Macromedia Free Hand

Macromedia Free Hand

Adobe FreeHand (formerly Macromedia Freehand) is a computer application for creating two-dimensional vector graphics that are oriented primarily to professional illustration, desktop publishing and content creation for the Web. FreeHand is similar in scope, intended market, and functionality to Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw and Xara Designer Pro. Because of FreeHand’s dedicated page layout and text control features, it also compares to Adobe InDesign and QuarkXPress. Professions using FreeHand include Graphic Design, Illustration, Cartography, Fashion and Textile Design, Product Design, Architects, Science Research, and Multimedia Production.

FreeHand was created by Altsys Corporation in 1988 and licensed to Aldus Corporation which released versions 1 through 4. In 1994, Aldus merged with Adobe Systems and because of the overlapping market with Adobe Illustrator, FreeHand was returned to Altsys by order of the Federal Trade Commission. Altsys was later bought by Macromedia, which released FreeHand versions 5 through 11 (FreeHand MX). In 2005, Adobe Systems acquired Macromedia and its product line which included FreeHand MX, under whose ownership it presently resides.

Development has been discontinued but it is still sold in versions for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. FreeHand MX is available in English, German, Chinese (traditional and simplified), French, Italian, Japanese, Spanish and Swedish languages.

FreeHand MX continues to run under Windows 7 using compatibility mode and under Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) within Rosetta, a PowerPC code emulator, and requires a registration patch supplied by Adobe. Freehand 10 runs without problems on Mac OS X 10.6 with Rosetta enabled, and does not require a registration patch.