| Donnamarie J. Walker October 29, 2001 Hemera's The Big Box of Art is just that, a BIG box of art! Not just clip-art or photos but tons of beautiful images and animations to use on your web pages, presentations, emails, whatever you can think of, you'll find the right image in The Big Box of Art. With 350,000 images to choose from, you'll find Clip Art, Photo Objects, Illustrations, Photographs, Web Graphics, Font Textures, Templates, Animations or Textured Photos to suit your every need! When I opened The Big Box of Art I was surprised to find not one, not two, but 21 CDs jammed pack with beautiful art work and photos! Also included is a Web Graphics and Animations CD and another CD that contains the Greeting Card Creator and the CD Designs Creator so you can use The Big Box of Art images to create your own cards and CD labels! What makes The Big Box of Art not "just another" clip-art collection is the large selection and quality of the images, the fact that the images can be saved and used in a variety of formats such as .TIFF, .GIF, and JPEG, or exported with the Export Wizard, and that there is much more than clip-art on these CDs. The Big Box of Art contains Photo Objects, which are images of objects without their surrounding background so they can be used in any project or placed on any background, and, Vector Art, which is art made up of one or more basic objects such as lines, lettering and shapes. Their color can be changed and Vector Art can be made larger, smaller or stretched without causing deterioration in image quality. Also included with The Big Box of Art is PhotoFont Maker. You can add life to your text by filling your favorite fonts or dings with realistic, photographic quality textures. Use the images from The Big Box of Art or use your own graphics to create amazing text effects! One of the best features of The Big Box of Art is the image browser. Unlike other image browsers that have you searching through individual CDs one by one, The Big Box of Art has a powerful, plain English search engine that lets you find images in a single search. Type in a keyword and all images with that keyword are displayed. It's fast and easy! When you find what you are looking for and double click on the image you wish to view, you are prompted to insert the appropriate CD, another larger window opens so you can view your image, and you can then resize or export it from there in the format you need. For an example, I typed in Fairies. The original image is on the left, which I then saved in .TIFF format. Now when you save in this format, after opening the image in your graphic program, I'm using PSP7, you can promote the image to layer, then go to selections, load from Alpha Channel, which contains a selection of the drawn image, invert and delete the background. Now you have a clean transparent image that can be used on any background. I like the .TIFF format for just this reason. No jagged edges.  
The Big Box of Art contains 30,000 wonderful black and white images, Raster Illustrations, which you can leave as is or color. Below are examples of the original on the left and one colored using PSP7's Color to Target feature on the right.   The Big Box of Art contains over 30,000 professional photographs as in the Sunrise sample below, resized smaller for viewing here. 
Here is one example of the 180,000 Vector Clip Art images you can use for any design or presentation. This is another Sunrise example and this image can be resized larger or smaller without losing the clarity of the image. It was also saved in .TIFF format so the white background on the original image could be removed. You can export the images in their original size or resize and export in whatever format you need. 
The Big Box of Art also contains 5,000 Photo Objects, 103,500 Web Graphics and Animations, 2,000 Textured Photographs, 500 Photo Textures, and 200 Templates for use in the bonus software included all in one box. It could be the only Box of Art you'll ever need! My only problem with The Big Box of Art was in loading the program. Several times it stopped and asked me to insert the CD, which was already in, and suggested if the CD was in, it might need cleaning. This happened several times while installing. It also happened several times while using the program, twice resulting in my computer freezing and needing to reboot. Even though I have more than the minimum requirements on this computer, I decided to try it on another computer with more power, but it resulted in the same thing, this time asking for the CD four or five times before getting the program completely installed. I also experienced a freeze while using the program. I do believe these freezes happened while putting in a different CD to bring up an image that I requested. Other than that one problem, I find Hemera's The Big Box of Art a wonderful investment for the highest quality and greatest selection of images available. Visit their web site to read more about The Big Box of Art ,and their other programs, including Hemera's Photo Objects. Hemera Technologies
http://www.hemera.com/
The Big Box of Art
$29.95 USD Minimum & Recommended System Requirements: For Windows:
Pentium Processor (233 MHZ)
64 MB RAM
Windows 95/98/ME or Windows NT 4.0/2000
80 MB hard disk space
CD-ROM drive | For Macintosh:
PowerPC
64 MG RAM
Mac )S 8.6
CD-ROM drive
256 color display
400 MB hard drive space | For Windows:
Pentium Processor (400 MHZ)
128 MB RAM
Windows 95/98/ME or Windows NT 4.0/2000/XP
400 MB hard disk space
CD-ROM drive
High Color (16 bit) display adapter | For Macintosh:
G3
128 MB RAM
Mac OS 8.6
400 MB hard disk space
CD-ROM drive
Thousands of colors (16 bit) display adapter | Copyright 2001, Donnamarie J. Walker, All Rights Reserved |