FreeHand 10 New Features

Illustration

• Create true Contour Gradients
• New Symbol-based brush and spray strokes
• Smart Cursors for automatic joins (like those in Macromedia Flash)
• New Macromedia standard Pen Tool
• Preserve Macromedia Flash Backgrounds across layers
• Embedded Fonts in MAC and WIN EPS files

Productivity

• New Macromedia User Interface
• Editable Symbols (like those in Macromedia Flash)
• Customizable Master Pages for increasing productivity through template-like behavior
• Print Area for large spreads or intricate zooms
• Macromedia Flash Player window for instantly testing SWF movies within FreeHand

Mulit-Publishing

• Industry Standard IPTC Header file support for Cataloging information
• Improved SWF export for preserving Backgrounds when testing animations inside FreeHand
• Macromedia Flash Navigation Panel for applying Macromedia Flash Actions and Web URLs
• Enhanced support for exporting to PDF, HTML, or SWF
• New Web Page Sizes

Fill, stroke, pattern, and gradient presets
FreeHand now offers a rich collection of visually previewable pre-sets that designers can use to achieve results right out of the box.

SELECT WINDOW: PANELS: Styles to bring up the Styles panel. In the Options pop-up, select "Hide Names" to display graphical icons for your styles. FreeHand 8 ships with a library of graphical styles that can be dragged and dropped on text and graphics to quickly create graphic effects.

The visual thumbnail previews significantly enhance the powerful graphic and text styles in FreeHand. They can easily exchange these style libraries with colleagues by using the import/export choices in the Options popup in the panel.

Users moving projects into FreeHand from Illustrator also can leverage the swatches contained in their Illustrator documents. FreeHand automatically turns these swatches into graphic styles.

Graphic hose
With the Graphic Hose, users can spray a series of vector graphics on the page. This helps in streamlining the task of creating repetitive or randomized patterns. The Graphic Hose is found in the Xtra Tools palette (WINDOW: XTRAS: XTRA TOOLS).

The Graphic Hose offers setting options for the spacing, scale, and rotation of the sprayed graphics, or designers can choose random settings to get a more natural look.

FreeHand ships with several preset hoses. Users can create their own hoses by pasting graphics into the Graphic Hose's window in a series. In this way, the Graphic Hose can serve as a library for commonly used objects as well as a tool for distributing graphics randomly.

Emboss
The Emboss Xtra (choose WINDOW: XTRAS: OPERATIONS) offers preset options for standard emboss, deboss, chisel, ridge, and quilt, and also provides users with controls for customization. These options make it easy to create stylized graphics, like nameplates or plaques and buttons or controls for new media projects. Select an object to emboss, then click the Emboss tool icon to bring up the Emboss dialog box.

Shadow
Designers can create drop shadows based on a path outline with the Shadow Xtra. With an object selected, choose the Shadow tool icon (WINDOW: XTRAS: XTRA TOOLS) to add depth to objects, and then click and drag on the selected object. Double-clicking the Shadow tool icon opens a dialog box for the tool with options for hard- or soft-edged shadows, colors, opacity, scale, and numeric placement (offset).

Mirror
The Mirror Xtra is used to quickly and easily create arrays of objects reflected around vertical and horizontal axes or around a movable center point.

With an object selected, click the Mirror Xtra in the Xtra Tools palette (WINDOW: XTRAS: XTRA TOOLS) After choosing the Mirror option, note that the smart cursor changes so you can set the axis point in the workspace. FreeHand also shows a live preview of the mirror effect in the workspace.

Double-click the Mirror tool to view options. The Mirror Xtra offers a multiple axis option for creating circular arrays of selected objects. Choosing the Reflect option creates two copies of the object reflected around a radial axis, while the Rotate option simply creates a single version of the object centered on the radial axis.

System Requirements--
Windows: Pentium processor or equivalent, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows NT4 or Windows ME, 64 MB of available RAM, 70 MB of free hard disk space, Netscape Navigator 4.0 or later of Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 or later recommended, Color monitor capable of 800x600, 256-color display (1024 x 768, millions of colors recommended), CD-ROM Drive, Adobe Type Manager Version 4 or later with Type 1 fonts (recommended), Postscript Level 2-Compatible printer or higher

Macintosh: PowerPC Processor, Mac OS 8.6, 9.1, or OS X, 32 MB of available RAM (64 MB RAM recommended), 70 MB of free hard disk space, Netscape Navigator 4.0 or later of Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 or later recommended, Color monitor capable of 800 x 600, 256-color display (1024 x 768, millions of colors recommended), CD-ROM Drive, Adobe Type Manager Version 4 or later with Type 1 fonts (recommended), Postscript Level 2-Compatible printer or higher

Macromedia's Freehand 10 Win Ver....$399