Making the most of Freehand 9

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June 28, 2000
Web posted at: 10:10 a.m. EDT (1410 GMT)

by Olav Martin Kvern

(IDG) -- With its tools for page layout, Web graphics, and animation, FreeHand is difficult to pigeonhole. Version 9 expands the application's abilities even more, offering new features for each of FreeHand's personalities. Some of these additions are eye-catching and take the program in a new direction; others offer solid enhancements to everyday tools and promise to transform FreeHand from a workhorse to a racehorse.

Here's a look at the most impressive additions to FreeHand 9 and some tips on putting them to work for you.

Live Envelopes

FreeHand's live envelope feature aims to make manipulating images a quick and easy process. An envelope is a method of distorting an object (or a group of objects) so it appears that you've bent or stretched the plane on which it rests. This creates an effect similar to a funhouse mirror. When applying an envelope, FreeHand creates an envelope grid--a kind of bounding box you can manipulate using standard points and control handles. As you stretch and distort the grid, the shape of the underlying object changes as well.

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The envelope feature itself isn't the big news in FreeHand 9; previous releases of the program included a primitive version. The main difference is that now envelopes are live, and you can manipulate them directly within the work space. In previous versions, applying an envelope changed the shape of the original path. This meant that the only way to adjust the original object was to start over or undo all of the envelope changes manually--along with any other changes you'd made in the meantime.

In FreeHand 9, applying an envelope changes only the appearance of the path, leaving the original object fully editable. If you decide an hour later that you are unhappy with the envelope, you can always return to the original shape of the path or change the settings to create a different effect. Even text remains editable after you've applied an envelope to it. Like perspective grids, however, live envelopes don't work with bitmapped images.

Symbols

Because of its powerful productivity features, such as graphic find-and-replace and intelligent text-handling tools, FreeHand is the program of choice for many cartographers and technical illustrators. For this group, one new feature that really stands out is the addition of symbols.

Many Macromedia customers are already familiar with symbols--which are standard features in other Macromedia programs such as Fireworks, Flash, and Director. Symbols are shapes you can use over and over again in your publications. They might be icons for state capitals in a map or for a specific nut or bolt in a mechanical assembly diagram. You could create duplicate graphics by copying and pasting, but symbols give you two advantages over that technique. First, by turning repeated objects into symbols, you can place an unlimited number of instances of the symbols in the document without significantly adding to your size. Second, symbols save time. When you change a symbol, FreeHand updates all instances of it in the publication.

The key to working with symbols in FreeHand is the Symbols palette, located in the Panels submenu of the Window menu. Creating a new symbol is as easy as dragging the object into the list area of the Symbols palette and dropping it. Then, to insert an instance of the symbol into your document, drag it out of the Symbols palette and drop it on the page. You can transform an instance just as you would any other object--moving, rotating, skewing, or reflecting it. These changes affect only the selected instance. You can also break the link between an instance and its symbol completely, converting the instance to a normal FreeHand object.

To update a symbol--and all of the instances based on it--simply drag a new object over the original item in the Symbols palette. You can even share your symbols with other designers or transfer them to another FreeHand document, by exporting them into a symbol library. To do this, choose Export from the Symbols palette's pop-up menu.

Page Tool

In addition to utilizing its illustration tools, many designers also rely on FreeHand as a page-layout program--especially for short jobs such as brochures. Unlike other drawing programs--Adobe Illustrator, for example--FreeHand can create documents containing more than one page, and you can give the pages in a single document any size and orientation. The only real limit is the size of the pasteboard--a healthy 222 by 222 inches.

In the past, it was hard to ensure that your pages ended up in the correct order and location when you arranged them in the Document Inspector's tiny Page Preview window. The introduction of the Page tool changes all that. This tool allows you to move, flip, and rotate pages directly, rather than dragging a tiny thumbnail around in the Document Inspector. You can also use the Page tool to add, duplicate, remove, and resize pages quickly.

When you select a page with the Page tool, handles appear around the edges of the page, allowing you to manipulate it like any other object. To resize a page, for example, simply drag one of the corner handles. Or if you want to delete the page altogether, select the page and press the delete key.

To arrange multiple pages on the pasteboard, choose Fit All from the View menu. FreeHand zooms out to a view that displays all of the pages in the publication. This makes it very easy to position pages relative to each other. For greater accuracy in positioning pages on FreeHand's pasteboard, you can activate the Snap To Grid feature (in the View menu), which forces the page to snap to increments of the document grid. (To view the grid, choose Show from the Grid submenu of the View menu; to edit the spacing of the grid, choose Edit.) This makes it much easier to leave an exact distance between pages--which you sometimes need when you're printing imposed pages.

Final Word

FreeHand 9 is a different program for every user. Part of its strength lies in its diverse feature set. But whether you use FreeHand for creating Web animations or designing vacation brochures, chances are you'll find a tool in version 9 that can save you both time and trouble. You can download a trial version of FreeHand 9 from Macromedia's Web site.

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