Bird Illustrations -- Permission-free Clipart

Once again I needed black-and-white clipart for a project. Since it is sometimes a guessing game whether clipart is copyright-free on the internet, I needed permission-free clipart. That’s why I purchased Bird Illustrations a CD-Rom & book from the Dover Electronic Clip Art
collection.


The Book

There are 419 designs in this 74-page book. Each image is different, and the images are in various sizes from medium to large. All the pictures are black & white. The pages are a matte off-white color and printed on both sides with illustrations. While the pages are opaque, you can slightly see the lines of the images on the other side of the page. The paperback book measures 11" high x 8.25" wide and is thin.

This book has a Table of Contents with a subject heading and page number. It reads:

Favorite Birds – page 1 (49 images)
Audubon’s Birds of America – page 9 (46 images)
Birds of Prey – page 17 (42 images)
State Birds – page 26 (29 images)
Hawaiian Birds – page 31 (24 images)
Sea and Shore Birds – page 35 (44 images)
Arctic and Antarctic Birds – page 42 (19 images)
North American Ducks, Geese and Swans – page 45 (42 images)
Swampland Birds – page 52 (18 images)
Tropical Birds – page 55 (43 images)
Long Island Nature Preserves Birds – page 63 (19 images)
Birds from Many Places – page 66 (44 images)

There is also an index on pages 73 and 74, which is alphabetized according to common bird varieties. (Example: Bluebird, Eastern – Bluebird, Fairy – Bluebird, Mountain – Bluebird, Western) Each listing is accompanied by the page number of where it is in the book.

Each page contains an assortment of images depicting various birds. There are 4 - 7 images per page. Every illustration is labeled with the common name of the bird and is assigned a 3-digit number. The 3-digit number matches the same 3-digit number of the images on the CD.


The CD

The book comes with a CD located in a clear plastic envelope at the back of the book. The CD is clearly labeled “Dover Bird Illustrations– Electronic Clip Art for Macintosh and Windows”. The CD is colored orange with a clipart image of a hawk.

When I first placed the CD in my computer, a window opened that announced, “Welcome to the Design Manager setup program.” The only description of the Design Manager software was the brief mention of it on the inside cover of the book. It described the program as: “... a simple image-editing program for Windows that will allow you to view, rotate, flip and print the images.” If you don’t already have this software installed on your computer, it is easy to install the program.

I wanted to see what files were included on the CD, so I right clicked on the CD icon on my computer and chose “open”. This allowed me to view the files on the CD without installing the Design Manager software. A folder titled “Images” is where the actual pictures featured in the book are located. These images are in six formats (bmp, eps, gif, jpg, pct, tif). The images in each folder are divided into three more folders based on the 3-digit numbers assigned to each image:

001 - 150
151 - 300
301 - 419

There is also a “Read Me” file that lists pertinent information about the CD and its contents, including troubleshooting and usage information. The readme file says, “Typically, black-and-white images are scanned at 600 dpi and saved in six different formats.”


Design Manager Software

I already have the Design Manager software installed on my computer from another Dover clipart CD. The first thing the software doe is open thumbnail images of the clipart on the CD at the right of the screen. If I click on an image, it appears at the bottom left of the screen in an enlarged format. I found it interesting that the program allows the thumbnails to be viewed in different sizes. The default size is 85x85 with the smallest size being 32x32 and the largest size 768x576.

Overall, I do not find this software intuitive. It is easy to view the images in thumbnail format and to select which image folders to open. The simple instructions do not explain how to use the tools to edit the images. Exploring the menu bar and editing options, I could not locate any functions that would allow me to rotate or resize the images. I didn’t like the software enough to waste more time with it. I much prefer editing images in Photoshop.


The Images

I use the images on a PC computer with the Windows XP operating system. Neither the book nor CD (not even Dover’s website) suggests any computer requirements for using this CD.

With 419 designs, there are a lot of image choices in this set. After viewing and printing a variety of images, I discovered that not all the images are of equal quality. The book states the designs are scanned at 600 dpi (dots per inch). Usually when I print images, I print them at 600 dpi; however, there is not much difference printing these bird illustrations at 300 dpi. That is because these images are line drawings. Some of the images (such as Favorite Birds, Audubon’s Birds of America and the Birds of Prey) are beautiful pen and ink drawings. Other images remind me of those that might be found in a coloring book.

Here is a sampling of the images you will find:

Favorite Birds – black-capped chickadee, blue jay, cardinal
Audubon’s Birds of America – mourning dove, whooping crane
Birds of Prey – African wood owl, bald eagle, gray hawk, osprey
State Birds – American robin, hermit thrush, Rhode Island rooster
Hawaiian Birds – crested honeycreeper, palila, Polynesian chicken
Sea and Shore Birds – herring gull, piping plover, ruby turnstone
Arctic and Antarctic Birds – gyrfalcon, rockhopper penguin
North American Ducks, Geese and Swans – mallard, snow goose
Swampland Birds – anhinga, marsh wren, pileated woodpecker
Tropical Birds – keel-billed toucan, Mandarin duck, sunbittern
Long Island Nature Preserves Birds – bank swallow, Canada goose
Birds from Many Places – burrowing owl, glossy ibis, tawny frogmouth

Some of birds have more than one illustration, but the illustrations are different. For example, the roseate spoonbill has four images on different pages and the ruby-throated humming bird has three images.

Note that the State Bird section does not list which birds represent which states, unless the state name is part of the bird’s common name. Also, some of the images feature the adult bird with offspring.

Even though I print the images on paper, Dover Publications suggests that these images are good for hobbyists, those doing fabric painting, decoupage and other crafts.


Image Sources

Part of the Read Me file on the CD includes biographical information about the illustrations. Remember how I said some of the illustrations reminded me of coloring book art? Well, I was just reading about the image sources, and see that some of the art work came from coloring books! For example, "Favorite Birds Coloring Book" by Lisa Bonforte, the “Arctic and Antarctic Life Coloring Book” by Ruth Soffer, and the “Zoo Animals Coloring Book” by Jan Sovak (as well as others) are quoted in the sources.


My Experiences

I’ve used a number of images from this CD, though not all of them. While all the images are nice, I noticed that bmp and tiff graphics are the best quality.

I use these images in programs such as Word Perfect, MS Word and Microsoft Publisher. I was surprised when I tried to import the tiff images into an MS Word document. Some of the tiff images showed a message that said “Preview Not Available”, and the image would not import into MS Word. I could actually see in one of the tiff previews that one image was corrupt with lines vertically bisecting the image.

At work, I use Word Perfect 8 on a Windows 2000 operating system. We needed a bird image, so I brought in my “Dover Bird Illustrations” CD. After my work project, as an experiment, I imported various images into Word Perfect to see how they worked. The pct format images would not import into Word Perfect. I then tried to import the pct format images into MS word where they worked great.

I print the images on white paper (usually 20- or 40-pound copy or laser paper). The images print well at 600 dpi and look clean on the page. Since these images are essentially line drawings, they also look good printed at 300 dpi.

A great feature of these images is that I can open them in Photoshop (or another image viewing/editing) program. I can rotate the images or resize them. One thing that I love is that I don’t have to clean the images before using them. If you have worked with images before, you may have experienced extra pixels around the image that create a blurred or fuzzy look. These images are crisp with clean backgrounds.

It is easy to view the images, too. Browse the book to locate images then note the 3-digit item number beneath them. Then find that item number on the CD, choosing your choice of image format. You can also open a photo-imaging program such as Photoshop and open the images from the CD so that they appear in the program. If you are using a publishing program, such as MS Publisher, you can open and insert the images directly from the CD into the document.

I needed a clipart library that was permission-free so that I didn’t have to worry about copyright infringement. Dover states: “You may use them for graphics and crafts applications, free and without special permission, provided that you include no more than ten in the same publication or project.” If you need to use more than ten images, you can contact Dover Publications for additional permissions.


Purchasing

I bought this book from Amazon.com for $1l.53. It’s retail price is $16.95.


Summary

The Bird Illustrations book and CD offers a variety of bird clipart that is easy to use. I just wish that some of the “coloring book” type images had more detail to make them look like fine art illustrations. However, it’s great not to have to search the internet for copyright-free clipart. No more scanning images and wondering if that horrible moire effect will appear in the background. It’s a comfort to know that this clipart is at my fingertips ... and I don’t have to worry about permission to use it.

I hope you have found this review useful.

Enjoy your day,
Dawn
http://dlstewart.com


Additional Information

ISBN # 0486996697


Copyright 2006 Dawn L. Stewart