What is Macromedia FreeHand 5.5?

Less than a year after the release of FreeHand 5, version 5.5 introduces several significant enhancements, including support for the Adobe Acrobat PDF format, the ability to export objects as antialiased images and to apply Adobe Photoshop filters to imported images, and the option to paste in-line graphics into text blocks (a first for a draw program). FreeHand 5.5 also includes over 10,000 T/Maker clipart drawings and 500 URW type styles in both PostScript Type 1 and TrueType format, all of which were originally bundled with FreeHand 5.0 for Windows.

Given Photoshop’s popularity among graphics professionals and casual artists, both FreeHand and rival Adobe Illustrator offer ways to support images and Photoshop-compatible filters. With Adobe in control of both Illustrator and Photoshop, FreeHand is at a marked disadvantage, In theory, you can apply an external Photoshop filter to any image placed inside a FreeHand document. In practice, third-party filters, such as KPT Convolver from MetaTools and the Gallery Effects plug-ins now carried by Adobe, work just fine, but many of the filters that ship with Photoshop 3.0.4, such as Spherize and Lens Flare, don’t work at all, and almost none of the Photoshop 3.0.1 filters work. FreeHand 5.5's support for Photoshop's acquisition plugins fares better; I was able to import GIF, BMP, and Photo CD images.

FreeHand 5.5 also lets you raster!ze selected objects as antialiased PICT images, which you can then modify inside an image editor and place into a presentation program or import back into FreeHand. You can change the number of colors in the image, specify the resolution, and even adjust the degree of antialiasing. You can also export the image to the Clipboard, if you have enough RAM. In my informal tests, FreeHand frequently rasterized drawings faster than Photoshop, but with FreeHand I encountered problems with insufficient RAM.

My biggest complaint with FreeHand 5.5 is its lack of essential primed documentation. To find out how to use the new features, you have to open a PDF file laid out into 61 horizontal pages designed to be read on screen. Worse, you must open the documentation in Acrobat; FreeHand can’t read the encrypted PDF files. I don't have a problem with including supplemental material such as expert tips on disk, but burying fundamental information is a disservice to all users.

Version 5.5 ignores a few inadequacies that I hope to see addressed. The program needs to provide more flexible gradient and guideline functions, and the palette-laden interface remains as ungainly as ever, but the in-line graphics come as an unexpected pleasure. For example, you can now force a series of graphics to follow the contours of a curve, great for creating custom stroke patterns. Longtime FreeHand users will also appreciate a few minor revisions to text-handling and image-linking functions, as well as a new path operation that lets you crop a group of objects to a free-form path.

The Last Word

FreeHand 5.5 continues to outperform Illustrator 5.5, and the clip art and fonts alone are worth the $79 upgrade fee. Even so, there’s plenty of room for Illustrator 6.0 to win back the number one position; whether Illustrator 6.0 will seize the day remains to be seen.

McClelland, Deke. (February 1996). FreeHand 5.5. Macworld. (pg. 74).

Serial number: 10255-0470-4403-24795

Download Macromedia FreeHand 5.5 for Mac

Architecture

68K + PPC (FAT)

System Requirements

From Mac OS 7.0 up to Mac OS 9.2

Compatibility notes

Emulating this? It could probably run under: Basilisk II