Freehand discontinued, Adobe upgrade routes and migration guides for converting users to Illustrator.

Freehand finally discontinued – upgrade paths to Illustrator

The venerable vector drawing program Freehand is finally to be retired permanently. Adobe are providing upgrade prices, migration tutorials and new Freehand-friendly functions in Illustrator CS3.

The venerable vector drawing program Freehand is finally to be retired by Adobe. The announcement will come as little surprise to most designers and illustrators. Freehand, which over the years has been developed by Altsys, Aldus and finally – until they were purchased by Adobe – Macromedia, has not been updated for four years.

Although the announcement has not been made officially by Adobe, Senior Product Manager John Nack has posted details about the winding down of the program on his Adobe blog.

Whist Adobe will continue to sell Freehand, they will no longer develop, update or patch Freehand for future operating systems.

It's clear that Adobe would rather that creatives upgraded to Illustrator and the blog article details an upgrade path to Illustrator CS3 of US$199 for registered Freehand users. Although there is no direct upgrade path for Freehand users to any of the Adobe Creative Suite 3 bundles.

Adobe have also built some features into Illustrator CS3 specifically for ex Freehand users. These include Flash integration, Freehand file importing and a number of Freehand-like tool, path editing and user interface options.

The discontinuation of Freehand means that CorelDraw is the only professional rival to Adobe Illustrator in the vector graphics market.

Adobe blog

17 May 2007

Freehand, Illustrator and vector drawing related resources and forum discussions

• Adobe buys Macromedia
• Adobe Illustrator help forums
• Freehand versus Illustrator – debate amongst forum members.
• Similarity between Freehand and Illustrator.
• Help with Freehand – help getting a graphic into Freehand with all the Pantones intact.
• Is Illustrator a lot like Freehand – will it be easy to change over to Illustrator from Freehand?