Customer Reviews

BIG BOX OF ART 615,000 (WIN 95,98,ME,NT,2000,XP)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

There is no question, this is an incredible collection of clipart; however, there are a number of things about it that annoy me.

My set came with 24 numbered CD's (1 & 2 are install disks) plus 2 more disks of web graphics. If you have the disk space, it is not actually necessary to do constant disc shuffling. You can copy the CDs to your hard drive, then set the option for 'Also look for images in the following locations:' so that the CD is unnecessary.

Annoyance 1 (minor)

When I choose to turn off viewing of certain window panes the choice is not persistent -- i.e. the next time I run the program I have to turn them off again.

Annoyance 2 (minor/moderate)
The database is not in a standard format which would allow the keywords etc. to be extracted and imported into another application. The searches are slower than what I would expect for a real database -- only about 350,000 of the images (everything except web graphics) are indexed/searchable, and searching that should be very fast.

Annoyance 3 (major)
Only simple searches are supported -- "match all words" and "match any word". You cannot specify a search for (keyword <A> AND <B> OR <C> OR <D>), also there is no "NOT" functionality. These advanced searches are essential for a product capable of returning hundreds of thousands of matches.

Both variety and quality of the images are excellent, and the Export Wizard makes it very easy to use them. The search engine, however, can only be described as "primitive," and you will need time and patience to find what you're looking for. I used the keyword "girl" as a test and got both appropriate images and others that left me scratching my head - many pics of soldiers in battle among them. As I scroll through search results, I've taken to copying good, but unrelated, images to a document in case I can't find them again! Overall, very good but could be great with a better search engine.

The search engine is a HUGE negative. Results are not reproducable consistently, so if you see an image you might like at some point in the future, you better save it because the chances you'll find it again are slim. Simple searches will turn up 10s of thousands of results, many having nothing to do with the search term.

I was wildly frustrated trying to find, and refind images.

When you can find what you're looking for, they're useful, and I didn't have any trouble with taking them to press in high resolution. They are very heavy on only happy people - if you want to find a slightly sad or impoverished-looking individual you won't find them. (Or maybe you will, but I sure can't.)

If they can manage to upgrade the search - or even produce some kind of thumbnail set that people could view or print easily - I would recommend it more highly. As it is, it approaches adequate.

Images if you manage to find what you want are very workable for graphics, but sheesh could they come up with a more cumbersome system? It takes up a lot of MBs on the computer, the search engine is laughable. If you manager to find what you are looking for, save it quick, for you won't likely come back to that image again.

Sorry, this needs a lot of work to make it a worthwhile buy.

I love this software. It has great art. The only drawback is the 22 CDS! Unless you subscribe to the on-line art retrieval you need to sort through all of the CDs to load an image.

A mind-bogglingly huge collection of excellent images. Incredible! It is worth 10x the price.

It's extremely good for the money... Quality indeed.