Macromedia Freehand 9 Flash 4 Studio

Richard Price

Its been a few years since I last used Freehand, so I was surprised to see the number of changes and enhancements.

Not only has Macromedia added some impressive new features to Freehand, they have popped Flash 4 into the box to provide a complete range of tools for creating vector graphics and special effects.

Macromedia has gone out of its way to integrate Freehand 9 and Flash 4, allowing one to export animated Flash files from within Freehand. If the Flash 4 toolset seems limiting, you may want to create all your artwork in Freehand and use Flash only for adding sound and motion. One can also display artwork on-screen using Flash 4 anti-aliasing.

I like the new perspective tool that easily creates 3D perspective effects very much. Once the perspective is set and the object placed in the non-printing grid, its shape changes as it is re-positioned.

Freehand now works more efficiently with other graphic programs such as Corel 8, Illustrator 7 and Photoshop 5. When copying and pasting to the clipboard the user can specify the file format. Another plus is that the new Autotracing tool gives better control options.

While doing this review I used Freehand 9 to design a new brochure.

If you are used to other graphics programs, you should have no trouble finding your way around.

Although Freehand now boasts inproved navigation and selection commands I still find it clumsy when it comes to working with text. It would not be my program of choice for text-oriented work.

Unfortunately for a graphics program, Freehand 9 doesn’t provide direct support for scanning.

But it’s easy enough to scan using another package such as Fireworks, and then cut and paste, or just drag the objects into Freehand.

Freehand documents can easily be converted to a web page with the help of the HTML Wizard.

My results however, were surprising. Freehand 9 appears to be quite temperamental when publishing to HTML.

My A4 brochure, consisting of typed text and several scanned images did not convert correctly.

Even when I changed the document size to be 640 x 480 pixels and exported to HTML Freehand instisted on taking one image and using it at different sizes instead of using all the correct graphics.

Although not touching, the scanned graphics were close together.

The only way I could get it to export correctly was to group the graphics as one object before publishing to HTML.

You can chose to export images as SWF, GIF, PNG or JPG files. The resulting HTML document opens up in your editor of choice.

If publishing your document to HTML proves difficult, just export it as a PDF file. I was impressed at how well Freehand 9 supports PDF. I will probably use it more just for this feature. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view PDF files, but they open in your Browser. So you could avoid HTML altogether.

HTML pages also appeared to display better in Internet Explorer 5 than Netscape Navigator 4.7. But then, that’s the Internet for you!

Freehand 9 needs a Pentium 120 or higher, Windows 95, 98 or NT 4, and 800 x 600 colour monitor, 64 MB RAM and 70+ MB disk space.

A Postscript compatible printer is also recommended.

Macromedia Freehand 9 Flash 4 Studio retails for AU$899. Registered Freehand users can upgrade for AU$399.

By Richard Price, Editor, EnergyME.com

For information on getting a product reviewed email richard@energyme.com