New workflow first time with InDesign and FH

Question

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!

Answer 1

Robert Philpotts wrote:
>
quote:
Originally posted by:
maxman23
> ID feels cleaner and more logical - far more - than
Illustrator ever did.
>
> I have to agree, ID feels very natural and intuitive to
a long time freehand
> user, I found it very easy to make the transition, ID to
me feels like FreeHand
> with a whole bunch of extra features thrown in, now if
they can impliment the
> same structure into Illustrator, then they would be on
the right track, (paste
> inside rather than masks etc, the list goes on and on)
>
> Illustrator as it stands still baffles me, so counter
intuitve, frustrating
> and odd, not just for FreeHand users, I have used other
vector apps, Corel Draw
> and DrawPlus in the dark and distant past and they are
all easier to use.
>
> Illustrator has some incredible features, just badly
implimented imho.
Same experience for me and my coworkers. We use ID everyday
and made a
smooth transition from Quark. Illustrator, on the other hand,
is just
baffling and I wonder if that's a legacy of it being a much
older
program. Photoshop, in some ways, has some difficult concepts
to learn
but Adobe seems to have worked hard to make its tools easy to
use
(reworking filters and layer styles for a couple of
examples.) I wonder
if Illustrator just doesn't get the same kind of resources
that
Photoshop and some of the other programs get.