Organizing Images with Aldus Fetch and Now Scrapbook
Scenario: You’re in the middle of a job when you decide that a picture of a smiling duck will improve the content and composition of a page. You know you have one somewhere. You suspect that there might even be more than one to choose from. The problem is finding them. What do you do? Rummage through a drawer full of floppies? Browse through pages of printed clip art. Use the Finder’s Find command to search through a CD ROM or a Syquest drive? Pull your hair? Curse?
With the recent releases of Aldus Fetch and Now Scrapbook, the options for filing collections of clip art or other graphic files have increased several fold. Although many of the cataloging programs work with sounds and QuickTime movies, we tested these products primarily on the basis of their graphics filing and access abilities.
Since the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984, users have been looking for a way to store graphics files for later retrieval. For many years, the Apple Scrapbook was the only way to achieve a collection. The Scrapbook had serious limitations, though; items in it could not be rearranged, and only a single selection could be viewed at any one time. The result was that searching for a particular image could be a long, linear process. Later improvements to the scrapbook concept, such as SmartScrap, added features such as browsing through thumbnails or adding titles to images.
All of these products worked fairly well for MacPaint and simple PICT files, but their biggest problem was that high resolution images such as TIFF and, especially, EPS files were likely to suffer extreme loss of quality when passing through the Apple Clipboard. A high resolution EPS graphic reverted to a clunky 72 dpi PICT when it was copied from the scrapbook.
A few years ago, a product called Mariah was introduced which made large strides toward solving all of the problems of cataloging and accessing a collection of graphic files. Mariah’s biggest problem was that it actually absorbed all of the data from a high resolution file. This created huge catalogs which could not easily be stored and browsed through. Also, when you located an image that you wanted to use, getting it into a page layout program was difficult. If you Copied it from the catalog and Pasted it into another program, the high resolution data was lost, resulting in a jagged image. Mariah’s other alternative was to Export the image from the catalog, thus creating a new EPS file. This meant that the large amounts of data inherent in a high resolution image existed in two separate places on your hard drive in order to be used.
What Now?
More recently, Now Utilities added Now Scrapbook to its popular and powerful Now Utilities 4.0 package. Now Scrapbook is easy to use and offers several unique features. A catalog can be built with the Import command. Just choose a folder of images and sit back and watch while all of the images are brought into the file. Their filenames are automatically retained as the title of each image, and the user can add additional keywords later. Keywords and titles serve as an aid to searching for images later. (See illustration.) There’s also a Sort command.
Now Scrapbook gives you three ways to browse through a catalog: the standard List View shows a text listing of all entries alongside a full-sized view of the current entry. The second method, the Detail View, gives information on each file, such as its type, size, date, and whatever keywords or descriptions the user might have added. The third method shows a scrolling field of thumbnails combined with a text listing. Changing views is as simple as clicking on an icon at the top of Now Scrapbook’s main window.
Once an image has been copied to the Clipboard, the user can access another unique feature: Now Scrapbook’s Clipboard editor provides tools which allow editing the image in various ways. Selections can be made and areas can be cropped or resized. Despite somewhat cryptic icons for some of the tools in the Clipboard Editor, Now Scrapbook is easy to use and intuitive.
In addition to interface advances, Now Scrapbook added code that allowed EPS graphics to be imported into a catalog and later Copied out and Pasted into another program while retaining its high resolution. Although some programs will not accept this data, others, such as several word processors, have been able for the first time to incorporate PostScript data into their documents. Page layout programs, the natural target of such a scheme, have a spotty record of compatibility with Now Scrapbook. ReadySetGo (DesignStudio) manages to print EPS graphics from Now Scrapbook, but PageMaker and QuarkXPress cannot print the images. In fact, XPress produces terminal crashes when attempting to print one of these images. (Note: cropping an EPS file will convert it to a low resolution PICT bitmap no matter what program is used.)
As part of the Now Utilities package, Now Scrapbook represents an excellent value; it comes with such popular utilities as Super Boomerang, NowMenus, WYSIWYG Menus, and several others.
Fetch
Aldus has entered the graphic cataloging/retrieval market with Fetch, a multiuser tool which offers strong possibilities for both the individual worker and members of a workgroup on a network, but the biggest difference is in the structure of the catalog. Now Scrapbook actually takes in all of the data of a graphic file, making the scrapbook grow by the size of each image that gets cataloged. The result is that Now Scrapbook files get quite large, but the original files are no longer necessary. Fetch stores, not the picture data itself, but thumbnail previews of each image. Using this system, Fetch uses only a few kilobytes per image, but keeps track of the location of the original file. Those files may be stored offline, on floppies, Syquest drives, CD ROMs, or some other storage media, but Fetch allows you to search, sort, browse, and retrieve on the basis of the information stored in the Fetch catalog. Theoretically, there can be up to 32,000 entries per catalog. (We did not test this capability.) A Now Scrapbook file would grow too large to hold even a small fraction of this amount.
Another big benefit of Fetch is its ability to catalog — automatically — many native file formats. In addition to standard file formats such as PICT, TIFF, EPS, and others (which Now Scrapbook recognizes), Fetch will also catalog native formats such as Photoshop, FreeHand, JPEG (compressed photo files), RIFF (ImageStudio and ColorStudio), Persuasion, and several others. During the cataloging process, Fetch will, if desired, assign keywords for you taken from the name of the file and the folder in which it exists. You can manually add your own keywords at any time.
Once the files have been cataloged, Fetch provides several ways to search for images. Simplest is scrolling through the thumbnails. You can also switch to a text view and arrange the files by name, type, location, etc. A separate Find window (which looks and functions much like System 7’s Find command) lets you do BOOLEAN and/or searches based on filename, file type, location, or keyword. Even on a file containing several thousand entries, searches are quite fast, as long as you use the “matches” or “starts with” option. Using the “contains” option will take quite a bit longer.
Once the desired file(s) has been located, Fetch provides several more choices. Most often you will simply Copy the image, switch to the receiving program, and Paste. Like Now Scrapbook, Fetch can capture the PostScript code and paste it into another program. (Again, QuarkXPress cannot print a page that contains embedded PostScript codes, but ReadySetGo and PageMaker work fine.) There are other options for transferring a Fetch “reference” to another program, but this section of the manual is quite vague, referring to (without naming) future programs which might be “Fetch-aware.” It is also possible from within Fetch, to copy or move the original file, view it at actual size, crop it, get information about it, or launch a program to edit the image. Resizing is not available from within the Fetch application.
Before you run out to find a copy of Fetch, there are a few things you need to be aware of. First, cataloging cannot be done in the background, and creating a catalog takes time. One of our larger test catalogs took over 31⁄2 hours to create. Catalog creation times will vary according to the speed of the device where the original files are stored; a CD ROM will take longer than a fast hard drive. Of course, building a catalog should only happen once (but see the next paragraph).
Deleting selections from a Fetch catalog does not reduce its size on your drive, To regain space, it is necessary to select all of the entries, export them, close the catalog, open a new catalog, and then import all of the entries. This import process takes as long as building the original catalog. (Remember that 31⁄2 hours from the example above.) It is interesting to note that Aldus recommends that you perform this procedure periodically in order to guarantee a catalog’s integrity. Since only one catalog can be open at a time, moving several images from one catalog to another involves the same export/import procedure listed above (and will take another block of time).
Although errors are normally skipped over, we had an occasional crash when building a catalog. On one of the CD ROMs we used in our tests, we found 24 medium sized (7–9MB) Photoshop files that Fetch wouldn’t catalog, and it took over 10 minutes each before the error was reported. Perhaps a larger memory partition or more free space on our hard drive would have helped, but we did not repeat the test.
Also, cataloging FreeHand files is highly problematic. A native FreeHand file (as opposed to an exported EPS file) does not contain a preview, so Fetch cannot include one in its catalogs. The latest “Fetch-aware” copy of FreeHand (version 3.1.1) provides a solution; you can opt to include a Fetch preview when you save the file. This sounds like a good idea until you look at the increase in the FreeHand document’s size. A file with a preview is likely to be several times bigger than a “normal” FreeHand file. One test file grew from 56K to 584K when a preview was added — a factor of more than 10:1!
Fetch demands a memory partition of at least 2400K (that’s larger than either PageMaker or QuarkXPress!), and the manual suggests that it might take even more to catalog large files. Since Fetch is most efficient when running at the same time as other programs, plan on buying more RAM.
Fetch’s interface may take getting used to; there can be up to six windows open on any one catalog, and it is necessary to close them all — individually — in order to close a catalog. Furthermore, there are some unusual interface shortcuts you’ll need to learn.
Conclusions
Both Now Scrapbook and Fetch represent well-implemented solutions to the problem of cataloging art files. If your clip art collection is modest, Now Scrapbook may be the better choice, especially considering that for less than the price of Fetch alone, you get a whole suite of excellent utilities. We wish that Now Scrapbook would recognize native formats such as Photoshop or FreeHand, but the interface is clean and searches are fast. You can open several scrapbook files at the same time, and the Now Scrapbook application runs in only 512–800K of memory
Fetch may be the better answer if you have thousands of images and plenty of RAM. The interface is not as intuitive, but there is more power. The relatively small size of the catalogs gives Fetch an advantage for users with lots of files to catalog. Also, if you need to share graphics over a network, Fetch will be your choice, but be sure to check for compatibility with your other programs. When (and if) more and more graphic and page layout programs become “Fetch-aware,” the Mac will have gained a valuable standard.
On The Horizon
If you’re not in a big hurry, you might want to consider waiting for the Kudo Image Browser, from Imspace Systems. Although Kudo has been released in version 1.0, there are a few glaring compatibility omissions that the company is working on: CMYK TIFF files are currently ignored by Kudo, and we have experienced problems with EPS files. Those two formats are crucial to success in today’s professional design industry.
Kudo has a lot to recommend it. While it has most of the power features of Fetch, it has a simpler and more intuitive interface — fewer cryptic menu commands — and it can import its cataloged images directly into XPress and PageMaker by a drag and drop method, just like dragging a selection from a Quark Library. This is the way programs should work!
Whichever program you use, you’ll be able to use your graphic files much more efficiently, and with a minimum of hair-pulling and cursing. You might even find more smiling ducks than you ever imagined.
Note: if either (or both) of the programs discussed here seems familiar to you, there’s a good reason. Now Scrapbook grew out of a product called PictureBook+, and Fetch began its life with the name Multi Ad Finder.
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The article above is reprinted from Mac Monitor, the newsletter of The Savannah Macintosh Users Group. It may be reprinted in a single issue of newsletters published by non-profit user groups. Payment shall consist of a single issue of the newsletter in which the article appears, sent to the following address:
