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Getting images organised
For graphic design works, it is essential to have a well organized collection of graphic materials for reference and production.
Whenever we need a concrete image we will be able to quickly locate and access it. In addition, to browse through a graphic file system is always an inspiration source.
There are plenty of materials that serve as ready made graphical reference: encyclopedias, a good library, a collection of magazines already have everything, more or less well structured, and easy to consult. But what would suit us better is having a specific system of image archive, elaborated according to our own criteria.
A paper-based archive
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A quick way to add materials to the archive is simply revieving old magazines, newspapers, catalogues, stamps, labels and packages... any printed material, before taking it to the paper container. We cut out or we tear whole pages... everything what it gets our visual attention.of Painting reproductions, interesting illustrations, photographies, attractive page layouts, textures, use of typography, logos... everything that attracts us. Naturally, some magazines have so many things of interest that is better to leave the scissors aside and to keep them complete!
As we make a cutting session, to save work, we can place each snippet in thematic small piles —following the same criterion that our graphical file. What should this criterion be like? This depends on the particular interests of each one, but it can be something similar to the accompanying table. To complete te archive, we only need to pass it to the our preferred support, be it a box with separators, an office file box, a notebook with separations... the small snippets can be glued to paper sheets, and the bigger ones and full sheets can be added as they are.
The graphical archive will be not only one valuable tool for design and drawing, like a reference and source of inspiration, but it may also be a pleasure for the viewer, an amusement that we will be extending and renewing whenever we add new materials.
Digital archive systems.
Following the same principles of a more conventional graphical file, when we have many digital graphical files it is necessary to organize them thematically, both to simplify its handling and to be able to see them more comfortably in search of ideas.
Two typical examples of digital image cataloguers, showing miniatures (thumbnails) of the images in a folder, and details on the corresponding files.
There are different programs which take care of the task of organizing the graphical files, and allow to visualise them. All of them offer similar benefits:
- They can display a large number of different graphical file formats;
- They show thumbnails of the images to watch them more comfortably and fast ,and you let print these miniature catalogues;
- They allow to include keywords, comments and other annotations associated to any file, a specially useful option to carry out searches or to export the listings to a database;
- They sort the listings alphabetically, by size, date, type...
- They make some elementary functions of file management, like changing the name, moving, copying, format conversion... both for single files or as a batch process.
Digital albums.
In addition to the own Windows explorer, which is able, from version 98 on, to show miniatures of the images, a great variety of organizing programs exists. Photoshop finally saw the light and from its seventh version it includes thumbnail viewer and organiser.
For a designer, having at least one of these utilities is really essential. This kind of program is usually run side by side with other programs where we want to use or process the images. For example, at the same time that we publish a document for the Web like this one, we have opened the folder that contains the images available, to be able to select them at a glance. In many cases it is possible to drag and drop the images from the thumbnails window to the application in which we plan to include the images.
Starting with freeware solutions: Irfanview is a freeware utility to visualize and organize images, with many options, very fast and really powerful. A personal favourite and many users’. There are many similar programs, such as Slowview, XNView and others.
Then there are some commercial applications of this type. ACDSee, ACDSee is a very complete file viewer. It is a Shareware program, and it can tried out for free. It is very simple to use and highly configurable; very simple to run, it is remarkable the way it displays thumbnails alongside with the real image; it shows a huge number of file formats, and it incorporates many utilities to edit and organize the graphic files, either individually or in batch mode.
Extensis PortFolio A program focused on the administration of great volumes of multimedia files. It incorporates powerful database functions, including keywords. One of the advantages that it has is its capacity to create thumbnails from vectorial files, such as PDF and AI/EPS.
ThumbsPlus and CompuPic Pro are other utilities similar to ACDSee.
Paint Shop Browse, included in the classic image editor Paint Shop Pro from its 4th version on.
Corel Mosaic was the utility of graphical files management which was included with Corel Draw .
Specifically for Corel Draw, there is a very useful organizer for its clip-art, completely free: RomCat builds a database with the thousands of drawings in the Corel graphics suite, properly indexed. Keywords can be searched, or you can browse the file list, sorted by any field. It displays thumbnails and you can open the files in Corel quickly, with no need drill down in the forest of folders of its clipart CD-Roms. If you have Corel Draw (version 7 or later) you really must get this jewel utility.
Finally, it must be reminded that most of the commented programs have the ability to create a Webpage with all the images GIF,JPG, PNG... in a given folder, with more or less sophisticated options, such as adding automatic navigation, different templates, etc. Check out utilities like HTML Imager, WebImages to HTML, Mihov Gallery Creator, STGThumb and others.
