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Review of Hemera Photo Objects I and II
Hemera Photo Objects
Hemera Technologies Software Requirements for PC
· 32MB RAM Software Requirements for Mac
· 32MB RAM Price: $99 per collection |
Every graphics user I've met loves clip art. In the past few years, that love has grown to embrace stock photos. Today we're going to look at two products that combine the best of both clip art and stock photos. Hemera's Photo Objects are photographs, but they differ from stock photos in that the main subject has been isolated. So that you can better understand, I'll walk you through finding an image and bringing it into a project. Then we'll talk about what you get in each package.
When I installed, I made sure that the image catalogs for Hemera Photo Objects I and II were combined. This allows me to search all 100,000 objects instead of having to search each catalog separately. I'm going to be going scuba diving soon so I decided to search on the word scuba. I was surprised that it found 59 unique images. Below you can see the dialog box with the search term highlighted, thumbnails of the matching images and a large preview of the image I selected.
Once the appropriate image is found, double-click on the image to start the Export Wizard as shown below. Here you get to choose how the image will be used. Mainly the wizard chooses the appropriate format and image size based on your choice of application type. More advanced users will probably want to just select "Export" as you get to make all the choices.
Next up in the Wizard is the Resize/Crop dialog shown below. The resolution can be adjusted, though this really is used to select the image's size in pixels. If you need to crop the image, simply drag the handles to the appropriate positions. Many times you'll just click Next and move on to the next screen.
The last choices you need to make are the file format to be used and the name of the file as shown below. Once everything is selected, click the Save button and you're all done with the Wizard.
Once the image is saved, you can work with it in your favorite image editor. I used Corel PHOTO-PAINT 10 for this. When the image was first opened, it has a white background. But you'll find the object's shape is stored in a channel named "Alpha 1". I loaded that as my current mask/selection to get the image shown at right.
With the image selected, it was a single click to turn it into an object/layer so that I could use it as part of another image. Looking through my photos, I found a beach picture with no strong foreground image. Into that picture went the scuba diver and I was all finished with my little project. You'll see the finished image at left.
Now that you know how things work, let's talk about what you get in the collections. Each one comes with 50,000 images spread across 80+ categories. You won't find every single thing that you need, but it is amazing how many choices you get. Let's use scuba as an example again. If I search Corel's clip art collection, there are fourteen vector images with scuba as a keyword. Of those, most of them are cartoon-like images. Hemera supplies 59 images in Volume II. Skeptics will say that I chose this subject on purpose to show a disparity. Strangely it was the first thing I tried and I too was pleasantly surprised at the results I got. I'm sure there are other topics I could have tried that would have had the opposite results.
For those who prefer to search through printed catalogs, each collection comes with a full-color catalog of every image. There is also a quick start book to help you install the program and learn the various options.
Each collection is supplied on eight CD-ROMs. Some have criticized Hemera for not shipping everything on a single DVD. For those who want a DVD, they will gladly send that for the cost of shipping. Keep in mind that almost everyone has a CD-ROM drive where DVD drives are still fairly rare. When that changes, I'm sure they will probably switch to including the DVD by default.
I've also seen criticism about some of the images. If I go through all 50,000, I'm sure I could find 10,000 or more that are not useful to me. But that same 10,000 could be exactly what another user needs. Realistically I would think it would be rare for any user to use even 1000 of the images in their projects. Even then, you are paying less than 10 cents for each image you've used. I don't know about you, but that is an incredible bargain in my mind!
Also included is a program called PhotoFont Maker. You simply type in some text, select the font and size then fill with any of the supplied tile able fills. A finished example is shown below. Personally, I doubt I'll use this program much. I'm sure there are others that will find it much more useful. It is nice to have it in the box, but it is the object collection that is truly the important part of the product.
By now you already know that I like these collections a lot. Anyone who creates graphics for a living should have both collections as they can be used in almost every project you do. I don't know when the next collection will come out but I can't wait!
Do you have a product you would like to have reviewed? Send press releases to reviews@unleash.com.
Foster D. Coburn III has written six best-selling books on graphics software and is currently the Webmaster of the Graphics Unleashed Web site.
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CorelDRAW X6 Font List · CorelDRAW X5 Font List · CorelDRAW X4 Font List · The Terms of Adobe Photoshop and Corel PHOTO-PAINT · CorelDRAW X3 Font List · Cropping and Rotating Files in Corel PHOTO-PAINT · The Magic of Color Styles · CorelDRAW's Find and Replace Wizard · Shorten Your Design Time with Templates · CorelDRAW's Multi-Faceted Eyedropper Tool · CorelDRAW and Special Characters · The Easy Way to Create Calendars in CorelDRAW · The Wide World of Labels in CorelDRAW · Including Variable Data with Print Merge · Resaving, Resizing & Resampling Files in Corel PHOTO-PAINT · Creating Your Own Fonts in CorelDRAW · The Evils of Using JPEG Files · Speeding Up CorelDRAW 11 and Windows XP · Symbols and Imposition · The Easiest Way to Recreate Logos · A Few Guidelines to Follow · Square Corners Can Be Sticky -- Rounding Corners in CorelDRAW · Creating Complex Shapes Easily with CorelDRAW · Identifying the Mystery Font · Two Ways to Create a Split Front Design · Last Word in Font Management · Calibrating Your Printed Colors with a Color Chart · Graphics Computing in 2001 · Hottest R.A.V.E. In Town · Get the Red Out of Eyes · Secrets of Color Management · Dressing Up Your PDF Files · How Adobe Acrobat Can Make Life Simpler · Why You Want PDF in Your Workflow · Converting a Scanned Logo to Vector in CorelDRAW · Designing 360 Degrees · Customizing Your Interface in CorelDRAW 8.0 · Fitting Text to a Path · Creating Cool Graphs Without a Spreadsheet · From CorelDRAW to Macromedia Flash, A Simple Example · Getting Rid of That Darned White Box · Converting a Bitmap Logo to Vector in CorelDRAW · Finding Clipart with ROMCAT
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Serif WebPlus X2
Xara Web Designer 5.0
Xara Xtreme Pro 4.1
Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Professional
Fuji FinePix 2800 Zoom Digital Camera
Procreate KnockOut 2
Hemera Photo Objects Volume I and II
Wildform SWfx
Macromedia Fontographer 4.1 and FontLab 4
Caligari iSpace v1.5
Xara X
Macromedia Fireworks 4
Web Site Design Made Easy
Alien Skin Eye Candy 4000
Swish 1.51
Macromedia Flash 5
Corel KPT 6
Dreamweaver Ultradev
1st Page 2000
Adobe Illustrator 9
Corel KnockOut v1.5
Xara 3D 4
Cool 3D 3
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