Macromedia Freehand

FreeHand has long been the choice of the professional designer and illustrator, mainly due to its ease of use and comprehensive vector toolset. Its only serious competition comes in the form of Adobe Illustrator, currently residing on version 9. Other vector applications that present a challenge to FreeHand's crown include CorelDRAW 10 and Expression (although slightly different due to its natural media approach), but neither seems to have the kudos or high-end appeal of Macromedia's package.

Over the past few years, Macromedia has substantially upgraded the program, responding to user's requests and consequently adding, among other things, the ability to tweak the perspective of artwork and a Symbol library for storing regularly used graphics. In version 9 a variety of simple yet useful Flash-based animation features were introduced, maturing FreeHand into a tool for both print and Web designers.

Streamlined interface
While version 10 maintains and improves on the Web functionality of FreeHand, the major changes come in the form of streamlining the application's interface, bringing it into line with the company's popular Web tools Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Flash. Hence, the Common Macromedia User Interface has been applied to FreeHand, with Common Macromedia User Interface keyboard shortcuts to match. Although it's immediately obvious that the company is trying to merge its applications into one suite of highly useable tools, this is undoubtedly a radical move due to the massive print-based design following of FreeHand. Those unfamiliar with the company's Web tools are presented with a wholly unfamiliar application, only saved by the ability to edit keyboard shortcuts in the preferences.

However, the new interface is far from a pain to navigate, and even relatively new users to Macromedia products will soon grasp the basics. Easy to use and fully customisable, it is even possible to save and share different interface layouts for different jobs.

Towards the Web
The most notable of the new Web features is the Flash Navigation Panel, offering designers the ability to create an, albeit basic, Flash-based Website directly from within FreeHand 10. This is achieved by simply assigning links or Flash Actions to graphics that'll take the user to another page in your document or a URL. So, in theory you could create a 100-page document (thanks to FreeHand's multi-page support - not yet seen in Adobe Illustrator without the aid of a third-party plug-in) and link it all together to create a Flash-based site. You don't even need to preview the SWF in an external Flash Player anymore, thanks to FreeHand 10's useful built-in Flash Player window.

Print additions
The addition of master pages consolidates Macromedia's stance on FreeHand as a DTP tool. In conjunction with its multi-page support, and the Page tool introduced in version 9, the package now offers the ability to create and manage up to 32,000 master pages in a single document. Although this number sounds impressive, it's a little pointless. Even when creating huge documents the amount of master pages you're going to need is probably around a hundredth of this number. Gripes aside, this is a great new feature and takes its lead from QuarkXPress and InDesign, working in a similar way. One significant boon of this feature is that you can import master pages into the Symbol library. This means that they can be utilised and edited like any other symbol. Master pages can also be edited from the Document Inspector.

Natural media?
Macromedia has added some natural- media-esque tools to FreeHand, the first of these being spray and brush strokes. The theory is, after creating a symbol it can be transformed into a brush and applied to any path. The brushes can take the form of paint, where your symbol is stretched and distorted along a path, or spray, in which FreeHand scatters instances of your symbol along a path.

Few additions to the toolbox
We liked the new Contour Gradients, which blend colors according to the outline of an object--an excellent feature for adding realistic shading to objects. It's too bad that the mesh gradients found in both CorelDraw and Illustrator, defined by a grid of lines and points, outperform this feature. You can now apply brush strokes to any FreeHand path, and the new user-definable brushes help create unique and appealing outlines. We also like the Envelope tool, used for distorting objects. FreeHand lacks macros for task automation, but it now offers a Symbol library, similar to the one found in Flash, for storing any object for reuse. If you edit a symbol, all instances of it in your document will change accordingly.

Overall, we wish that the tools packed more punch; in particular, the Layers palette needs some muscle. It lacks thumbnail previews, and you can't group layers together--a necessity for organizing complex illustrations. In addition, you can't apply drop shadows to text objects or bitmapped images, techniques often used to give depth to flat artwork. In fact, many of the special effects tools--such as Roughen, Bend, and Smudge--don't work on text at all. You have to convert text to noneditable outlines to do any creative work. With CorelDraw and Adobe Illustrator, you can apply fancy effects to editable text.

Worthy but weak upgrade
Current FreeHand users will want to spend the $129 to upgrade, but professionals looking for a new illustration program will find beefier packages in CorelDraw or Adobe Illustrator. Less dedicated users should turn to more basic products such as Microsoft PhotoDraw or Xara for easy, inexpensive line drawing.

Macromedia FreeHand is a heavy-duty tool desgined for creating illustrations and layouts for print and the Web. Freehand continues to feature a number of enhancements, both in design and performance. Macromedia's premier vector illustration program sports several new tools to help you draw even more precisely, and create even better animated Web graphics. New features includes greater illustration, publishing, and publishing tools.

Specifically, FreeHand 10 offers some great new features to help make all your illustrations standout. New additions and enhancements include, a new user interface, symbol-based brush and spray strokes, Smart Cursors for automatic joins (like those in Macromedia Flash), Macromedia Flash Player window for instantly testing SWF movies within FreeHand, and much more.

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