10-11-02
A while back we reviewed
Hemera's Big Box Of Art 215,000. The Big Box Of Art
contains a well rounded mix of clip art, raster illustrations,
photographs, animations and more. It also contains 10,000
"photo-objects." Photo-Objects are photographic
images of people, animals, inanimate objects, etc, with
the surrounding backgrounds removed.
Hemera's Photo-Objects 50,000 Volume II, as the name
implies, is a collection of photo-objects covering a
wide array of subject matter.
As with Hemera's Big Box collection, images are grouped
into logical categories. Photo Objects sports the same
intuitive and responsive search engine found in the
Big Box collection. Image names and associated keywords
are searched with search terms highlighted in the results
list. By default, all categories are searched, but you
can narrow your search to any one category. Searching
for "pig" will pull up roughly 140 results
including "pigskin" (football), "piggy
bank," "pigtail," etc. Selecting the
"animal" category quickly narrows the list
to a more manageable and relevant 13 results.
The collection also contains roughly 6,800 textured
photographs that don't fall into the "photo-objects"
category. This texturing effect compliments the subject
in a few cases, but looks downright ugly in others.
Fortunately, the textured photos represent a very small
portion of the collection.
For offline browsing, Photo-Objects comes with a 386
page color book with thumbnails of all the images grouped
by category. With 182 images per page, the thumbnails
are amazingly small. You will need to break out the
Photo-Objects program or a magnifying glass to make
out any detail.
Hemera's Search engine is quick and
yields accurate results.
Search terms are highlighted in red.
Once you have tracked down the image you want, there
are several ways to proceed. Double clicking on the
thumbnail will bring up an "export wizard"
which will help you select the best format based on
the graphic's final use. A second option is to drag
and drop a thumbnail to your hard drive or directly
into your application. When dragged to your drive, the
image will be saved in the format (TIFF, JPG, GIF, etc)
you set up in preferences. When dragged to an application,
the image will be inserted as a PICT file. The last
option is to select the thumbnail and copy the image
to the clipboard for pasting into another application.
The export wizard helps you select
the appropriate settings for your project
Like the Big Box of Art, Photo-Objects 50,000 sports
a nifty feature dubbed PhotoFont. With PhotoFont, you
type in some text and select one of 200 backgrounds.
Double clicking the resulting image (pictured below)
brings up the export assistant. You can also also import
your own background images for use in the program. While
you can create the same effect in a dedicated graphics
program, PhotoFont makes the job quick and painless.
Nothing like swiss chard as a background!
Conclusion
There is no doubt that Photo-Objects is a far more
focused product than Hemera's Big Box Of Art. If you
are looking for a well rounded starter collection, I
recommend the latter which contains 215,000 images,
10,000 of which are photo-objects. If you don't need
a vector based artwork collection, Photo-Objects is
an outstanding collection of high quality graphics.
If you are lucky enough to own both the Photo-Objects
and Big Box collections, you will need to run each program
separately to search for images. The Photo-Objects I
and II collections can be searched simultaneously of
course. You simply need to "combine" the two
collections. Hemera has told us that they are working
on an update that will allow you to search across multiple
installed Hemera collections, whether they be Photo-Objects,
The Big Box of Art, or online subscriptions purchased
through Hemera GraphicsDesk (which is currently Windows
only). Look for it in December or January.
Hemera's efficient search engine and helpful export
wizard make obtaining graphics for your projects quick
and painless. With 50,000 images to draw from, chances
are that you will find what you are after.
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