Put freehand options in to Illustrator

Question

I am a Freehand user that also uses Illustrator. Now it is
official that Adobe will not develop Freehand. We will all have to
start using Illustrator exclusively. There are some tools that are
much better with Freehand such as paste inside and punch. Also it
is much easier to work with text, for example you can resize a text
box and it will change the "Leading". It is also better to work
with pantone colors because you can make tint of pantone colors in
Freehand.
I think Illustrator would improve alot if these features were
implemented.
My question is, could you add some of these features to
Illustrator?
- Guðrún Anna Magnúsdóttir, graphics
designer
I did put this letter in Illustrator forum. Maybe we Freehand
users should tell our opinions there
Gudrun Anna

Answer 1

> 1) MULTIPLE PAGES!!
Yes
> 2) the option to view placed objects in low resolution
> 3) the align tool doesn't shift EVERY object to center
like Illustrator - thus
> having to re--align objects on your page again.
Click any selected object and Illustrator will align objets
to that object. Way better than FreeHand. Also distributing is far
better.
> 4) snap to guides SUCKS in illustrator - incredibly
non-precise.
True but 'smart snap' is very good.
> 5) paste inside is way better than illustrator's "masks"
- those are a
> frustrating joke!
Try layer masks, they are great as well as opacity masks.
> 6) bounding box should ALWAYS be reset automatically
after you rotate an image
> - but in Illustrator, you have to manually (no command
key for it either!) go
> to the menu & select it.
No, every object should keep rotation data until reset,
especially images.
> 7) scaling objects is so much better in freehand!
Different, not better. For example scaling with transform
palette is great, just type for example 50% (or a new value) into
with field and hit Enter.
> 8) color pallet much more user friendly
Exactly but color sets in CS3 is good improvement.
> 9) blends - so much easier to create & modify
True
> 10) # 5 from Jeremy - being able to modify a shape - ie:
putting a radius on
> corners of a box
I use cvalley's plug-in, beats FreeHand.
My list
11. Outline (node) editing
12. Search & replace
13. Changing type to are type like in freehand.
14. guide layer
15. Resizing text box should not resize type.
16. Overprint black text by default
17. No overprint for white (cmyk)
18. Speed, more speed
There are a lot of good features in Illustrator. In fact I
have not used FH for months but just recently edited old documents
and it felt clumsy and dated. Fast, though.
Jukka