, that it will pursue further development considering Freehand has been a direct competitor to Illustrator, and its code is now out of date compared to the other applications in Adobeis arsenal.

You can download the 11MB Migration Guide in PDF format here, and the 392KB resource paper here.