Illustrator VS Freehand (halftones)

[Vitaminado]

One of the features i love most in Freehand its the abillity to control Halftones...thats how we see the difference between a really pro oriented software and the rest!

[Sally]

Illustrator V Freehand

I posted this topic on the Adobe Illustrator Forum about a week ago. Makes for interesting reading! http://forums.adobe.com/message/3680453#3680453

[Vitaminado]

Even when I try to print a job in a postcript film printer illustrator choice of resolutions and lpi it's a joke!!

In Freehand i choose other... and i pick the combination i want.

It's incredible that i have search a lot of forums about Freehand vs Illustrator and no one talks about halfone's!!

One of the most interesting features of Freehand, the hability to choose several lines, types of dots and angles in a single job.

It's not a fight between two programs most of us use them booth and sometimes even other's like Corel. As a prepress professional, designer (i don't know if i can call myself "designer" i don't have a degree in Design) i use several programs but i create or redo my work in Freehand and i love it for it's simplicity, as i love photoshop for its image editing capabilities.


When i began working in this "art", we didn't even talk about graphic software, the only software was to write text that then was photographed and put to film. Then appeared Freehand and Illustrator, and the choice was simple Freehand all the way since 1991 (i think).

[FFH Mark]

This is an interesting addition to what FreeHand can do. There has been a lot of comparisons of the obvious features between the two programs but a deeper look into smaller details reveals quite a bit more. I didn't know of this halftone advantage. If there are any other similar examples, please post them.

FreeHand's mathematical underpinnings are more exact which may be related to why the programmers added more precise options to halftone output. A quote from FH programmer, Lorin Rivers,

"One HUGE difference between the two is FreeHand’s superior math as applied to path modification and point placement. To see what I mean, zoom way in on a path and click to add a point. FreeHand puts the point where you click while Illustrator puts the point NEAR where you click. That and the easy access to positioning elements/points via a dialog using MATH (don’t know if this works in Illustrator). In FreeHand, you can put “/2″ after some value, hit enter, and lo, it’s half as wide (or what have you)."

[Vitaminado]

I didn't know of this halftone advantage. If there are any other similar examples, please post them.

Thats the difference, I have to create the work sometimes but i also have to be worried with the fact that i have to make plates/film, and that the work will print ok.

Most designers don't care and don't know how the job is printed, because most of the times the prepress guy is there to take the fall!

Illustrator is a good program (not simple) to create, lots of filters, gradients and effects but if you had to think about overprints, dots, Lpi's, angles, spot, cmyk, both, if the job is for Flexo, Roto, Offset you would probably use less the capacities off the program.

Freehand is a more friendly, professional program and Halftones is there to prove it.

[trevor]

Now that work is upgrading my Mac (and hence Lion) I am in trouble. I have thousands of freehand files. I have tried opening in Illustrator CS5 and a number of errors occur which frightens me. Text blocks cut off and as a forms designer painfully checking every text block is tedious. It potentially adds a lot of time and or releasing forms with errors.

Halftones are critical to me. As a professional I select plate resolutions for screens on the forms. I also use screens to note particular areas. So a form may 10% Black 45 degrees 150lpi. Another shaded area may have 8% 0 degree 99 lpi. on the same form.

As I also do highly secure documents (i.e. Certificates, Bank Cheques and design money) there is complex embedded halftones in the artwork.

Illustrator seems to NOT be able to do any of these things. I am in tears!! and very frightened.

[Monika Gause]

The cutting off text objects is caused by Illustrators text handling. It converts any FreeHand text to area text, which is often a disadvantage. You can convert area text to point text using scripts. Find appropriate scripts here: www.kelsocartography.com/scripts

As for the handling of halftones, take a look at the plugin Phantasm CS. It creates vector based halftones at your chosen resultion settings. Since these are applied as effects, you can change anything afterwards. The plugin does a couple of other interesting things in the handling of color, especially spot color and separation. Find information here: www.astutegraphics.com