Art Explosion 600,000 Images [Old Version]

I can't believe companies (like Corel or even Microsoft) have stopped publishing clipart packages. I still prefer cliparts on CDs. This was one of the few remaining packages left on the market. The package came with 29 CDs and a big book. The book contains pictures/illustrations of everything in the CDs. I think the clipart would have been better organized in the book and in the CDs but I am satisfied with this rare package.

Let me get my dissatisfactions out of the way as overall I am very pleased with this collection.One of my gripes is the choice of format for the graphics. The vector images are WMF files, the raster images are TIF files and the photographs are JPG. JPG is a good choice for the photographs, but WMF is not as universal as Nova development would like you to believe and TIF files are just not one of my favorite formats.My other complaint is the supplied image browser, an Extensis product. Each disk has a nice catalog, in the form of a database, and the idea is you can use the browser to see the images you are looking for. The major shortcoming is that if you add images to a folder, there is no way to add this image to the database. I also just could not get used to using it it. I freely admit I did not spend much time with this tool. Instead, I use a shareware image browser, or the browser of my graphics program, to view the images in the folder without the benefit of the supplied database. I am much more at home with these tools.The good news begins with a thick book containing a B&W thumbnail of each image. They are all cataloged and supply the location of what folder you will find the image in. Some people prefer to look through a book to preview the image and for them this is a major plus: Art Explosion is the only collection I found with this feature. While this may seem a like quaint anachronism to many people, I do find myself sometimes browsing this catalog just to see what's there.What's there is an incredible collection of clipart, backgrounds, photos, cut out letters, buttons (icons) and fonts. The shear volume is overwhelming. The styles range from retro to early Americana to timeless. While some clips are ready to use as-is, other images beg to be modified, and that's what they're there for. There is even a collection of do-it-your-self parts to assemble your own screen being!The quality of images ranges from very good to excellent. I was a little disappointed when I closely examined one of the TIF images and found what look like scan artifacts. There are too many images to preview all for this type of defect, but from what I've seen this is the exception as opposed to the rule. I can easily clean these artifacts, but they should not have been there to begin with. I was also surprised to find their definition of High Resolution is 300 DPI. While this is adequate, my personal standard for High Resolution is 600 DPI or better.As a bonus, there is a collection of several hundred fonts and a photo-editing program. I did not install Kai's Photo Soap as I already have a program I use for that purpose. I will let someone else comment on Photo Soap. I am a fontaholic, so some of the included fonts were duplicates of fonts I already had. Overall the fonts represented a useful collection and there were some fonts I did not have, so these were a welcome addition to my personal selections.This clipart collection is certainly not the least expensive, but I feel it is worth the price based on the volume of images, quality of the images and the printed catalog of images. I found some duplication of the bonus tools with programs I already own and use, but I have no gripe with their inclusion in the package. I was looking at buying clipart, not more programs. For that, I think this package represents a fair value. If I could rate this frationally, I'd give it a 3.75 It's way better than average, but a little short of outstanding and well short of excellent. You won't go wrong with this package as a starter collection.3/19/2004I found two of the images in the collection were corrupt and would not display properly. I contacted NovaSoft via e-mail and had a reply within 24 hrs. They sent me two replacement CDs. When I checked the images om the replacement CD, they too were corrupt. I called tech support and within a matter of minutes, I was e-mailed replacement images in a different format. The images that were bad were WMF clipart. The clips e-mailed were in EPS format. The new EPS images were perfect. According to the tech I spoke with, that's the difference between the Mac and Windows versions: Mac packages use EPS instead of WMF files, and the catalog program is Mac specific.Add another half point to my rating of this product for excellent tech support. My overall rating is now boosted to 4.25. NovaDevelopment did correct the problem, without any aggravation, but the error should not have been there in the first place. I stand by my original Four Star rating: Very good collection and worth the price.

Don't be fool. There are not 600,000 images in the box, as many are repeated two, three or more times. Especially when it comes to photos, browse a whole folder and you should notice that many are repeated in the same folder and even between folders. So how many images are there actually in the package? I would go for half, if it's not less.And they are not quality images for the most part. So believe me, this product is total crap. When you have bought once, you will never buy again.

The quality of the clip art, raster images and photographs is mostly bad. The vector images seem to be traced freehand sketches. I would say about 80% is useless.

I read the reviews that many had been written before I made this purchase and found them to be accurate. The graphics are great. More than I will ever be able to use but the organization of the system is poor at best. There needs to be a seach function. I remember one of my first purchases of Printmaster had a search disc that referred you to the disc that contained the graphic you wanted.The book sent with the Explosion software is fine but again it's not easy to use. No one has time to look through the whole book looking for a specific subject.Maybe I haven't spent enough time trying to figure it out but so far, it's frustrating.I might also add, my one attempt with getting help from their help-line left me on hold until I gave up.

As a developer of educational materials, I like to include graphics into my exercises to make them more interesting, appealing, and at times humorous. For me, this is the perfect program. It's easy to use, provides a great variety, and the manual is worth its weight in gold. Thanks for providing me with a quality product and very fast delivery.

I agree with most of the other reviewers; this package is inexpensive for all you get, and the quality of the images is good. I'm using it with Windows XP Professional and have had NO problems with the interface between the operating system and the software. It installed quicky and easily.I did have a problem with one of the disks originally, but Nova came through with great customer service. Now I'm a customer for life.

Boy, I really wanted to like this-especially after seeing it got 5 stars by other reviewers. However, I ended up returning it. It is an enormous collection and I have no complaint about the quality. The problem is the search engine. THERE ISN'T ONE.!! Finding an image is a labor of Hercules. Even the book they supply containing most of the images (the photo images are not included) is poorly conceived. The images are small, black&white and poor quality - some so dark and grainy that I couldn't make them out even using a magnifier. I was looking forward to using this impressive set, but it isn't worth the trouble. You just can't find your images. It isn't searchable.