FreeHand 8 draws near
Macromedia Inc. next week at Macworld Expo in San Francisco will draw show goers' attention to a new version of its popular illustration application.
FreeHand 8, due in March for a street price of $400, will pack an editable transparency effect, a new Freeform drawing tool, and new functions for print and Web publishing. With Version 8, Macromedia has adopted a lens metaphor for applying effects. The upgrade's new Lens Fill for transparency will offer editable transparent vector output as PostScript code, the company said. For example, users could place editable transparent text over bit-mapped images, Macromedia said.
With FreeHand 8's new Freeform drawing tool, users will edit shapes by pushing and pulling any area of a path. The upgrade will also offer object transformation handles within the workspace, so users can move, rotate and scale objects without changing tools.
Beta tester Michael Diehl, a designer in Glendale, Calif., said the Freeform tool is one of his favorite additions. "Nudging existing line work is much simpler than finding, highlighting, then dragging handles and points," he said.
Version 8's Magnify Lens for creating zoomed views will be useful for making cutouts in technical illustrations, the company said. Other effects lenses will invert, lighten and darken images. The upgrade will also feature one-button Shadow, Mirror and Emboss effects, and the new Graphics Hose function will let users place vector and bit-mapped graphics into a drawing with a mouse click, Macromedia said.
In addition, the interface will offer customizable toolboxes and tool bars, and users will be able to redefine shortcuts to commands or load a set of shortcuts matching those of other commonly used applications.
FreeHand 8's Collect for Output function will assemble components such as fonts and linked images in a folder for transfer to service bureaus. The upgrade will let users create and edit multipage Portable Document Format (PDF) documents in Adobe Acrobat 3.0 format and export files in the Desktop Color Separation 2.0 and Quark EPS formats. FreeHand 8 will also export files that can be read by Flash, Macromedia's vector-based multimedia tool for the Web.
The upgrade will include performance optimizations, including a Fast Preview mode that will redraw up to 10 times faster than the current version's preview mode, Macromedia said.
Upgrading from earlier versions of FreeHand or the FreeHand Graphics Studio will have a street price of $150. Competitive upgrades will be $200.
Also at the show, Macromedia will introduce the Design in Motion Suite, due in March for a street price of $500. Aimed at Web designers, the suite will include FreeHand 8; Flash 2; and a new version of Insta.HTML, an export tool.
Macromedia Inc. of San Francisco is at (415) 252-2000 or (800) 326-2128; fax (415) 626-0554; http://www.macromedia.com.