Clip-art Management...please help!

[Customator]

Hello Everyone...first off, I'm new to this board so I appologize if this message is perhaps in the wrong forum...but I am a Corel user so I thought I'd try to find answers here first.
I, like many of you have a substancial collection of clip-art ranging in file formats from CDR-EPS-AI...and have just recently installed another slave drive to copy all my clip-art images to rather than trying to manage them off each cd. I am trying to find a program or simply a 'way' to catalog this clip-art (there are many duplicates from disk to disk, I'd like to eliminate) and would like to use (or create) keywords etc to search my entire catalog...and wish to be able to view thumnails of them before importing them.
I've read up on a few like "ROMCAT" which seems great for CDR files w/keyword files that already exist...but does nothing for EPS or AI files. ThumbsPlus, with the GhostScript plug-in is 'supposed' to handle most AI and EPS files...but seems as though I get no thumnail images other than the Corel icon (since I have file association set to Corel). One of my clip-art disks uses "Portfolio" by extensis, to view thumnails...but it seems as though I have to use another program to 'create' thumnail files first, in order to view them...I've been searching the internet and downloading demo's for days...to no avail.
I would REALLY appreciate some input as to what any of you are using...it seems in this day and age of computers there should be a program able to do all this (I can't imagine I'm the only one wanting to do this rather than just printing of sample sheets...as handy as they can be)
Any advice on programs/viewers/managers, or your own catalog methods (folder names etc.) you think would be helpful would truly be appreciated.

Thanx so much in advance,
Mike Ball
(customator)

 

[Fred Weiss]

Hi Mike and welcome to Signs 101.

I'm a Portfolio users and am very pleased with it. The version I use (version 4) creates thumbnails automatically. It won't from a CDR but it will from a CMX (along with AI and EPS). I can tell you that most of the Corel clipart I have is in CMX format already. Since they are currently up to version 7, Extensis may have added in thumbnail creation by now for CDR. Especially since Adobe Illustrator added the capability to open a CDR file, I would be surprised is Extensis has not also added support for the CDR format. The best way to find out would be to download their 30 day demo and try it out.

Portfolio is extremely powerful if you want to take the time to keyword you images and also has a find duplicaes feature. they also have a number of online video tutorials you can view HERE.

 

[Customator]

Thank you Fred for your reply...I checked out some of the demo's and it looks interesting enough (I have used a limited version that came packaged with one of my clip-art disks for viewing just those files) problem is I couldn't find anything mentioning AI or EPS...it's kinda confusing because most of these programs seem to be aimed mostly at Photo-management and talk about JPG's and such but few show a list of supported file types, so unless I hear someone like yourself is/has used it for clip-art I'd never know to try it. I'll perhaps try the demo version and see how it works...but I'm still interested in others opinions as well. Thanks for the info.
Respectfully,
Mike (customator)
PS...hope you aren't in the area of florida hit by those storms???

 

[Fred Weiss]

Here is one database gallery of vinyl ready clipart that I built. Depending on the speed of your system, the adding of files and thumbnail creation for 9000 images would take a day or two but you can go and do other work while it does its thing.

Keywording, OTOH, so that it's truly useful, is very time consuming. This one took probably around 150 hours. Not a bad way to spend your free time during your long cold winters. I'm located in southeast Florida. So far so good this year with regards to storms. Last year sucked.

 

[Bobby H]

Adobe Bridge (included with Creative Suite 2, and I think most standalone CS2 applications) is probably the best graphics file management tool I've used to date.

The program will show previews of EPS, AI, PDF and CDR files (Corel files up to version 10). You can also include all sorts of metadata with them. The file browser will also do similar management for most raster based images. On top of the file management system, Bridge will manage color control across the Adobe Creative Suite and allow you to edit digital camera RAW files too.