A few month ago, I reviewed Macromedia Freehand 9. In this review, I will not define an illustration program. For that information, please see the review on Freehand 9. Better visual integration of Freehand with other Macromedia products and a more intensive section for producing Flash files completely in Freehand are two areas that stand out in this new version of Freehand.

Freehand 10 can be purchased by itself or as part of the Flash 5/Freehand Studio. The street price is about:

• Freehand 10 $400.
• Freehand 10 Upgrade $130
• Freehand 10 Competitive Upgrade $200
• Flash 5/ Freehand 10 Studio $500
• Flash 5/ Freehand 10 Studio Upgrade $200

The system requirements for Freehand 10 are:

• Intel Pentium Processor with Windows 98, Me, 2000, or NT4 or
• PowerPC Processor with Mac OS 8.6 or higher
• 64 MB of available system RAM
• 70 MB of available disk space
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 or Netscape Navigator 4 or later recommended
• 800x600, 256-color display
• CD-ROM drive
• Postscript level 2-compatible printer or higher

Freehand 10 is both an illustration program for producing web ready materials as well as a program for producing printed materials. An example of this can be found in the document inspector which lists the elected dpi (dots per inch) output for printing purposes and offers the choice of output size in standard printing form such as letter, legal, etc. as well as has the option to set the page in a standard web format size. Custom sizing is also an option. Even though a custom size could have been chosen in Freehand 9, the inclusion of a web size shows Macromedia's intention of making this product integrate more with other web based authoring and animation tools such as Dreamweaver and Flash.

In conjunction with increasing web oriented material, Macromedia has expanded its tools for working with Flash and even included a Movie Setting and Publishing menu for testing Flash files generated in Freehand 10. One doe not have to export a Flash movie into Flash itself for testing purposes.

The [Flash] Navigation panel provides tools for producing links, events, and actions within Freehand itself.

Macromedia has also beefed up its basic vector tools such as introducing the Brush and Spraying tool for more visual effects. This tool can either brush or spray a pattern created from symbols across the work surface. An illustration of some of the symbol based brushes can be found on the right. These brush strokes (since they are symbols) can be changed with a "Graphic Search and Replace" command. More symbols can be created by users and entered into the library. One can even warp a symbol to a path in different ways. Macromedia has, also, standardized the Pen tool so that it works in the same manner in Freehand as it does in Flash and Fireworks.

The gradient editor has also been enhanced with a new setting called Contour Gradients which allows for the gradient pattern to follow the contours of the objects as the latter's shape is changed. The following illustration shows the same two polygons with first a radial gradient and underneath a contour gradient. The Contour Gradient will be wonderful to use to add highlights to non radial or simply linear figures since it conforms to the shape and can be placed off center, as can all the other gradients.

Macromedia has also expanded other aspects of Freehand 10 to include a new Symbol Library. As an aside, the beauty of using a symbol instead of the actual object is that a symbol can be used many times in a piece of art work as if it were one object. Accessing the symbol library, one can edit a symbol and then apply this change to multiple pages of a document. For those familiar with Flash 5, this should be an especially nice addition to Freehand. The illustration immediately underneath shows an example of how a symbol would appear in the library as well as some of the controls available. While symbol creation was also available in Freehand 9, it was not standard to other Macromedia programs and could not be kept in a library nor did it have all the options that it does in Freehand 10 (due in part to added features such as Master Pages).

Freehand 10	Freehand 9

For people in a collaborative environment or those producing multiple "look-alike" documents, Macromedia has added Master Pages, well known in page layout programs as well as a new "action" called "Print Area." This new action allows a user to print part of a design as well as the whole workspace so that team members can look at a hard copy of an illustration or plan, for example. Also, Macromedia has incorporated the ability to preserve IPTC header information within Freehand 10 including information such as copyright, credits, etc.

Standardization of interfaces, shortcuts, menu structure, and panel management will make Freehand 10 easier for the new user and faster for the experienced user. One example is color selection. The Tool's tool bar now contains foreground and background chips as do other Macromedia products. Aside from the uniformity of how to access colors and create them, the process of color selectionl in Freehand 9, in my opinion, was always unwieldy. Using the chips on this tool bar to create foreground and background colors is so much easier.

Freehand 10	Freehand 9

As I stated in the beginning of this review, for a more comprehensive discussion of a vector drawing package, see the review of Freehand 9 and also the review of Flash 5 to see why the added integration with Flash 5 is so important.

Freehand 9 is an excellent program and, with its added features, Freehand 10 is even better. For more information see the Macromedia web site.