8th August 2004

Posted August 8, 2004

To say it is frustrating that vector programs do not play well together is an understatement. In my senior year of college I learned Illustrator in a “Computers for Graphic Designers” course. I got to be very good at it, and fast by the end of the semester. I continued to use the program while applying for my first job.

I landed my first job at Spindel in Grand Rapids and they used Macromedia Freehand. Having never used the program, I figured the principles were still the same, and they were. Seven months later I was just as good, if not better at Freehand. Now all I use is Freehand and have lost some of that knowledge base, just by lack of not using it everyday, for Illustrator.

At my current career, I designed a flyer for our company’s web design template program. I put together the flyer in Freehand, but as we came to find out over numerous occasions over the coming months, Freehand won’t export a file to a .tiff. Or at least not very easy. If my computer did not freeze up, we may be able to get a .tiff of the flyer after letting the computer sit for just over an hour. Sometimes it would never perform.

After a many unsuccessful struggles, and no help from Macromedia, I decided to rebuild the pieces in Illustrator, since that is what all printers have. (Damn Adobe’s stranglehold on the printing industry.) But Illustrator has it’s own bugs. The version 10 I was using would not start after numerous fresh installs. Then when it did finally, I was missing half of my vector creation tools.

We had to go back to version 9, and soon found out that some of the filters were specific to that version and could into be edited in version 10. But, as of now we should be able to get the flyer printed.

Long and short of the story is, why can’t Freehand make nice Illustrator documents and act a little bit like a print program and not a web version of a vector program. I also call out to Illustrator to work well in importing and general integration with other vector programs because, although it is top dog, you can never expect everyone to be in your allegiance. But you can expect possible new customers if they can use your program to edit their old files and find that it is overall more flexible.