What's the point of using Adobe Creative Suite!

There is no doubt that using Adobe Creative Suite has HUGE advantages. It does everything that Freehand used to do (the past tense is deliberate - it surely can't survive forever), and a whole lot more... plus more and more.

We moved over to Creative Suite five years ago as most of our work is for the UK, and Indesign was giving Quark a run for its money. Illustrator, Photoshop and Indesign make a great team - and since all artwork could be proofed with Acrobat Pro - our artwork time is a tiny percentage of a job.

We're now doing a lot more SA work, and specifically packaging. We create our all-singing-all-dancing designs and impress the pants off our clients. We check our plates and colours in Acrobat Pro - and all is OK with our artwork and ready for print.

Understandably, the label or packaging printer needs to do some technical production on the artwork specific for their machines (step-ups, bleeds, dot gains etc). But because they have been using Freehand forever, they want everything converted back. Not because Illustrator can't do what they need, but because they just don't know how to use it yet.

Now I can guarantee one thing. If the artwork process takes an hour in Adobe CS, it will take 4 to 8 hours in Freehand. Hence agencies having to have large artwork departments! Freehand is like a blinkered horse when it comes to artwork - it only has one way - and you can't cheat like you can in CS.

"Is your file PostScript friendly" they ask. Of course it bloody is! Adobe invent PostScript!
"You PDF is corrupt, it has blocks all over it" they say. Turn on your overprint preview (and read the Acrobat Pro manual)... and whilst you're there... check out those amazing plates in the output preview (no printing hundred of pages to check plates)!

Can't the printers see the benefits?
Who is going to teach the production departments of printers that Freehand is not the only program that can do what they need?

When printers start using CS as well, design agencies can start to produce better work and stop wasting time with friggen Freehand.