Hemera Photo-Objects 50,000
Review

Hemera Photo-Objects 50,000
Premium Image Collection
Company: Hemera Technologies
Price: $84.99

http://www.hemera.com

When you think of Clip Art, do you think about the black and white graphics that come free with your paid subscription to Macworld? You know, those discs that hold, maybe, a few hundred black and white pencil looking graphics that show ten different hundred-dollar bills being stretched and pulled? “Cool. I might use this for something” you think, and put this disc away for latter use. But when it comes to needing some clip art, those cartoon pictures just don’t cut it for your church newsletter, school paper, or personal website? “I need a good picture of a REAL chicken, dang it!” Well, the days of having to settle for boring black and white crappy art are over!

Hemera Photo-Objects 50,000 bills itself as “The Next Generation of Clip Art” With over 50,000 images on the eight CD-ROMs that make up the package; you are bound to find something to fit your needs. They broadly define most of the pictures into ten different categories: Animals, Antiques, Buildings, Business, Flowers, Food, Sports & Leisure, People, Special Occasions, and Transportation. A good range of images fills those ten categories very well.

The qualities of the graphics are decent for mild graphical needs. Professional graphic artists may also get use out of these images, provided that they are used as FPO. (For Placement Only.)

With Photo-Objects 50,000, you can find the images you want in one of two ways: using the bundles software search engine, or using the very nice full color 255 page printed photo-objects manual. A nice touch and one I found invaluable. Not nearly enough products ship with a manual today, let alone on over 250 pages long.

Hemera Photo-Objects 50,000 ships with their Hemera Photo-Objects software, which is the user interface to both find the images you are looking for and the means of extracting the software from the CD-ROMs. While the software itself is very easy to use, it could use a few tweaks to make it a little more user friendly.

Another addition to the Hemera Photo-Objects 50,000 software is a tool called “PhotoFonts.” This tool allows you to put a texture or picture (you’re own or some samples included in the software) in your text. For instance, if you wanted to make a sign for your Soccer team, you could use this program to create it, with little Soccer balls right inside your text. Cute, but worthless to anyone who already owns PhotoShop 5.5 or higher. For casual home users, this could be a fun way to get creative.

All the graphics included on Hemera Photo-Objects 50,000 are of decent quality. You can export the graphics in a number of different formats and sizes (dpi). You can export your image to a folder or your desktop, and open it later in your image editing software. Output formats supported include tiff, jpeg, targa, gif, bmp, Pict, and png. When exporting, you also have the ability to choose the background color of the object, as well as transparency.

All in all, Hemera Photo-Objects 50,000 is a very nice graphics library that offers ease of use and a nice collection of decent photography. The price is lower than lesser products on the market today, while the consistency of decent pictures and the sheer abundance of them make the asking price much more than fair. I found many of the pictures did need a little cleaning up before I was able to use them, but most are ready to go. (By cleaning up, I mean softening jagged lines, getting rid of grass under a persons feet, etc…)

If you’re looking to upgrade your clip art collection, you can’t go wrong with Hemera Photo-Objects 50,000.

System Requirements:
Mac OS 8.1 or higher. 16MB of RAM. 28MB of HD space. CD-ROM.

MacMice Rating: 4 out of 5


Tim Robertson

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