FreeHand was similar in scope, intended market, and functionality to Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW and Xara Designer Pro.

In 2005, Adobe Systems acquired Macromedia and its product line which included FreeHand MX, under whose ownership it presently resides.

FreeHand MX continues to run under Windows 11 and under Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) within Rosetta, a PowerPC code emulator, and requires a registration patch supplied by Adobe.

Based in Plano, Texas, the company initially produced font editing and conversion software; Fontastic Plus, Metamorphosis, and the Art Importer.

After 1988, a competitive exchange between Aldus FreeHand and Adobe Illustrator ensued on the Macintosh platform with each software advancing new tools, achieving better speed, and matching significant features.

In October 1991, a 3.1 upgrade made FreeHand work with System 7 but additionally, it supported pressure-sensitive drawing which offered varying line widths with a users stroke.

It also included drag-and-drop color imaging, a larger pasteboard, and a user interface that featured floating, rollup panels.

In the same year of FreeHand 4 release, Adobe Systems announced merger plans with Aldus Corporation for $525 million.

)[10][11] Because of this overlapping of the market, Altsys stepped in by suing Aldus, saying that the merger deal was "a prima facie violation of a non-compete clause within the FreeHand licensing agreement.

"[13] The Federal Trade Commission issued a complaint against Adobe Systems on October 18, 1994, ordering a divestiture of FreeHand to "remedy the lessening of competition resulting from the acquisition as alleged in the Commission's complaint," and further, the FTC ordering, "That for a period of ten (10) years from the date on which this order becomes final, respondents shall not, without the prior approval of the Commission, directly or indirectly, through subsidiaries, partnerships, or otherwise  .. Acquire any Professional Illustration Software or acquire or enter into any exclusive license to Professional Illustration Software;"[3] (referring to FreeHand.)

Despite brief plans to keep it in-house to sell it along with Fontographer and Virtuoso,[13] Altsys reached an agreement with the multimedia software company, Macromedia, to be acquired.

This mutual agreement provided FreeHand and Fontographer a new home with ample resources for marketing, sales, and competition against the newly merged Adobe-Aldus company.

Altsys would remain in Richardson, Texas, but would be renamed as the Digital Arts Group of Macromedia and was responsible for the continued development of FreeHand.

This version featured a more customizable and expanded workspace, multiple views, stronger design and editing tools, a report generator, spell check, paragraph styles, multicolor gradient fills up to 64 colors, speed improvements, and it accepted Illustrator plugins.

Features included a redesigned user interface that allowed recombining Inspectors, Panel Tabs, Dockable Panels, Smart Cursors, Drag and Drop with Adobe applications and QuarkXPress, Graphic Search and Replace, Java (programming language) and AppleScript Automation, Chart creation, and new Effects tools and functions.

Also Lens Fill and Transparency, Freeform tool, Graphic Hose, Emboss Effects, and a "Collect for Output" function for print.

A minor version of FreeHand 10 (10.0.1) came as a result of Adobe winning a lawsuit against Macromedia for infringement on a Tabbed Panels patent.

During the development of FreeHand MX, the customer install base was 400,000 users worldwide[16] but because of competition with Adobe Illustrator's market share, Macromedia focused instead on its web oriented lineup of Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Contribute.

The Department of Justice regulated the transaction that came 10 years after the Federal Trade Commission's 1994 ruling which barred Adobe from acquiring FreeHand.

[25] One year later on May 15, 2007, Adobe said that it would discontinue development and updates to the program[26][27] and the company would provide tools and support to ease the transition to Illustrator.

"[35] In spite of the aforementioned petitions with the advent of Flash Player 11 in October 2011 Adobe intentionally ditched the support for SWF contents created in FreeHand supposedly aiming to urge the transition to its Illustrator software.