Macromedia FreeHand

Macromedia FreeHand is a computer application for creating two-dimensional vector graphics (use of geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and polygons to represent images, also known as geometric modeling), oriented to the professional desktop publishing market. Development has been discontinued[1][2][3] but it is still available[4] in versions for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X.

FreeHand is very similar in scope, intended market, and functionality to Adobe Illustrator. It was created by Altsys and licensed to Aldus, which released versions 1 to 4. When Aldus merged with Adobe Systems, because of the overlapping of market with Illustrator, Adobe returned FreeHand to Altsys soon after the merger (after some legal wrangling, and intervention by the Federal Trade Commission). Altsys was later bought by Macromedia, which released FreeHand 5.0, 5.5 (Mac only), 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11/MX. In 2005 Adobe acquired Macromedia, thus returning the FreeHand product to Adobe.

A flexible application, it was used for page layout (especially since version 4 which was based on Altsys Virtuoso for NeXTstep and had multi-page capabilities) as well as the creation and editing of vector graphic files for print and the Web.

Its last version, FreeHand 11, was marketed as FreeHand MX, which showed its integration with the Macromedia MX line of products, which also includes Macromedia Flash, Macromedia Dreamweaver and Macromedia Fireworks and more.