Customer Reviews

Clickart Professional Win/Mac

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

 

 

First off: Ignore the previous review claiming the software "doesn't work on laptops". It's hard to know what that even means. The software does NOT require anything special from your PC/Mac in terms of hardware, and it is hard to believe that there is a standard configuration modern laptop or desktop that wouldn't run this properly.

What it is: This software package offers you over 50,000 pictures. No clip art, no fonts. All pictures. Almost all in very high (300dpi and 5-10" per dimension, sometimes larger)resolution, with a (selectable) transparent background (so they can be easily inserted in a montage) and suitable for just about any project. The program is trivially easy to run, and the interface is rudimentary but usable (enter phrase to search for and it'll return pictures that match, or else you can select from a modest list of catagories).

The major drawback of this software is that while the thumbnails for all 50000+ objects are installed (about 100mb required), you need to fumble around with 10 DVDs to get the actual picture. (Select the thumbnail, insert the appropriate DVD, evaluate, repeat if not to your liking). I suppose that's unavoidable--and it's typical of these mega-art packages--but it's still inconvenient. There is no option for installing all the artwork to the hard drive to avoid this (you'd need a large amount of hard drive space anyway).

Other than that, this software delivers what it promises.

I got this on sale and it also had a rebate.

I was going to give the package away as a gift, but since I had to open it to get the rebate form, I decide to play around with it a bit.

The bad news: I won't be giving it away as a gift.

The good news: It was quite impressive and I'm keeping the package for myself.

Like another reviewer mentioned, the thumbnails of all the pics are on the 1st DVD. Within each thumbnail is the number of which DVD that particular thumbnail is on.
So, there is some swapping in and out of DVD's.

If you have a really big hard drive, or multiple drives, you could probably use one of those software programs that lets you create "virtual drives" upon your hard drive. Then it offloads the CD or DVD contents to a virtual drive, giving you access to
any of the clipart right from your hard drive. But I have not tested it yet, as I need to purchase "Virtual drive" or whatever that software is called.

I don't have a laptop to test it on.
It's regrettable the laptop reviewer had problems, because this is a nice program/package.

I've seen a lot of these type photos while surfing the web, so now I know where the website makers found their pictures.

I give this a 1-1/2 thumbs up.

If I did not have to shuffle DVD's, I'd give it a 2 thumbs up.

As a professional graphic designer I have found this package well worth the purchase. With stock photo CDs starting at $300 there is bound to be something on here you can use. Very easy to use and you get an excellent preview of the image. Everything is high resolution. And you'll find many of the same images that are postage stamp size in the Hemera Big Box of Art. Just remember that these are DVDs so your computer will need to be able to read them.

i've just spent 7 to 8 hours troubleshooting - and perusing the net to find absolutely nothing in the way of assistance from this company. the technical support site listed (www.valusoft.com) for mac is not valid. i'm running a powermac g5 i purchased in late 2005 and this software will not even load correctly; (even though i more than meet the requirements on the 'readme' file). i have been able to load the browser and nothing else. (and you would not believe how DATED this thing looks!!!)

do yourself a favor, do not buy broderbund. use your own digital camera and generate your own stock photographs. this is a complete rip-off and i will never purchase anything they offer in the future.

This product does work on laptops and worked flawlessly with my PC. The graphics are excellent and I have used them with many video and photo editing and production programs. However, if you are not computer savvy you may have some problems. The thumbnails to view the pictures are installed with the program disk but you have to switch between the 10 DVD's to use the pictures for projects. This is normal with a high quality image collection of this size, however it is still a pain. This can be avoided if you install all 10 disks to your hard drive but you need a whole lot of extra memory to do that. I did that and I am happy. Excellent product if you know how to use it.

It's difficult to give this product a 1 star rating when it doesn't even work, but that's the lowest possible rating available. What they don't tell you on the box is that this program hasn't been tested on laptops! And quess what, it doesn't work. When you go to the recommened support website they tell you right away. What's more, they state that if it doesn't work you are out of luck. (...)