Freehand MX

Rating:
Summary: Not up to par
Review: When I was in college for art/graphic design, we were trained to draw on the computer using Macromedia Freehand version 9, despite being told that Adobe Illustrator was the industry standard. I really liked Freehand however and got used to it.

I now work in a company that uses Adobe Illustator CS. But I decided to give Freehand MX a try both because I had liked version 9 in college and because of the slightly lower price tag.

The new user interface is a mess. I've seen better designed looking programs that are freeware. I couldn't find several toolbars without hunting and it appears several of the features in it that I liked in version 9 that set it apart from Illustrator have been removed. The art looks choppy and rasterized. When it's saved for web it looks cloudy and murky. The user does not have the options of using any colors they wish but are forced to choose from a handful of limited and, in my opinon, mostly unattractive pre-selected shades.

These are just the few things I've found. I haven't had the patience to mess with it much more because I'm so dissatisfied with it. I hope to take advantage of the comparitive price offer Adobe offers on Illustrator CS and get it instead. It might cost more, but it's very much worth the price tag. Freehand MX is not. I'm not even sure it's worth $100, much less the almost $400-500 dollars they're asking.