by Don Engstrom

7-12-02
If there is one thing that our recently completed site redesign has taught us, it is that we are not graphic artists. We left the creation of our logo and other site graphics to a professional. Even if you have the talent to create artwork for your project from scratch, it can be time consuming task.

Enter Hemera's Big Box of Art 215,000. As the name implies, the Big Box of Art (or BBoA) has a total of 215,000 images covering a wide variety of subject matter. The collection, which spreads over 24 CD's, is broken down into broad categories, education, house & home, transportation, nature, etc. Sorting through such a large collection could be a daunting task, but BBoA provides an easy to use search engine that helps you quickly cull through the collection for the image you are after. No filters are applied by default, but you can restrict your search to a particular category or image type to narrow your results.

The search engine scans both the file names and associated keywords to yield its results and this works well most of the time. We found, however, that some of the graphics were mislabeled. Searching for photo-objects (photos of objects with the backgrounds removed) of a mandolin pulled up no results. Expanding the search to "instruments" revealed several mandolins, all mislabeled as electric guitars! I assume that this is a fluke as most of our searches pulled up a healthy collection of accurate results.

The Big Box of Art comes with a 750 page book that lists all 215,000 images sorted by image type and then category. Just be prepared to put on you bi-focals as there are 182 thumbnail images crammed on to each page!

The Big Box of Art also contains over 25,000 web images and animations, but these are accessed through your web browser, not the BBoA search engine. Browsing through the web graphics collection revealed a rather unimpressive collection of bullets, buttons, lines etc, in several different color schemes. You are probably better off using one of the several free online collections or going with a dedicated web art CD set.

A search for "climbing" pulled up an impressive collection of rock climbers, climbing gear
and people climbing into or out of various settings. Search term is highlighted in red.

Once you have tracked down the image you want, there are several ways to proceed depending on the type of image you have selected. EPS files, which comprise over half of the collection, are simply downloaded (via dialog box or drag and drop) to your hard drive for later import into your favorite application. The remainder of the collection can take advantage of BBoA's export assistant which helps you select the appropriate resolution, compression and background based on the graphic's final destination. If you want to cut to the chase, you can simply drag the thumbnail image to your open application window to insert the image.

The export wizard helps you select the appropriate settings for your project

One other fun feature of the Big Box of Art is it's PhotoFont textures. PhotoFonts is a great way to create eye grabbing titles for a flyer, brochure or (if used judiciously) web page. Creating your title graphic is a simple matter of entering your text, selecting a font and style (bold, italic etc) and then selecting an appropriate photo background. If the included backgrounds don't strike your fancy, you can import and use your own. Although you can create the same effect using a program like Photoshop, BBoA's PhotoFonts is a real time saver and produces great looking results.

Much easier than dealing with Photoshop!

Conclusion

215,000 may sound like a huge collection, but Hemera's Big Box of Art 215,000 represents the smallest of their "Big Box" series. Hemera also produces 350,000 and 615,000 Big Box collections that are for Windows only, and include extra programs not found on the Mac version. Even so, 215,000 images is more than most uses will ever need. Although we discovered a few mislabeled items, we were quite impressed with the number of relevant results for some of our more obscure searches. The export wizard helps guide you to the correct settings for your project and the PhotoFont feature helps turn out great looking titles with minimal effort. Throw in the fact that it runs under both OS X and OS 9 and you have a real winner!

Product: Big Box of Art 215,000

Company: Hemera

Street Price: $60

Hits: Well rounded collection with efficient search engine, runs under OS 9 and OS X, PhotoFonts a nice addition.

Misses: Some mislabeled items don't turn up in searches, smaller collection and fewer software extras than Windows counterparts.

Requirements: OS X or 9.0, G3/233, 64 MB RAM, 400 MB hard drive space.

Rating: (5 possible)