is a blog about design, technology and culture written by Khoi Vinh, and has been more or less continuously published since December 2000 in New York City. Khoi is currently Principal Designer at Adobe. Previously, Khoi was co-founder and CEO of Mixel (acquired in 2013), Design Director of The New York Times Online, and co-founder of the design studio Behavior, LLC. He is the author of “How They Got There: Interviews with Digital Designers About Their Careers”and “Ordering Disorder: Grid Principles for Web Design,” and was named one of Fast Company’s “fifty most influential designers in America.” Khoi lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn with his wife and three children.
Several weeks ago, at his personal Web site Design by Fire, former Adobe employee Andrei Herasimchuk published an open letter to John Warnock, co-founder and spiritual father of Adobe Inc. In it, Herasimchuk proposed the idea of making a selection of Adobe’s highly popular typefaces — Caslon, Franklin Gothic, Helvetica Neue, and others — available to the public under an open source license. The idea would be to reshape — and improve — the typographic climate for Web designers through a newfound ubiquity of these generally well-regarded typefaces.
It’s a terrific concept that I fully support, but it’s probably best described as ‘a long shot’ in the grand scheme of things. It’s true that Adobe would generate a tremendous amount of good will by open sourcing a slate of very useful typefaces, but I think I have an even better idea for Adobe to totally hit a home run in the near term, and without compromising any of their existing businesses. Ready for my crazy idea? Here goes; make the next version of the company’s Creative Suite software not totally suck. Crazy, right?
Don’t Judge a Program by Its Packaging
I wrote some nice things about the packaging for the first iteration of the Adobe Creative Suite back when it was announced, three years ago. I found its sophisticated, illustrative reinterpretation of the brand quite seductive. Since then, though, it’s become stingingly apparent to me that not even the sexiest packaging design on the planet can hide the fact that the Creative Suite and its version 2 follow-up are train wrecks.
It’s almost pointless to enumerate their many shortcomings, but here are just a few: a massive and unrealistic processing overhead required any time you launch one of the suite’s programs; a general decline in reliability and a general increase in crash frequency; a surfeit of seemingly arbitrary, low-level changes to how basic commands are invoked and executed from version to version, often invalidating years of customer habits. Everything bad that you can do to these once effective, industry-leading software programs has been committed by Adobe in the name of ‘improving’ them — not the least of which is the basically ill-advised idea that they should be bundled and sold together as a prohibitively expensive “suite.”
Anyone who’s used the current or previous version of Adobe Creative Suite can probably attest to similar reactions. And, like me, I’ll bet they want the same thing that I want in the pending release of Creative Suite 3; Adobe should just make these indispensable tools in our toolbox good again. We want them to require only a few hundred megabytes of RAM in order to run acceptably, we want them to be virtually crash-proof, we want them to maintain the same key commands and menu arrangements that we’ve known for years and have integrated into our workflows, and we want them to be written in such a way that Adobe doesn’t need to take a year to revise them in response to future hardware developments. Mostly, we just want them to work, so we can get our own work done.
Form of…a Vector Drawing Program
Anyway, that’s my rant. But I’ll tell you what set it off: a program called Lineform by Freeverse, Inc. Ostensibly a competitor to Adobe Illustrator, Lineform is a vector drawing program that’s almost completely different: it’s small, efficient and reasonably priced. Revolutionary, right? Lineform provides ninety percent of Illustrator’s crucial functionality in just one-tenth of the disk space; it claims just 7.1MB on your hard drive and US$79.95 from your wallet to use and own this program, and it’s a thing of beauty. If that beauty is thus far imperfect, that’s okay; it’s more important to me that there are developers out there who are willing to challenge Adobe’s hegemony. The fact is, people are unhappy with Adobe Creative Suite, and it’s a problem that not even a grant of open source fonts can ameliorate.
I’m still using Photoshop 7. The problems I have require a small amount of effort and time to overcome, compared to the time I would no doubt spend re-learning / being frustrated by CS. Try going back to an older version for a day. You might find it helps!
For all its shortcomings, Adobe’s suite offers what no other application can offer; integration across the board. Not that this is done particularly well at all, but the fact that it’s integrated at any level makes cross-application work much easier.
Admittedly I’m talking very much about the Photoshop-InDesign-PDF workflow here and not so much about Illustrator. However, even if Quark improved their product(s) by leaps and bounds, they can never catch up with InDesign’s integration with Photoshop.
As much as I’d like to stay in Photoshop 7, I can’t; InDesign CS2 brings essential improvements, and Camera Raw (updates, at least) is now CS2 only.
I do wish they’ll load faster though. Every morning I click a couple Adobe apps in the dock and literally can go off for 5 minutes and make coffee.
One of the most interesting ‘features’ of Lineform is that it’s produced by one student who, not surprisingly, won the ‘Best Student Product’ at WWDC 2006.
As for photoshop, have you ever started up this app called “Seashore” on your OS X Mac?
Damn! Fast, fun, and gives me the ability to do simple things to my bitmap images. But, the thing is, usually those “simple” things were all I was looking to do whilst waiting for the Photoshop CS2 splash screen to finish it’s dealings with find plugins and initializing little window screens, etc.
All I’m looking for in Adobe CS3 is support for Intel Macs. Although documented by Adobe, CS2 is slow on Intel Macs as it runs in emulation. Furthermore running more than one CS2 application at the same time causes crashing.
For an application whose user base is heavily Mac based this is pretty bad form in my book.
I still dream in vain of a modular suite for CS3, where a lightweight, minimal core application can be built up with extensions relevant to the project I’m working on.
Cost is also an issue now. So many excellent production apps are available for practically pocket change that Adobe’s pricing structure makes it feel like sacrificing your firstborn by comparison.
Damon Haidary
I can’t understand why people are still using commercial vector apps now. I’ve been using Inkscape for 6 months.. it’s free, open source, remarkably stable and is under active development.
It supports most of the things commercial apps do.. bezier edits, gradient tools, boolean operations etc.
Can someone highlight the things in commercial vector software that make it worth paying for?
Oliver
Hi Khoi,
It took me a second to parse the sentence “Everything bad that you can do to a these once effective, industry-leading software programs …” owing to the extra ‘a’ in there. I guess the only reason it stuck out is because your attention to detail is so consistently high!
Oliver: just fixed it, thanks for catching that. I must’ve been particularly sloppy on this post, because a friend of mine caught a few other typos, too.
Having played with Lineform a little this morning since my last post, I have to say I’m really impressed! I love that it integrates with OSX’s type and colour palettes and loads in the blink of an eye.
Someone earlier made the point of CS’ strength being in its integration. I think OS-level integration (colour & type palettes, media browser etc) trumps suite-level integration a hundredfold. Although CS covers much of my workflow, there’s still a significant percentage that’s handled by non-Adobe software, so it needs to be able to talk to the rest of the system, not just its stablemates.
I just want Adobe to fix the CS2 bug where the space and shift key stops working. The Adobe forums are full of this issue and Adobe still has not even suggested a fix (that works)! Typical of the shoddy state of CS2.
I’m not a designer myself but I run a record label that requires me to create lots of little things here and there that the real designers don’t have time for.
Having said that I downloaded Lineform a few weeks ago and have been really impressed. I just needed it to do simple things like import images (EPS files work just fine!) and do some minor typesetting and formatting. $79 makes it a realistic purchase for someone like me.
Now if only the real designers I work with used it too…
Ah, bug-ridden crash-prone Illustrator. Don’t even start on the Illustrator/InDesign file corruption problems. Lightroom gives me hope – it’s evidence that Adobe can still build innovative, exciting software, though the beta versions don’t exactly wear racing stripes down the sides.
Also, there’s this nice responsive vector-drawing application called Freehand . . .
Lineform might be just what I need. I was working on a design project where Illustrator would’ve come in very handy, and was lamenting that I didn’t pick up the standard Adobe Creative Suite when I got my new machine, but just bought Photoshop CS2 (since that’s what I do 99% of my work in). However, I didn’t really want to shell out the $500 or so to get it. But $79.95? That I can do.
There’s probably not much to add here except a big fat “Amen!” to all that. Specially after trying to run CS2 on a Windows Vista box with a “paltry” 512 MB of RAM. You can feel my pain, do you?
I really like to see people challenging Adobe’s monolithic domain/quasi-monopoly in the graphics field. Unfortunately it’s a steep road ahead for those who dare, why? Because of the very same reason people stick to Windows and MS Office applications even if offered leaner, faster, better or prettier alternatives: Establishment of a standard by market lock-in, brute-force marketing, and the “it’s what everyone else uses” factor. Sure there may be better alternatives to Photoshop and Illustrator out there, but people just don’t know about them. Or care about. At least I try to.
Since we’re on the subject, does anyone have linkage to lineform-esque equivalents of InDesign and/or Photoshop? Unless CS3 really pulls some surprises out of the bag, I can’t see me wanting to part with so much for so little.
I must admit to being a little baffled by this post. About the only part of it I understand and agree with is the fact that Photoshop CS2 has a definate and noticible performance drop compared with PS7 or CS1, and a much longer load time. All of that is to be expected when you add features to a program, so while it’s a bit of a pain, it’s not surprising or cumbersome for me. Other than that, I fail to see what the problem is. I use Photoshop 7 every day at work, and CS2 a lot of the time at home, iv’e used Photoshop for years and yet I’ve noticed no tendency to crash for any version of the application, no changed shortcuts or behaviours from version 7 to CS or CS2, no crazy-insane re-arrange of tools or menus either. I slip between the two versions without even noticing – apart from the lack of shiny new features in the work version.
Seriously – what is it about moving to CS2 that is so bad? I’ve not noticed anything. About the only issue I have with Photoshop is with needing to use the old version at work – which doesn’t allow nested folders and layers! Truely a royal pain in the ass for workflow.
Having made the move direct from Quark 4 (and Illustrator 9) direct to CS1, I’m quick to jump to Adobe’s defence. Running CS1 off my MacIntel could be a little speedier, sure —аand I do suffer the occasional crash. But when I remember the days when I had one undo I’m appreciative of the integration and feature set of CS.
Noir
I use Illustrator almost exclusively to edit vector graphics created by other programs. For example, I have a graph as an eps file and want to change the color of a line. Tell me any app that can do this besides Illustrator (probably Freehand but that is part of Adobe now as well, Lineform crashes upon importing even the eps files it created itself).
And after this post was made thousands of designers all breathed a breath of relief. Now, if only Adobe would listen and focus on what made them great in the first place we’d be set.
I’ll definitely be checking out LineForm, thanks for the tip.
I started reading this article and thought it was going to be all about Adobe fonts. And the first thing that went through my mind was. “How can you talk about the fonts when the software has become such a disaster?”
I’m SO happy this article took the turn it did. As a SysAdmin I’d add that the installers and updaters have gotten almost as bad as those from Epson, which is to say ridiculously so. An updater to update the updater? That crashes? I dread installing and updating Adobe software, particularly because there often seems to be no reason worth the amount of hassle it takes to do so. Sure, there are a couple nice new features, but is it worth it?
It’s really sad, because a few years ago I raved about Adobe products. But now? I mostly just complain about them.
I’m really noticing the speed difference between GoLive CS2 and Dreamweaver 8 under Rosetta… is anyone noticing Freehand running that much quicker than Illustrator?
All of this makes me think that Macromedia might be a little more efficient at writing GOOD code. Q1 of 2007 can’t come fast enough.
Terry Sutton
Interesting to note that I’d definately be a linux user if I could find Adobe alternatives. I’ve used all the major distributions – all of which I have enjoyed. THere’s a pile of support out there on the web, its all free, its all simple, its all fast and slick, and its all designed to help you get down to work.
The problem? I spend ALL of my day with Photoshop and Indesign open, and about half my day with Illustrator.
I can probably get by without Illustrator, but since the Gimp has such a terrible interface I’m stuck with Photoshop, and since Indesign has virtually no reasonable equivalent I’m stuck in Windows/Mac land. Period.
Terry Sutton
Interesting to note that I’d definately be a linux user if I could find Adobe alternatives. I’ve used all the major distributions – all of which I have enjoyed. THere’s a pile of support out there on the web, its all free, its all simple, its all fast and slick, and its all designed to help you get down to work.
The problem? I spend ALL of my day with Photoshop and Indesign open, and about half my day with Illustrator.
I can probably get by without Illustrator, but since the Gimp has such a terrible interface I’m stuck with Photoshop, and since Indesign has virtually no reasonable equivalent I’m stuck in Windows/Mac land. Period.
Another Xara fan here. Fast display, useful features, good bitmap handling. Can be quirky, but then what software product isn’t?
Seashore is nice, though with obvious limitations. Gimp’s UI is terrible, oh for a design reboot. Inkscape’s UI is much better, though I wish it used native UIs on Win/Mac (Ctrl instead of Cmd anyone?). If Inkscape figured how to handle bitmaps better (a limitation of SVG?), went native on OS X, it’d be a winner.
Sorry about the many similar posts Khoi. I didn’t notice until it was too late as I was only getting errors from the comment engine. Please delete the last two! Thanx.
I still use Photoshop 7 too — my vector art needs are satisfied by OmniGraffle (I’m an engineer not an artist), but I really, truly want the HDR stuff in the CS versions of Photoshop. For those who don’t know, it combines “bracket-exposed” still frames of digital images to achieve higher dynamic range than a single digital exposure is capable of.
For some time, I’ve been wondering why Illustrator seems so neglected.
I mean, it should be well known by now that if the user Maximized the application and then closed it, it should re-open as maximized.
I find it really sad to see that Illustrator startup takes about twice as long as Photoshop startup. This is obviously not due to over-complexity in Illustrator, it just means the people in Adobe did not bother putting effort in that…
Use all the programs under free trial and then sort out
what works for you. These are excellent programs written
for OSX and came up through NeXT so they are rock solid.
I’d like to see Xara on the Mac, as I used to use it way back on my old PC. It trounces illustrator. I’d also like to see Freehand get one final version, but I guess that’s dreaming. I wonder if Fireworks will suffer the same fate?
I’m giving LineForm a try, as well as Seashore —аthey both look great so far. The thing these apps need to do is open the common formats. EPS is a good start, but Seashore needs to open or at least import PSD files. It might already, but it wasn’t obvious to me.
The Pixel app leaves me a bit cold because of it’s awkward tool palette.
Ross Brown
Illustrator CS 2 is the best version of the program since version 8, and the first decent version for OS X. But it’s taken a long time to get there and it still has plenty of rough edges. Sometimes it seems like the main reason why they release so many half-baked versions with no significant intra-version updates is to drive people to buy the next version in the hope that various problems and annoyances have been fixed.
I know Illustrator is a vastly complicated program and it does a lot of things very well — I appreciate all the work that must go into it — but many times it does not feel like a high quality piece of software.
There are only two reasons for me to stick with CS2: Our customers frequently send CS 2 (InDesign, Photoshop) and I am in no position to request different formats. The other one is the flawless PDF generation. I never had a single problem with a any print shop sending them PDF files made with CS2 presets.
I really hope that Adobe’s current video applications are an indication of the things to come in CS3, their interface is far better than the previous versions.
Marcus Branch
I have multiple issues with most adobe products. The biggest, customer service/ customer. As I write this, I have my other phone line connected to customer service. I am in EST/ so there time is 7:48 am mine 10:48 am, thats 1 hour and 49 minutes now they open 6am pst. to spend over $700 USD for a product and then you cant get any support, what user to user, My issues are with adobe not the end user down the street. I have been trying to reach someone for over 5 weeks. every day, several times a day. I have not had anyone answer yet. Not one time. Just for the heck of it I looked up Corel support and called the number and had a real live person in just under a minute.
Marcus Branch
I have multiple issues with most adobe products. The biggest, customer service/ customer. As I write this, I have my other phone line connected to customer service. I am in EST/ so there time is 7:48 am mine 10:48 am, thats 1 hour and 49 minutes now they open 6am pst. to spend over $700 USD for a product and then you cant get any support, what user to user, My issues are with adobe not the end user down the street. I have been trying to reach someone for over 5 weeks. every day, several times a day. I have not had anyone answer yet. Not one time. Just for the heck of it I looked up Corel support and called the number and had a real live person in just under a minute.
robert francis
There are many solid competitors to Adobe’s current CS suite. Corel has Draw, and PhotoPaint. Their UI is completely different and foreign for Adobe users, but they do have their strengths. A print designer friend of mine swears by the strengths of Draw, though I can say the annoyances with CS have been enough for me to make the switch myself.
For me, there is Macromedia’s final suite of apps. Granted for bitmap editing I still use Photoshop, but that’s what it’s designed for. While Fireworks is great for web designing and it’s integration with Flash is solid unlike CS’s integration. I highly recommend picking up Macromedia’s final offering before it gets re-released in CS3 as a cross bread between the two companies offerings.
Several weeks ago, at his personal Web site
I’m still using Photoshop 7. The problems I have require a small amount of effort and time to overcome, compared to the time I would no doubt spend re-learning / being frustrated by CS. Try going back to an older version for a day. You might find it helps!
there’s also a photo-editing app called “pixel” that includes many photoshop features.
pretty impressive considering it’s a one-man shop writing this thing…
it’s $32, but is going to go up to $79 with version 2.0.
so, pixel + lineform is less than $200
a lot better than the $1200 or whatever creative suite!
For all its shortcomings, Adobe’s suite offers what no other application can offer; integration across the board. Not that this is done particularly well at all, but the fact that it’s integrated at any level makes cross-application work much easier.
Admittedly I’m talking very much about the Photoshop-InDesign-PDF workflow here and not so much about Illustrator. However, even if Quark improved their product(s) by leaps and bounds, they can never catch up with InDesign’s integration with Photoshop.
As much as I’d like to stay in Photoshop 7, I can’t; InDesign CS2 brings essential improvements, and Camera Raw (updates, at least) is now CS2 only.
I do wish they’ll load faster though. Every morning I click a couple Adobe apps in the dock and literally can go off for 5 minutes and make coffee.
One of the most interesting ‘features’ of Lineform is that it’s produced by one student who, not surprisingly, won the ‘Best Student Product’ at WWDC 2006.
As for photoshop, have you ever started up this app called “Seashore” on your OS X Mac?
Damn! Fast, fun, and gives me the ability to do simple things to my bitmap images. But, the thing is, usually those “simple” things were all I was looking to do whilst waiting for the Photoshop CS2 splash screen to finish it’s dealings with find plugins and initializing little window screens, etc.
Have you ever heard of Xara Xtreme? It is even better than illustrator, and it costs less than a hundred dollars.
Actually, for Linux user it is completely free, because the source code is open.
The OSX, unfortunatly, is still a work in progress. If you know any good C++ programmer, ask them to help on this project.
If you have Windows, it’s definitely worth trying (for just 79 US $ !!).
Its faster, it’s more pratical, more powerfull…this software is just great ! Try it !
All I’m looking for in Adobe CS3 is support for Intel Macs. Although documented by Adobe, CS2 is slow on Intel Macs as it runs in emulation. Furthermore running more than one CS2 application at the same time causes crashing.
For an application whose user base is heavily Mac based this is pretty bad form in my book.
I still dream in vain of a modular suite for CS3, where a lightweight, minimal core application can be built up with extensions relevant to the project I’m working on.
Cost is also an issue now. So many excellent production apps are available for practically pocket change that Adobe’s pricing structure makes it feel like sacrificing your firstborn by comparison.
I can’t understand why people are still using commercial vector apps now. I’ve been using Inkscape for 6 months.. it’s free, open source, remarkably stable and is under active development.
It supports most of the things commercial apps do.. bezier edits, gradient tools, boolean operations etc.
Can someone highlight the things in commercial vector software that make it worth paying for?
Hi Khoi,
It took me a second to parse the sentence “Everything bad that you can do to a these once effective, industry-leading software programs …” owing to the extra ‘a’ in there. I guess the only reason it stuck out is because your attention to detail is so consistently high!
Oliver: just fixed it, thanks for catching that. I must’ve been particularly sloppy on this post, because a friend of mine caught a few other typos, too.
Having played with Lineform a little this morning since my last post, I have to say I’m really impressed! I love that it integrates with OSX’s type and colour palettes and loads in the blink of an eye.
Someone earlier made the point of CS’ strength being in its integration. I think OS-level integration (colour & type palettes, media browser etc) trumps suite-level integration a hundredfold. Although CS covers much of my workflow, there’s still a significant percentage that’s handled by non-Adobe software, so it needs to be able to talk to the rest of the system, not just its stablemates.
I just want Adobe to fix the CS2 bug where the space and shift key stops working. The Adobe forums are full of this issue and Adobe still has not even suggested a fix (that works)! Typical of the shoddy state of CS2.
I’m not a designer myself but I run a record label that requires me to create lots of little things here and there that the real designers don’t have time for.
Having said that I downloaded Lineform a few weeks ago and have been really impressed. I just needed it to do simple things like import images (EPS files work just fine!) and do some minor typesetting and formatting. $79 makes it a realistic purchase for someone like me.
Now if only the real designers I work with used it too…
Ah, bug-ridden crash-prone Illustrator. Don’t even start on the Illustrator/InDesign file corruption problems. Lightroom gives me hope – it’s evidence that Adobe can still build innovative, exciting software, though the beta versions don’t exactly wear racing stripes down the sides.
Also, there’s this nice responsive vector-drawing application called Freehand . . .
Lineform might be just what I need. I was working on a design project where Illustrator would’ve come in very handy, and was lamenting that I didn’t pick up the standard Adobe Creative Suite when I got my new machine, but just bought Photoshop CS2 (since that’s what I do 99% of my work in). However, I didn’t really want to shell out the $500 or so to get it. But $79.95? That I can do.
There’s probably not much to add here except a big fat “Amen!” to all that. Specially after trying to run CS2 on a Windows Vista box with a “paltry” 512 MB of RAM. You can feel my pain, do you?
I really like to see people challenging Adobe’s monolithic domain/quasi-monopoly in the graphics field. Unfortunately it’s a steep road ahead for those who dare, why? Because of the very same reason people stick to Windows and MS Office applications even if offered leaner, faster, better or prettier alternatives: Establishment of a standard by market lock-in, brute-force marketing, and the “it’s what everyone else uses” factor. Sure there may be better alternatives to Photoshop and Illustrator out there, but people just don’t know about them. Or care about. At least I try to.
Since we’re on the subject, does anyone have linkage to lineform-esque equivalents of InDesign and/or Photoshop? Unless CS3 really pulls some surprises out of the bag, I can’t see me wanting to part with so much for so little.
I must admit to being a little baffled by this post. About the only part of it I understand and agree with is the fact that Photoshop CS2 has a definate and noticible performance drop compared with PS7 or CS1, and a much longer load time. All of that is to be expected when you add features to a program, so while it’s a bit of a pain, it’s not surprising or cumbersome for me. Other than that, I fail to see what the problem is. I use Photoshop 7 every day at work, and CS2 a lot of the time at home, iv’e used Photoshop for years and yet I’ve noticed no tendency to crash for any version of the application, no changed shortcuts or behaviours from version 7 to CS or CS2, no crazy-insane re-arrange of tools or menus either. I slip between the two versions without even noticing – apart from the lack of shiny new features in the work version.
Seriously – what is it about moving to CS2 that is so bad? I’ve not noticed anything. About the only issue I have with Photoshop is with needing to use the old version at work – which doesn’t allow nested folders and layers! Truely a royal pain in the ass for workflow.
Having made the move direct from Quark 4 (and Illustrator 9) direct to CS1, I’m quick to jump to Adobe’s defence. Running CS1 off my MacIntel could be a little speedier, sure —аand I do suffer the occasional crash. But when I remember the days when I had one undo I’m appreciative of the integration and feature set of CS.
I use Illustrator almost exclusively to edit vector graphics created by other programs. For example, I have a graph as an eps file and want to change the color of a line. Tell me any app that can do this besides Illustrator (probably Freehand but that is part of Adobe now as well, Lineform crashes upon importing even the eps files it created itself).
And after this post was made thousands of designers all breathed a breath of relief. Now, if only Adobe would listen and focus on what made them great in the first place we’d be set.
I’ll definitely be checking out LineForm, thanks for the tip.
I think that’s why many Flash designers/developers are looking at the next release of Flash with great concern…
I started reading this article and thought it was going to be all about Adobe fonts. And the first thing that went through my mind was. “How can you talk about the fonts when the software has become such a disaster?”
I’m SO happy this article took the turn it did. As a SysAdmin I’d add that the installers and updaters have gotten almost as bad as those from Epson, which is to say ridiculously so. An updater to update the updater? That crashes? I dread installing and updating Adobe software, particularly because there often seems to be no reason worth the amount of hassle it takes to do so. Sure, there are a couple nice new features, but is it worth it?
It’s really sad, because a few years ago I raved about Adobe products. But now? I mostly just complain about them.
People should really raise a stink.
So, thanks, Khoi. Nice post.
I’m really noticing the speed difference between GoLive CS2 and Dreamweaver 8 under Rosetta… is anyone noticing Freehand running that much quicker than Illustrator?
All of this makes me think that Macromedia might be a little more efficient at writing GOOD code. Q1 of 2007 can’t come fast enough.
Interesting to note that I’d definately be a linux user if I could find Adobe alternatives. I’ve used all the major distributions – all of which I have enjoyed. THere’s a pile of support out there on the web, its all free, its all simple, its all fast and slick, and its all designed to help you get down to work.
The problem? I spend ALL of my day with Photoshop and Indesign open, and about half my day with Illustrator.
I can probably get by without Illustrator, but since the Gimp has such a terrible interface I’m stuck with Photoshop, and since Indesign has virtually no reasonable equivalent I’m stuck in Windows/Mac land. Period.
Interesting to note that I’d definately be a linux user if I could find Adobe alternatives. I’ve used all the major distributions – all of which I have enjoyed. THere’s a pile of support out there on the web, its all free, its all simple, its all fast and slick, and its all designed to help you get down to work.
The problem? I spend ALL of my day with Photoshop and Indesign open, and about half my day with Illustrator.
I can probably get by without Illustrator, but since the Gimp has such a terrible interface I’m stuck with Photoshop, and since Indesign has virtually no reasonable equivalent I’m stuck in Windows/Mac land. Period.
Another Xara fan here. Fast display, useful features, good bitmap handling. Can be quirky, but then what software product isn’t?
Seashore is nice, though with obvious limitations. Gimp’s UI is terrible, oh for a design reboot. Inkscape’s UI is much better, though I wish it used native UIs on Win/Mac (Ctrl instead of Cmd anyone?). If Inkscape figured how to handle bitmaps better (a limitation of SVG?), went native on OS X, it’d be a winner.
Sorry about the many similar posts Khoi. I didn’t notice until it was too late as I was only getting errors from the comment engine. Please delete the last two! Thanx.
I still use Photoshop 7 too — my vector art needs are satisfied by OmniGraffle (I’m an engineer not an artist), but I really, truly want the HDR stuff in the CS versions of Photoshop. For those who don’t know, it combines “bracket-exposed” still frames of digital images to achieve higher dynamic range than a single digital exposure is capable of.
Other than that, CS, beh.
The suggestion of editing well-known fonts in etchy-askew form does sound like a fun idea though 😀
For some time, I’ve been wondering why Illustrator seems so neglected.
I mean, it should be well known by now that if the user Maximized the application and then closed it, it should re-open as maximized.
I find it really sad to see that Illustrator startup takes about twice as long as Photoshop startup. This is obviously not due to over-complexity in Illustrator, it just means the people in Adobe did not bother putting effort in that…
You people all need to go to http://www.stone.com
Use all the programs under free trial and then sort out
what works for you. These are excellent programs written
for OSX and came up through NeXT so they are rock solid.
I’d like to see Xara on the Mac, as I used to use it way back on my old PC. It trounces illustrator. I’d also like to see Freehand get one final version, but I guess that’s dreaming. I wonder if Fireworks will suffer the same fate?
I’m giving LineForm a try, as well as Seashore —аthey both look great so far. The thing these apps need to do is open the common formats. EPS is a good start, but Seashore needs to open or at least import PSD files. It might already, but it wasn’t obvious to me.
The Pixel app leaves me a bit cold because of it’s awkward tool palette.
Illustrator CS 2 is the best version of the program since version 8, and the first decent version for OS X. But it’s taken a long time to get there and it still has plenty of rough edges. Sometimes it seems like the main reason why they release so many half-baked versions with no significant intra-version updates is to drive people to buy the next version in the hope that various problems and annoyances have been fixed.
I know Illustrator is a vastly complicated program and it does a lot of things very well — I appreciate all the work that must go into it — but many times it does not feel like a high quality piece of software.
There are only two reasons for me to stick with CS2: Our customers frequently send CS 2 (InDesign, Photoshop) and I am in no position to request different formats. The other one is the flawless PDF generation. I never had a single problem with a any print shop sending them PDF files made with CS2 presets.
I really hope that Adobe’s current video applications are an indication of the things to come in CS3, their interface is far better than the previous versions.
I have multiple issues with most adobe products. The biggest, customer service/ customer. As I write this, I have my other phone line connected to customer service. I am in EST/ so there time is 7:48 am mine 10:48 am, thats 1 hour and 49 minutes now they open 6am pst. to spend over $700 USD for a product and then you cant get any support, what user to user, My issues are with adobe not the end user down the street. I have been trying to reach someone for over 5 weeks. every day, several times a day. I have not had anyone answer yet. Not one time. Just for the heck of it I looked up Corel support and called the number and had a real live person in just under a minute.
I have multiple issues with most adobe products. The biggest, customer service/ customer. As I write this, I have my other phone line connected to customer service. I am in EST/ so there time is 7:48 am mine 10:48 am, thats 1 hour and 49 minutes now they open 6am pst. to spend over $700 USD for a product and then you cant get any support, what user to user, My issues are with adobe not the end user down the street. I have been trying to reach someone for over 5 weeks. every day, several times a day. I have not had anyone answer yet. Not one time. Just for the heck of it I looked up Corel support and called the number and had a real live person in just under a minute.
There are many solid competitors to Adobe’s current CS suite. Corel has Draw, and PhotoPaint. Their UI is completely different and foreign for Adobe users, but they do have their strengths. A print designer friend of mine swears by the strengths of Draw, though I can say the annoyances with CS have been enough for me to make the switch myself.
For me, there is Macromedia’s final suite of apps. Granted for bitmap editing I still use Photoshop, but that’s what it’s designed for. While Fireworks is great for web designing and it’s integration with Flash is solid unlike CS’s integration. I highly recommend picking up Macromedia’s final offering before it gets re-released in CS3 as a cross bread between the two companies offerings.