IBM Lotus Freelance Graphics

Lotus Freelance Graphics is an information graphics and presentation program developed by Lotus Software (formerly Lotus Development Corp.). Lotus Freelance Graphics is a part of the Lotus SmartSuite office suite for Microsoft Windows. (Previous versions were also released for OS/2.)

It allows users to create and compile text, digital images, diagrams, basic drawings, and charts (such as bar charts and pie charts) into a digital slide show. The program was originally an enhancement for the graphing function of the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet-based program.

Freelance worked within DOS to produce slides that were a worthy competitor to PowerPoint, a program that was started for the Macintosh system. IBM acquired Lotus and instead of developing a version for the new Microsoft operating systems, Windows, the program was developed for IBM's OS/2, while PowerPoint was converted to the Windows system. With the general lack of adoption of OS/2, Freelance became a little-used system.

It was eventually grafted into a new version of 1-2-3 for Windows (Smart Suite) but by then PowerPoint and Excel had become dominant. The quality of the Freelance product started to deteriorate as IBM gave little support to SmartSuite while Microsoft Office and PowerPoint dominated the application area.

External links

• Freelance Graphics home page
• Lotus SmartSuite home page
• Freelance Mobile Screen Show Player (to view .prz files, 1.5MB)