Chapter 4: Getting to Know FreeHand

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FreeHand is a very powerful drawing program. If you can learn its basics, you can do just about anything in the graphic arts field. In this chapter you'll get a feel for its power and capabilities, from simple drawing through Web page design and animations.

What to Expect from FreeHand

FreeHand was the first drawing program to be built from the ground-up with Mac OS X compatibility. That created a few minor problems on the Mac side of the aisle. Apple engineers were hard at work with the introduction of an entirely new operating system, and Macromedia engineers were working on FreeHand 10 with daily changes from Apple. As a problem was fixed at one company, the solution would break something in the other company's software. Both companies had deadlines to meet, and both products were delivered with problems of one kind or another.

Why don't I have FreeHand MX?

The version of FreeHand that is installed as part of the MX Studio is a slightly modified version of the original FreeHand 10. The only changes that have been made to the program are minimal: Tabs in panels have a new way of operating, due to a lawsuit with Adobe, and the program plays better with OS X and Windows XP. Other than that, the version doesn't get the full upgrade to an MX label until the engineering and marketing departments can get a handle on what is necessary to satisfy customers and the operability of the program — both in terms of the cost to accomplish it and its profitability. For now, FreeHand 10.0.1 is a great program, but it lacks some of the bells and whistles of the MX user interface — I can work with that, easily.

FreeHand was developed as a vector drawing program and has grown to be arguably the best program on the market for the production of pure vector art. Over the last 15 years or so of continual change and improvement, FreeHand has become an extremely versatile program for anyone in the graphic arts community. Nearly anyone will tell you that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, and the same is true of FreeHand's and Adobe Illustrator's yards. Both programs contain similar tools and features, and both have tools and features the other program lacks. If you are an experienced Illustrator user and just need a jump-start to functionality, that chapter may be a good place for you to start.

Comparisons aside, this book is about Macromedia products, and this chapter is devoted to FreeHand, so let's dig in!

Page layout

FreeHand stands alone among drawing programs in the regard that it supports multiple-page documents. The FreeHand desktop is 22-feet square, and you can fill that desktop with as many pages of different sizes as you want. The only restriction is the amount of disk space and RAM you have on your machine. Master pages enable you to have common design elements on specific pages to make your layout less time-consuming. Certainly, programs such as Adobe InDesign, PageMaker, and QuarkXPress are more suited to long-document production, but I've personally done many multipage documents solely in FreeHand.

The advantage to working on multipage documents in FreeHand lies in the amount of artwork that's necessary for the project. If you have a lot of drawings, spot illustrations, logos, or icons in the publication, FreeHand is a natural program to choose for the entire undertaking. Because the entire project is in a vector-based program, there's no need to import EPS files. All the drawings can be live vector illustrations. That means a smaller file size.

Single projects, such as catalogs or instruction manuals, are easy to create in FreeHand, but you can also place all of a company's stationery in a single document. The letterhead, envelopes, second sheets, and business cards can all be in the same document. You can have the logo on one page, and use special Lens effects to place live copies of the logo on the other elements. Then you can make a change to the logo and the changes ripple throughout the whole set of documents.

Of course, you can also use symbols to get the same results. That's one of the beauties of FreeHand. Another beauty is the text-handling capabilities within the program. FreeHand is a drawing program, not a page-layout program, but there's not much in the way of manipulating text that can't be done in FreeHand. Chapter 9 goes into FreeHand's text features in detail.

Package design

FreeHand makes it easy for you to design packaging. Most box manufacturers require you to draw the lines for the die cuts that form the box after it has been printed. It's an easy task to draw the die lines and then simply duplicate the page. You leave one page as-is for the die-cutting process, and use the other page to place design elements — photos, blocks of color, and text. Use a separate layer for the die lines on the "art" page so you can place all the elements in their correct location. Hide that layer before printing. Because both pages (die and art) are the same size, the printer registers the die to the printed sheet. With other illustration programs, you would have to contend with two separate documents, and minor changes and adjustments become major stumbling blocks. Through a judicious use of some of the tools available in FreeHand, such as master pages and custom pages, you can go a long way in label design.

Technical illustration

I call myself a technical illustrator, and FreeHand has been my tool of choice since its first release. Technical illustrations vary in style and complexity, from the line drawings that show you how to set your VCR's clock to colorful exploded or cutaway views of mechanical devices such as a car or airplane. The FreeHand toolset is well-defined and easy to use and master. Symbols can be developed for items that must be drawn multiple times. Styles are easy to set up so you can change a single path or an entire drawing with a single mouse-click. Most graphic programs have layers, and learning to use them should be one of your first priorities. Through layers, you can show or hide various parts of a drawing to make construction of other parts easier.

Maps

Many cartographers around the world use FreeHand in the execution of their jobs. FreeHand's layers, styles, and custom brushes are a mainstay of map creation. It's not uncommon to have dozens and dozens of layers in a map, and strict organizational skills are a must.

Web graphics

By definition, everything you see on a Web page is graphic, and all those graphics have to start somewhere. There's no better place to start than right here! You can design buttons, page layouts, and construct all the elements you need while you're working in FreeHand. This is a really good place to start a Web site's development by making a storyboard layout for the pages.

Basic animation

Simple animations are very easy to do, and you'll catch on to the system very quickly. It's a matter of creating a blend between two objects and assigning the steps of the blend to an animated sequence. You'll learn all about the finer points in Chapter 11. The resulting file can be exported in .SWF format and imported into Flash for further work.

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