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When I got my first stereo system it was all-inclusive. The radio, 8-track player, turntable, cassette player, etc. were all in the same unit. My older brother, on the other hand, had a much better system that had all separate components from different companies. He said that was better because there was no single company that made everything better than any other company-each had their one best component.

The same could be said about software. Some of the lower priced home desktop publishing products will let you do everything from greeting cards to newsletters, etc. The professionals, however, have all separate programs: one for art, one for photos, one for text, one for layout, etc.

There is a new generation of software that is just hitting the market that combines the two schools of thought and Macromedia has done a fine job putting almost all of the tools in one place with Freehand 8. From writing text to text effects for headlines to artwork and layout, Freehand 8 does it all-but with the quality of separates.

Before I get into some of the details of Freehand 8(r), let me state that I am not suggesting everyone uninstall their Quark(r), Adobe(r) or other software. Freehand is not the cure all nor is it everything for everyone, but Macromedia has done their homework and the result is quite impressive.

Normally Freehand would be considered on the professional level of vector art along with Adobe Illustrator 8 (r), Corel DRAW 8 (r) and other programs from the other companies. Then for text and layout and web publishing, Microsoft FrontPage(r), Quark Xpress(r) and other programs would be brought in. Freehand 8(r), however, has brought together the right tools so you can create almost the entire project without opening several other programs. In fact, their committment to staying on top is evident with the new upgrade to version 8.0.1. Just released about the same time Adobe (r) announced Illustrator 8, the new upgrade for Freehand includes complete compatibility with Adobe Photoshop 5 (r) and opening Flash 3 files and is a free download for registered users. 

To begin with, if you are unfamiliar with Freehand, the tutorials are excellent, as are the wizards that can get you well on your way to drawing vector art for a project or laying out a newsletter, etc. I will say, however, that you will not learn this program in 5 minutes.  This is still a professional level program and there will probably be tools that you may never use and it will take some time for you to become proficient. As you do learn the program, I would say the help section is the most extensive and easiest to use and understand from all of the programs I have used. And if you don't understand from the plain written text, it will give you more details and there are a couple of Show Me movies that show how the layers main menu and colors main menu work.

Kodak^. color management and Pantone^. matching tools are included as well. Even animation is made easy with Freehand 8 for the pro or novice as well as being able to export Flash 3 animated files and edit and export Adobe Acrobat files. The earlier mentioned upgrade to version 8.0.1 also means people using Adove Photoshop 5 have complete drag and drop support of PS5's .PSD filrs and also full support for linked JPEG images. You can even import a bitmap file and put a vector file over top of it and make the vector transparent so you can see the bitmap behind it.