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ATPM 8.07
July 2002

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AquaGrep Review

FreeHand 10 Review

Episode II: Attack of the Installers

Building the Dream Machine

Also in This Series

Reader Comments (7)

Mike · November 20, 2002 - 01:31 EST #1
Freehand 10 has major printing problems with Mac OS X 10.2.2, including the PDF preview problem, and the view mode dialog box often locks up in keyline mode. I have had strange paper feed misalignments printing from Freehand 10 to my Epson Sylus C80, and often only a small portion of the page prints. I have been using earlier versions of Freehand (back to the days when Aldus made it) but this has stumped me. Any suggestions???
David · March 17, 2003 - 12:46 EST #2
I am using Mac OS X 10.2.4 and have been completely unable to get Freehand 10 to print on my Epson C80. This seems to be a Freehand issue since I can print from all of the other OS X applications I have tried. Any suggestions what I might be doing wrong? Please help!
Mike · April 16, 2003 - 16:14 EST #3
Roy, Mike, and David,

I have had all of the same problems, but have a fix. When printing FH 10 documents to the Epson C80, first click on the File menu, then Page Setup. In the dialog box on the "Format for" pull down menu, the default says "any printer." Change this to "Stylus C80." On the "Paper Size" pull down menu, change the selection from the default "Other" to the size you intend to print, such as "US Letter."

That should eliminate the baffling printing of a small image portion on the lower left hand side of the page that you have probably been experiencing.

With Mac OS X 10.2.5, the export as ".gif" now seems to work, where previously in FreeHand, the attempt would try to save the file as "name.gif.swf." That is, hopefully, resolved for good.

As for the slow response, I am running an iMac G4 800 MHz 17 inch with 512 MB of RAM, and FreeHand 10 is much slower than most of the past versions, including Aldus Freehand on my Mac LC.
Donna · October 12, 2003 - 13:16 EST #4
I have just switched to Freehand 10 and it is horrible. When running FH 9, a file with a 12mb TIFF opens in seconds. The same file, when opened in FH 10, takes 5 minutes or more. When the file has more than 1 page with TIFFs, it is slower than molasses. To complicate matters, we just installed the new G5 and Freehand 9 runs slow now. What a nightmare.
Any ideas? Every FH file I work with has multiple TIFFs. It is not an option to change the redraw to a lower resolution because I need to see exactly what the final will look like. Freehand 10 is horrible.
Lee Bennett (ATPM Staff) · October 28, 2003 - 22:46 EST #5
Donna - I'd advise getting some assistance from Macromedia support. I'm not going to claim that Freehand 10 is absolutely faster than 9, but I've had some FH 10 files with large TIFFs placed in them and haven't had the type of problems you describe. I was going to ask you what your original hardware setup was. I'm using a 1 GHz PowerBook with a gigabyte of RAM. A lot lower specs and I imaging things could possibly be slow like you describe. The G5, however, should have no issues.
k3rry · July 10, 2005 - 12:20 EST #6
i've been using freehand 9 sine 2 years ago, and it produce quite a good product. recently, i've been working on my vector art and it keeps on lag and it is very hard to do my work (around 1 sec each time i want to move or draw a line or etc etc etc). I only use the foreground to do my work and the background to put the original picture on the back. around 20 transparent layer in there, and the rest is just a normal shape. then i try swithch into MX and its completely SUX, seriously, i cant even use an inspector and bezigon anymore (dammit). Is there any other solution i can take to increase the speed of fh9 without having to change it into mx?
Jack · March 14, 2006 - 10:16 EST #7
Get over all your problems in one go with Freehand. But it in the Bin and never use it again

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