Amazon.com Review Written for everyone from beginners to experts, this guide covers all of the basic and advanced features in Macromedia's popular illustration package for Macintosh and Windows. The author combines specific instruction with discussions of features and digital-graphics technology. He first explains the uses of the toolbar options and shows you how to navigate the interface, select and move elements, work with layers, set preferences, use Xtras, and get help in using the program. Next he helps you create basic drawings while working with simple shapes, paths and points, strokes, fills, graphic styles, charts and graphs, and drop shadows. There's plenty of guidance on creating realistic and compelling drawings, with insight on perspective drawing and extensive path manipulation. As you create and alter text and type, you'll use FreeHand's spelling, search, formatting, style, and copyfitting options; place text on a path; wrap text; and create inline graphics. The subsequent chapters teach you how to import and export files; transform elements in a drawing; create, add, edit, and apply colors; manage color; and work with trapping and color separations. A full-color section illuminates various color-management issues. Next, you learn how to fine-tune printing options for the best output, prepare files for imagesetting, troubleshoot printing problems, and use PostScript to extend FreeHand. Finally, you output your images to the Web. Kvern shows you how to export GIF images, create Shockwave Flash graphics, output images to Fireworks, and create HTML pages in FreeHand. An appendix demonstrates how to write scripts using AppleScript (Macintosh only) and Java. --Kathleen Caster Product Description Gives clear explanations, step-by-step instructions, and suggestions, with a sense of humor, to both novice and professional designers in Windows and Mac environments. Coverage ranges from basic to complex techniques, including creating Shockwave graphics and Flash animation, devising PostScript effects, and saving FreeHand pages as HTML. Includes b&w and a few color illustrations. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or. From the Back Cover The earlier editions of Real World FreeHand won international acclaim and awards for their friendly, approachable style and clear descriptions of the workings of FreeHand, covering topics from the most basic (how to draw a line) to the most advanced (how to add new tools and options to the program itself). Real World FreeHand 8 has the same goals: to provide clear, solid explanations of the basics; to make the most advanced techniques accessible to even the least experienced Macromedia FreeHand users; and to explain every tool and procedure from the point of view of the graphic arts professional. This new cross-platform edition also covers in depth FreeHand's new transparent lenses and its Web graphics creation features. And as with the earlier editions, Kvern's humor and engaging style make, as one reviewer put it, "learning this complex program almost as much fun as using it." About the Author Olav Martin Kavern designed documentation at the Aldus software firm before becoming one of the engineering designers of PageMaker 5. After leaving Aldus, he helped design and develop the new business drawing program, Visio from Shapeware. He has written for Macworld, Publish, and Personal Publishing and writes "Desktop Science," a regular column for Adobe magazine. With Steve Roth, he wrote the ground-breaking Real World PageMaker (Random House). In addition, Olav has designed many other books in the Peachpit catalog, and he has won dozens of awards for book design and illustration. Olav resides in Seattle.