Yesterday, I wrote about Adobe’s abandon of FreeHand. While Adobe suggests a switch to Illustrator, Freeverse software has another idea: a switch to Lineform, their own vector-based drawing tool. The company is even offering a $30 discount for FreeHand users, bringing down the price from the usual $79.95 to $49.95 with a simple “freehand” coupon code.
In case you’re not familiar with Freeverse, they’re quite a respected company, with apps such as Comic Life (bundled on most new Macs today). Lineform itself, meanwhile, won an Apple Design Award last year and definitely has a very modern, clean, and Mac-like interface. Don’t let the simple interface and the low price tag fool you, though: Lineform is regarded by many as a top-notch vector drawing application. Since it’s free to try, you’ve got nothing to lose.
I've been using Lineform for a couple of weeks now. It's definitely a 1.0 app, and there are some glaring oversights (ability to move the origin, please). But that said, it's a GREAT piece of software. It's easy to catch on to, and super simple to use.
I was already planning to change to Lineform prior to Adobe's execution of Freehand (I hate Illustrator). This just makes the deal sweeter.
The $80 price tag had put me off buying the application but a $30 discount was enough to push me over the edge so I've now bought a license. Interestingly it does not appear that you actually need to be a Freehand MX user to receive the discount (simply entering the discount code "freehand" is enough), although I'll note that I'm guilt-free on this one since I still have my educational copy of Macromedia's application. Unfortunately the registration process for the application does not seem to be proxy-server aware so it is currently complaining that it can't connect to the Internet so I'll have to wait until I leave the office to see if it all works OK.
thanks a ton thom!!!! im definately going to try this one out. i often find illustrator is too akin to photoshop to be a good vector drawing app. LineForm looks very promising.
Canvas for OSX is also dead. Mark Franklin, executive vice-president of ACDSee, the company that now owns Canvas, posted this a few days ago:
"While we will not be incrementally releasing new versions of Canvas for the Mac platform, our R&D department is exploring opportunities to develop new cross-platform products that support and streamline our users' workflow."
http://forums.acdsystems.com/index.php?showtopic=3845&st=20