Reviews and News

"Macromedia has a knack for creating applications that encourage users inclined in a particular direction to empower themselves in other mediums. Freehand MX is one of the most surprising examples of this, playing enabler for vecorists to enter mediums that are natural progressions (web, animation, publishing) without the need of a career change. Somehow, Macromedia went from being a developer of powerful niche applications to being the developer of applications that made niches invisible. I recommend Freehand MX to even those users that thought they wouldn't need it. This is an app you simply must explore."

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"Freehand MX is a solid improvement over previous versions, offering a much-improved interface and exciting new tools and features. It provides much more screen space for documents, and is customizable according to your needs. It’s a powerful application that offers several features that no other vector application has."

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"The real selling point is its more comprehensive integration with other MX products; this integration finally brings FreeHand MX up to a level where professionals can use it with confidence."

"FreeHand MX can also handle heavy-duty publication design. The multiple-page environment includes master-page environment includes master page capabilities and smoothly creates pages based on the original....A selectable output area helps you print (or publish to Flash) only those items you want from a chaotic pasteboard."

"FreeHand MX is definitely one of the better tools on the market and I suggest you try it out if you want to create stunning graphics."

"As I say, I've used Adobe Illustrator a lot more than I've used Freehand in the past. But Freehand MX will change this for me. It can do things that Illustrator can't, and it offers improvements to the interface and workflow that make it possible for me to move back and forth between the two with very little mental adjustment. Plus, it's far more interoperable--especially with Adobe Photoshop 7--than previous releases."

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"If you currently work with Macromedia Web programs, such as Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Flash, FreeHand's tight integration gives it a real advantage over Adobe Illustrator and CorelDraw."

"Of course, Macromedia did more than make FreeHand MX look like its Studio MX counterparts, they made it play well with them, too . Flash MX is huge in the web world, of course, so it's a foregone conclusion that FreeHand MX would both import and export Flash SWF."

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"A powerful, easy-to-use piece of software aimed at media and new media users, but home users may be tempted by it, too." "This reworking of the Freehand interface is not only radical, but also spectacularly successful."

”best-integrated development, authoring and graphics-building products I've seen in quite a while."

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MacUser

Rating: five out of five mic
April 2000

CNET.com

Rating: 8 out of 10
March 2000

Editor's Choice

Best Professional Design Tool
April 1999

Publish Magazine

Rating: 4.5 Stars
July 1998

MacWorld

Best of Show
January 1998

"The 'raster effects feature' in Macromedia FreeHand MX opens new possibilities to a designer. Operations that used to involve several applications can now be achieved within FreeHand alone. Another welcome step forward is that FreeHand MX supports transparency in bitmaps and that thanks to the 'gradient mask raster effect' you can have objects that fade into transparency. This is a wonderful feature that gives the designer a lot more creative freedom."

"Macromedia FreeHand has a reputation among professional illustrators for a uniquely intuitive user interface, and FreeHand MX takes this to the next level. The user interface has been unified with the rest of the Macromedia MX product family, complete with dockable panels to ease the transition from one application to the next. It's a cleaner, more streamlined working area designed to maximize user efficiency and minimize on-screen clutter. I always work in FreeHand for illustration, basic layout, package design, and any other uses I can come up with. The entire art department here at Disc Makers uses FreeHand for CD packaging design because it just beats the pants off of other illustration software."

"Because Macromedia FreeHand has been the ultimate illustration tool for years, it was hard to imagine how it can be improved. But Macromedia Freehand MX exceeds all expectations with its live effects, Action Tool for applying Macromedia Flash actions, and a tighter integration with the Macromedia MX product family. With multi-publishing capabilities, designing, reviewing, and printing our forms is much easier. In short - its an indispensable tool for any designer."

"Macromedia FreeHand MX is a big step forward towards creating a platform capable of supporting a company in the process of developing complex projects, from the layout design to the integration with application servers. At Adacto we are used to thinking in terms of cross-media, therefore the new characteristics of FreeHand MX seem great to us: the integration with Macromedia Flash MX has become considerably stronger, as well as the possibility to create .swf file directly from within Freehand MX. Also the new effects and tools, like extrude and navigator, not to mention the improved control of printing, have permitted us to cut the total work time by around 30%."

"Macromedia FreeHand has always been a multifaceted product making it a much more valuable tool than other leading illustration products. FreeHand MX takes that even further with tools like the new connector tool which is great for creating technical diagrams increasing productivity dramatically. In addition to all the great added strengths are core drawing tools for creating amazing illustrations. I love the new extrude tool in FreeHand MX as it allows us to get some really interesting 3D object in a matter of seconds. No modeling no add-on plug in app it is built right in working seamlessly with the rest of the application."