Design made simple; with clip art, anybody can become an artist - includes buyer's guide of clip art software packages and related articles on illustration, paint and image-editing software and clip art for logos and newsletters

Home Office Computing, Oct, 1993 by Steve Morgenstern

Artwork does more than illustrate-it communicates. And not just in desktop-published documents. A lively, well-placed piece of art draws the eye to any document, from the obvious--fliers, brochures, and newsletters--to the imaginative. Why not, for example, emphasize a year of record profits by decorating your spreadsheet with balloons and champagne bottles popping their corks? Or you might dress up visually oriented databases with artwork that makes it easier to skim categories-tying images of sports equipment to a product field, for instance. And using illustrations as section dividers can break up the text-intensive monotony of a lengthy word processed report to a client. The possibilities are endless, and the only thing that's holding you back is a fatal lack of artistic talent. But there's a simple cure for the artistically impaired--computer-based clip art. Today, a multitude of software packages with millions of predrawn images are available to spice up your work. And even if your efforts with paper and pencil can't produce anything you'd be willing to display publicly, you need only know how to wield a mouse to take advantage of the tools in graphics programs to easily revise, combine, and adapt clip art to fit the needs of any given project. There are no copyright hassles to worry about, either--when you buy clip art, you buy the right to reproduce it freely in any document.

WHERE TO FIND IT

Clip art was originally a form of paper-based artwork that you literally clipped out and glued down on a publication's camera-ready mechanicals. As desktop publishing took off, traditional clip art libraries were converted to disk-based formats and new illustration libraries were created for the computer marketplace. Today, the breadth of subjects is extraordinary--everything from ornate borders and graphic ornaments to cartoon images and textured backgrounds.

A host of vendors specialize in producing clip art packages (see "A Clip Art Resource Guide" for information on popular offerings). In some cases, vendors' clip art libraries are small collections geared to particular themes (business, sports, or maps, for example); other collections are massive image resource libraries with something for everyone. Such one-stop-shopping collections are increasingly available on CD-ROM, which can hold 600MB worth of images on one disk. Before vendors began ship* ping their clip art on CDs, you often had to sort through dozens of floppy disks to find the picture you needed or give up megabytes of hard-disk space to store all the images.

As you get into these huge clip art collections, being able to easily find the image you need is as important as having that image in the first place. Most vendors reproduce their electronic images in an accompanying booklet, ideally with a comprehensive index that lets you look up a category or an object and then directs you to all the relevant images. Some companies also provide software utilities that search the image collection based on the keywords you choose. Once the search is completed, you get a thumbnail display of the graphics for a quick preview. (You can also buy third-party products like Multi-Ad Services' $180 Search for the Mac and Spinnaker Software's $60 PFS: Power Album for the PC to create your own clip art catalog.)

If you own a drawing or presentation program, chances are you already have some clip art on hand. High-end, professional-quality illustration packages, such as Corel Corp.'s $595 CorelDraw 4 for the PC (see Reviews in this issue), often provide an extensive collection of clip art. (In contrast to the PC world, the clip art you get with illustration packages for the Mac is often fairly restrained.) So do popular presentation software offerings, like Microsoft's PowerPoint 3.0 for the PC ($495) and Mac ($395).

Any Windows user who owns a modem can get commercial clip art from Connect Software's specialized online database. The Clip-Art Connection package provides telecommunications software that logs you onto the database, where you can browse the clip art collections from 17 vendors (over 29,000 images). You can download a single image or order a complete collection, paying via credit card. At about $7 per single image, this may not be the least expensive way to acquire clip art, but as a 24-hour, 7-days-a-week resource, ClipArt Connection can be a real lifesaver.

You can also log onto CompuServe, America Online, and many private bulletin boards to download clip art files. These are generally shareware offerings. But sometimes, some bulletin boards may post artwork that's just been scanned in from printed sources without permission. So if you're planning to distribute your document publicly, you may be better off buying a piece of clip art from a reputable commercial source.

A wide selection of paper-based clip art still exists, ripe for the scanning. The biggest name in this area is Dover Publications, with hundreds of inexpensive clip art collections in book form. The traditionally sedate Dover also recently came out with its first disk-based collection (published by Random House Electronic Publishing), and the company promises more to come.