Using FreeHand to publish a book tips and technique...

[Handsfree]

FreeHand tips to share. I have just created an educational book using FreeHand MX for all the illustrations and texts. Using what I have based on my Mac 10.4 which includes both Quark and Indesign (which I loath) and scanned in art illustration manipulated in PhotoShop as tiff files (better previews). I have an extensive (old) font collection going back to Postscript 1 and 2 and I still use Extensis Pro to organise into fonts and project collections. So I can call up any display font or body text font at will and compare. So I used a lot of fonts in my book to create the pages, some of which were postscript unprintable, (so some of which I can convert to outlines in FreeHand (Quark has exactly the same textbox option). This project has taken years (not months) and most of my illustrations are combinations of hand drawn art scans into FreeHand template with all texts and display faces set in FreeHand. I should have used Quark or Indesign to add the texts to the illustrations but as it turned out I simply imported each as standalone PDF into InDesign as I went along. I could have used Quark but each page is unique layout. Indesign has a better PDF bake off, Quark has a better functionality very much (for me) like FreeHand. Anyway its done and dusted and published last year in 2017. So as an example of what you can do in FreeHand I am linking to the publishers interactive PDF pages.

Publishers interactive PDF link:
https://b2l.bz/IqPrLx
This shows each page as a web enabled preview. The Author being an ex pro designer helps a lot..

(Technical notes):
Each page was a two page PDF imported (into InDesign) on a page-by-page basis from FreeHand MX export as PDF. Doing a book this way is NOT to be recommended as the editing of ‘typos’ took longer than putting the book together the ‘normal’ DTP way. But I enjoyed every minute working with FreeHand and I still do. I do have some export Number ONE tips for other FreeHand illustrators out there. You must change the import option within FreeHand settings to import at 300dpi (I used 200dpi for example (which did cause complications ‘photo res’ query at the end printers). The FreeHand photo res default is just (not ideal at just 72dpi) but it’s not obvious how to change this... You have to do this on the FeeHand blank page DOCUMENT settings (FreeHand FILE menu and not the ‘preference’ settings). And don’t forget to change all RGB images and settings to CMYK (as you would anyway for all postscript printing). Also turn off all FreeHand jPeg compression (preferences to maximum jPeg). I plan (next few months) to move towards using the OSXFH website (http://osxfh.com) option of running everything in Virtual Snow Leopard. I like this idea a lot - it solves lot almost all the print designer problems with legacy installations and fonts. But then I do prefer Tiger os given the choice (and there is none on the new iMacs). I hope that this is useful to those considering using FreeHand in publishing and print.

[FFH Mark]

This is an amazing book especially with the extensive use of FreeHand. I'm a book designer as well so I can appreciate what you did and using PDFs imported into ID. I agree that moving over to OSXFH would help streamline your process (which my setup does) but that aside you were able to manage quite well wth all the graphics.

I will post this to our social media sites. It is a great read.