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How to manage large clipart collections?

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superboyac:
I've been struggling with this for years.  I've collected several gigabytes of clipart and icons.  Many of these are vector formats (ai, eps) so they are not viewable as thumbnails in pretty much any program out there, excluding Adobe Bridge.  I've always struggled with two things: how to organize these enormous collections, and how to have thumbnails available to quickly choose a desired image?

In the early years, I was very anal about how to organize and name files.  So I would take collections, even if they were from official catalogs (like clipart explosion) and try to rename and reorganize them for my own purposes.  But packages like that usually come with a large book with thumbnails of all the files along with the associated file names.  So if I modify that, it makes the book useless.  But I was willing to do that because I want the book to be useless.  I want to select,view, preview, manage...all that from the computer, so i don't have to keep track of these big books.

The problem is that none of the image viewers out there can deal with vector images in ai/eps.  That leaves you with Adobe Bridge as the only option.  The problem with Bridge is that it's big and bloated, and everything else you expect from Adobe.  It also crashes a lot.  The images show up beautifully in their thumbnails, however.  Additionally, you can't customize the interface too much.  Then, I came across a little known program called ST Thumbnail explorer, which can read and display ai/eps thumbnails.  So that was ok for the thumbnail issue.  I still ended up using adobe bridge more.  ST sometimes was very slow or wouldn't be able to show all the thumbnails.  So Bridge is more reliable.

But, my larger question is how do the experts or pros deal with very large clipart collections?  The other problem I had with clipart is that if I let my image program create the database of thumbnails, the clipart directories would take FOREVER.  You can imagine: it has tons of little files, and each one has to be indexed.  Also, whenever I back up my hard drive, the clipart directories would always be the thing slowing it down drastically.  Once again, it's because there are so many little files.

That's why i finally decided to rid them off of my main hard drives.  Too much headache.  I only need to use them a handful of times a year, so I'm just going to move them to another hard drive and back it up to dvd's and be done with them.  because it's so hard to create your own index for these things, I gave up on my anal reorganization of them and just left them in their original filenames.  But it's SOOOOO hard to find anything.  Just browsing through them takes forever.  I found myself going to my favorite directories always because they were easy to find and I knew I more or less liked the images there.  But that wastes the gigabytes of other images.

Anyway, I guess the same question would apply to professional photographers who have tons of photos.  I can't seem to figure out how to manage so many files that are visual in their nature.  So I'm archiving them for now.  If I find a good solution, I'll bring them back to the hard drive.

Any recommendations/experiences are welcome.  Thanks!

vixay:
I had a similar problem but not as extensive as yours. Since this was a work related issue, i assigned one graphic designer to create thumbnails in PNG for all AI files (in retrospect should have chosen jpeg for the metadata, don't know if png has a widely supported metadata structure). Then I used Gallery Server Pro to read the folder structure and serve it on a different pc. So now the collection is accessible via the network, easily searchable, and easy to add to as well. It actually takes care of a lot of these problems.
I also tried to use imagemagick to convert ai files automatically, but for that to work, the AI needs to be saved with the PDF option enabled, else it won't work. I am sure it can convert the .eps files directly though. So this might be a start.

app103:
I am a digital packrat and I collect a lot of the same type of files you do...tons of clipart, stock photos, vectors, icons, etc.

Extensis Portfolio is worth every penny of its $199.95 price tag (single user edition). This is software made for the pros and there are multi-user and server versions of it that are quite expensive that big companies use. It's powerful, but not bloated like Adobe products.

If you catalog everything as you acquire it, it's so much easier to deal with. And you said you wanted to burn it to DVD. Extensis makes that easy by collecting, organizing, and packaging the photos and including a copy of the database, linked to the full size images that will be on each disk.

You can include so much info for each image and assign as many keywords as you wish. And it's pretty speedy once the images have been cataloged. It creates the thumbnails or extracts them from the original (if they exist) and they become part of the database. It doesn't have to go find the original file and create a new thumbnail each time you browse or search. Browsing through 1000's of files in Portfolio is faster than waiting for Explorer to render thumbnails for a large folder full of images.

And it will make thumbnails for a lot of image, document, and audio/video formats, including AI, EPS, and a lot of RAW formats. But you aren't limited to that. You can literally catalog anything with it.

I am currently using it to collect, catalog, and organize a ton of free, public domain, and CC licensed stock photos for a friend's project, assigning keywords as I go along. When I am finished, I'll export the whole thing for burning to disk, and it will include a freeware redistributable application for viewing and searching the database. (this is provided with the software)

Screenshot:

How to manage large clipart collections?

I have the photos organized in folders according to what site they came from. In each folder I have placed a text file with the license info for use of the images. The software watches the folders for new images, and will add them to the database when I manually sync the folders (I have it set up this way to make assigning keywords easier, so I don't miss any)

If you have been as much of a maniac about renaming files and organizing them with descriptive folder names, as you said, the software can automatically assign keywords based on file and folder names to make the job much easier on you. And it's pretty customizable, too, with an assortment of different view styles and will order the view based on a ton of different information.

superboyac:
Thanks app!
I'm going to give Extensis a try tonight.  I like the idea of it cataloging what's on my dvd's.  Reminds me of whereisit, which can also do thumbnails, now that I think about it.  but i don't want to mix these thumbnails with all my other files.  That's the big problem with clipart: if the collection is small, it's easy to just use whatever software you normally use for pictures and images.  But when it gets huge, you want to keep it separate from your family photos, normal images, etc.

Thanks for being very clear and understanding app, I always appreciate your advice.

app103:
Ummm...you might have misunderstood...it isn't for cataloging what is already burned to disk. It is for cataloging and then using their export function to create packages to burn to disk. Catalog first and then burn.

I would probably copy the disks you have to the hard drive, catalog them, export it and reburn it so you have a database on the disk linked to the photos on the disk. Then you can go ahead and delete the copy on your hard drive if you want.

You can make as many databases as you want, so if you feel like creating one just for the family photos, all your desktop wallpapers, sound effect wav files, etc. that works too. In fact, I have about 4G of photos taken by my daughter that we need to sit down and catalog together. File names are all default camera assigned names, folders only are date stamped. (that's going to be a lot of work!)

The thumbnails are stored in the database file and not loose on your hard drive, so it won't make a whole bunch of clutter mixed in with your original images.

If you have any troubles with figuring out how to use the software or how to do something in particular with it, just send me a private message and I'll try to explain it.

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