In the never-ending leapfrog game with the competition, Macromedia has outpaced Adobe with version 9 of its powerful vector-drawing app, FreeHand. With this rev, Macromedia aims to retain its popularity with the print-design market while attempting to add that lucrative Web contingent. For technical and other illustrators, print designers, and cartographers, FreeHand 9 is a great upgrade. Web folks, however, may feel less gleeful.
FreeHand 9 adds some long-sought-after new features, including mixed page sizes within a single document. Do you need to group together two pages for a graphic that spans both? The page tool lets you select, rearrange, duplicate, delete, and even resize pages on the pasteboard as though you were working with any drawn object. You can even move a page without moving its contents. This feature is great for product packaging, poinl-of-purchase advertising displays, and some types of brochures — generally projects with varying page or side sizes that don’t have a lot of text.
Designers familiar with QuarkXPress’s Library feature will appreciate FreeHand 9’s new Symbols Library. FreeHand symbols are document based (you can copy and paste a symbol specified in one document into another document and retain its identity as a symbol). However, altering the symbol in one document changes all instances in that document only, it won’t affect instances of the symbol in other documents even if you have them open simultaneously. Limiting the possibility for infinite change is a very good thing; however, we’d like to see options that let other open documents recognize the altered symbol.
FreeHand 9’s new Perspective Grid feature is an option long overdue in Illustration software. In its newborn state, it doesn’t serve the purpose of large-scale, 3D illustration. You’re best off creating a 2D object, then snapping it onto the Perspective Grid. Perspective Grids can have one, two, or three vanishing points, and you can adjust grid cell size. You’ll have to experiment with this feature to learn its quirks. Snapping 2D art to the grid requires a few attempts as you get the hang of tapping the correct arrow key before releasing the mouse button. You also must use the perspective grid tool instead of the selection pointer to move the object within the grid. This new feature is a respectable first effort, however.
Live enveloping allows you to distort objects, groups of objects, and even live text (you don’t have to convert them to paths first) with built-in or user-created shapes. A shape appears when you click and hold on its name in the menu. Far beyond the ability of the usual transformation tools — which merely resize, rotate, and skew — enveloping lets you tweak the applied effect. Simply adjust the points and curves of the envelope to your heart’s content... It’s great for, say, bending your company logo over any irregular surface. Some shapes submit to distortion better than others, so if your shape doesn’t follow the envelope’s shape to your liking, try adding more Bezier points (in the Xtras menu, choose Distort, then Add Points) before applying an envelope. Tip: Option-drag to copy your object or group onto the pasteboard before adding points and applying envelopes. Experiment all you want, knowing that you can try again with a fresh, unaltered copy of your art.
FreeHand 9 makes further advances in the Web revolution with options for native SWF export, animation features, output to HTML for export to Dreamweaver, and heightened Flash integration. Some Web designers will appreciate these options; others won’t...
The improved selection tools, though less exotic, are welcome. In one step, you can corral precisely the points or objects you want with a new lasso selection tool. Previously, selecting a set of objects or points that didn’t fall neatly within the pointer tool’s selection rectangle meant you had to Shift-chck one point or item after another — tedious and often tricky. Although FreeHand’s lasso tool feels similar to its Photoshop counterpart, we found that the FreeHand tool does a better job of displaying what you’re doing as you do it.
By double-clicking the lasso and pointer selection tools in the tool palette, you can make each one Contact Sensitive: This feature is a matter of personal preference. If you prefer dragging over just the edge of an object to select the whole thing, turn on the Contact Sensitive option. If you want the selection tool to snare only the points or parts you completely encircle, leave Contact Sensitive turned off (the program default),
FreeHand 9 offers many other goodies. These Include import, editing, and export of multiple-page Acrobat PDF files; greater import/export capabilities; autotracing (a magic wand tool offers greater precision in selecting); more control over the freehand drawing tool; custom measurement units and scaling; and better integration with other design applications.
FreeHand 9 is a substantive upgrade with solid new features — some great and some potentially great. Whether you’ll want to purchase this release depends on who you are and what you do. Adobe Illustrator users probably won’t jump ship completely (we’re still waiting to see Adobe Illustrator 9 before we make up our minds). For current FreeHand users, this is a great new version. If you’re looking to buy illustration software for the first time, you should base your decision on the type of illustrations you create and the groups you work with. For example, if you most often exchange files with news organizations, you’ll want to choose that industry’s standard, and that’s FreeHand.
Chapman, Elyse. (July 2000). FreeHand 9. MacAddict. (pgs. 54-55).
Macromedia, Inc.
Applications
out of 10 (0 vote)
490 / 
2014-06-22 / 
c959bee4f29615c442c981b69b36ac892179482d / 
/ 
mm-freehand-9.zip
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
SheepShaver
