Macromedia has taken the decision to drop FreeHand from the new version of its Studio software suite. Many fear that when the company merges with Adobe later this year, the vector drawing application will be phased out completely. For the time being Macromedia have denied that the application would be dropped totally, but many industry observers fear that FreeHand will soon be abandoned in favour of Adobe Illustrator. Macromedia Studio 8 is scheduled to ship in September for £699, or £299 for an upgrade.