Masterclips. (clip art collection) (Software Review) (Evaluation)
by Stephen Levy

Need a flag of Japan to dress up your brochure? Or maybe you need a map of your state showing all the counties for your civic club? Masterclips includes these and nearly 6000 other pieces of clip art to dress up your memos, advertising, or business correspondence, or to help create dynamic presentations.

Masterclips is a collection of clip art with dozens of categories. Each clip art file is in CGM format, which is importable into most DOS and Windows programs that import art; I had no trouble importing images into Microsoft Word for Windows, Quatro Pro for Windows, and PageMaker. Masterclips includes a list of over five dozen applications that will accept CGM-format clip art.

Almost all the clip art included is in color and varies in quality and complexity. Most of the graphics are good-to-excellent in quality. These are business graphics, but students and home users will find many items they can use to dress up a report or a personal letter.

Masterclips comes on either one CD-ROM or 34 3-1/2-inch high-density floppies. The documentation included is adequate and contains a black-and-white picture of each of the clip art images. Two utilities are also provided to assist you: a Windows clip art browser and a color-to-monochrome converter. Both of these are useful and nice extras, although perhaps not as well designed as they could be.

Masterclips permits the use of its art on any hardcopy output--including advertising, letters, flyers, and so forth--as long as the art is not part of a piece that is sold, such as a book. But the company will make arrangements for commercial uses.

Masterclips is a complete business clip art package that should be useful for anyone needing to spruce up his or her output with professional illustrations.