Deborah Woehr

I was browsing through the NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals) tutorials this morning and came across a tutorial for Smart Gradients. By the way, you’ll find tons of great tutorials in this members-only website. Anyway, this tutorial involved creating smart objects, and then creating wavy gradients with the freeform warp tool. The first image is the result of my initial test.

After I save my first image, I decided to experiment with the freeform warp tool to see just how far I could push it.

Gradient 1

I liked the color combination and the somewhat 3D look of this design.

Gradient 2

This took me all of two seconds to create, once I set up the color scheme.

Gradient 3

This design was created by distorting the radial blur.

I’ve had this sitting on my server since Sunday, but have been too busy with writing projects to post about it. The uploading process went smoothly, once I realized that I needed to create a directory first. It’s a very simple one-page setup, which I created almost exclusively in Photoshop and imported into Freeway. Prospective readers can either download the free ebook for Prosperity or buy the paperback on Amazon.

To see it in action, click on the picture.

On Monday, I received a nice surprise when I found an email from Freeway’s technical support, which addressed the comments that I had written in this weekend’s post about my results with the software. With their permission, I am posting the solutions they gave me for the problems I faced.

We were alerted to your blog post by Google Alerts, so we wanted to discuss some of your comments.

It’s not directly possible to wrap text around curved graphics, however it is possible to wrap around the graphic item. You can do this by drawing an HTML item and entering the text you wish to use.

With this HTML item filled, place the text insertion cursor where you wish the graphic to be placed and use Insert>Graphic Item. Import the image file that you wish to use and with the Inspector palette, set Align to Left or Right.

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For your uploaded site, Freeway uses relative paths to all the resources, so if you have a Site Folder set that contains no other files, you should be able to simply upload the entire contents of the Site Folder and all will display correctly.

If you created from the Blank template or another template, you should have a folder called Site Folder alongside your Freeway file. If you created from custom, you will have been asked to specify one when publishing.

If you selected the same folder your Freeway file is in, I recommend creating a new folder and changing the Site Folder setting so that only Freeway will write your site files into this folder.

If you are using another FTP program such as Cyberduck or Fetch, you will be able to upload the entire contents of the Site Folder as mentioned. Otherwise you can use Freeway’s own built in FTP software to upload to your server, available from the File menu.

I bought Freeway Pro 4 in February and have been experimenting with it to create a website with moderate success. The first design limitation I experienced was the inability to make the text wrap around graphic elements. Then, I read their manual and learned that you can’t wrap html text around graphic items. You have to input your text as a graphical item, which (according to the tutorial I watched) isn’t readable by the search engine spiders. I began to wonder if I should have saved up for Dreamweaver, despite the steep learning curve.

When Freeway 5.0 launched last week, I hoped to find an improvement with the above scenario. The same rule still applies. I’ve yet to explore every feature (see link below) in the latest version, but I’m just as happy with the new interface as I was with the old one. You can design a custom website within the Freeway program, just by using the built-in tools. Even better, you can import files from Photoshop, Illustrator, Freehand, Fireworks, and other programs into your design.

I was able to create a single-page website in less than an hour, which I uploaded to my server. The results were crappy, however. Freeway automatically makes folders for your images and CSS files, but the images failed to display. Plus I saw some HTML text that shouldn’t have been there. The developers haven’t created a user manual for Freeway 5.0 yet, so I read through the manual for the earlier version. Their instructions sound so simple, but I’m wondering if I have to modify an html file in order to get them to display properly. Once I iron out this problem, I’ll post a snapshot of my results.

Overall, I like using Freeway. It has come a long way since version 3.0, which wasn’t user friendly at all. Looking at their Gallery, I’ve seen quite a few impressive sites.

Freeway Pro 5.0 Feature List