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How to manage large clipart collections?

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superboyac:
can I move all my clipart files to a separate hard drive, and use Extensis to create a thumbnail gallery or contact sheet that is stored on my main drive?  Meaning, i don't want it reading the thumbnails live every time I want to browse them.  I want a static thumbnail gallery always available for quick browsing.  I should probably play around with it before peppering you with preemptive questions...
-superboyac (August 16, 2010, 12:10 PM)
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Awesome!  Sounds just right.
Yes! You can store the databases anywhere you want. In fact, because the thumbnails are stored in the database and it doesn't even need access to the originals once they have been cataloged, you could export the collections, burn them to disk, and keep a copy of the databases from the disks on your hard drive and just insert the disks when you need access to the original full sized images. (it will tell you to insert the disk)

I discovered this software through a stock photo collection I purchased about 10 years ago, containing about 7000 images. I copied the database from the disk to my hard drive, and I can browse and search it without the disk being in the drive. If I try to access the originals from the database, it tells me to insert the disk where the originals are located. Unfortunately, the database on that disk is locked and password protected by the company that created it, to prevent adding files or editing the file locations, otherwise I'd copy the images to my hard drive too, and just repair the database to point to the new location.
-app103 (August 16, 2010, 12:30 PM)
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app103:
Extensis Portfolio is worth every penny of its $99.95 price tag (single user edition). -app103 (August 16, 2010, 12:20 AM)
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I make it $199.95 for the full version with the $99.95 being for the upgrade. And prices twice as high in the UK (and nearly that in Euroland). Decent product, but definitely at the pricey end.
-Dormouse (August 16, 2010, 01:14 PM)
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Yes, your are right. My mistake. I have edited my original post with the correct price.

I agree that it is pricey, but it's a buy it once thing as far as I am concerned, and I'd only consider upgrading it if it didn't want to run on whatever my current OS was, at some point down the line or they offered me support for some file type I absolutely had to have thumbnails for that the current version didn't offer. Since neither of those is likely to happen any time soon (if at all) it is likely that I will never upgrade mine.

Plus, I do create artwork of my own, and at some time in the future I will have enough of my own work to create and sell disks of my art, cataloged, with a database, and a copy of the free redistributable viewer application. This will allow the software to pay for itself.

superboyac:
I agree, it is pricey for the simple task that i am looking for.  However, if it's the only program that does what it does, then they are free to price it however they like.  I don't have too much of a problem.  I may not purchase it until I need to, but it's good for me to know that it's out there.

eleman:
I had the same problem of having more than enough .ai .eps .pdf files and so on. I wanted to make their thumbnails.

NConvert is a batch utility to convert graphic files with support of more than 400 graphics formats!

That is the free solution I found for creating thumbnails.

I am now thinking of a way to create a database of sorts to be able to search on the basis of file names, but I have not decided on which approach to take for that.

superboyac:
Looks like Adobe's Bridge Lightroom is the only program that can do what I'm asking.  Pretty steep price, $150, but this is sort of a very specific featureset i suppose.  Still, if any of the millions of image catalogers could figure out how to add eps and ai files with thumbnails seamlessly, that would be the better option.  But nothing really exists like that.  Everyone says reading those vector files is a lot more complicated than it seems.  So if anyone is following...Lightroom Bridge is the only one that does this without any headaches.

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