The Open Clip Art Library has spent much of 2010 actively pursuing higher ground and greater methods of user contribution, beginning with the March Release of Version 2.0. Since that landmark release, the OCAL team has been on a regular iteration schedule, geared toward simplifying the user experience and fixing bugs.

More recent openclipart.org releases have begun adding incentives for content creation, in the form of themed package releases. To date, said releases have resulted in a wide array of content that forms a spectrum of seasonal work.

For the next release, scheduled on August 2nd, the Librarians are changing things up a bit, by calling for Sports-themed content from the Community. These new works will be included in the coming release and featured, as the latest downloadable package. Artists wishing to step up to the plate and contribute their original works are encouraged to register (if not already a member) and upload the SVG(s), tagging them with the keyword “sports2010“. Deadline for user submissions is Sunday, August 1st.

This Open Clip Art Library Package Announcement is sponsored by Worldlabel.com, a multifunctional label manufacturer.

The Open Clip Art Library enjoys yet another of it’s scheduled monthly updates, with revision 2.3. With over 32,000 vector graphics currently calling it home, OCAL has grown into one of the largest and most prevalent sources for freely available graphics on the web. Version 2.3 aims to begin building on this solid foundation, by increasing user interaction and content submissions.

The Spring 2010 Clip Art Package brought together a diverse group of artists and pointed them in a similar thematic direction. Over 11,900 individual downloads have proven the themed package format an effective way of presenting similarly-grouped work to the Community. As in the June Release, Open Clip Art 2.3 brings along with it, a compact, user-generated, themed package of clipart.

Familiar ground is tread, in the latest Themed Package Release, as Community artists, like laobc, rg1024, and pianoBrad have focused their attentions on the Summer Season. Summer2010 is packed with useful scenery elements, like rg1024’s beach ball (below),

along with the abstract, seasonal imagery of laobc’s “Sunshine in the Country” (the header for this article).

Any wishing to utilize this smoldering collection can do so individually (by searching for the key term or tag “summer2010″) or by downloading the entire package.

Also continuing this month is a logo design contest, initiated by the organizers of the Free Culture Research Conference. Artists still planning on submitting an entry should mark this Friday (July 9th) as the deadline for that submission. Three more judges, Jonathan Zittrain, Leonhard Dobusch, and Michelle Thorne, have been added to the esteemed panel that will judge and announce the winner on July 11.

For more information on all things related to this Summer 2010 Release, have a look at the official press release.

This Open Clip Art Library Release Announcement is sponsored by Worldlabel.com, a multifunctional label manufacturer.

This release is unique to previous iterations, as members of the OCAL Community have begun contributing to a new Themed Clip Art Package. Each subsequent Open Clip Art Library Release will now include a batch of unique work, created by some of the Community’s amazing graphic artists!

This month’s package called for Spring flavored clip art, and our Community answered with some dynamic and elegant work that can be downloaded in it’s entirety or individually, using the key term spring2010.

As always, The Open Clip Art Library is reaching for higher ground with a new release targeted in one month. Any artists interested in contributing to a summer package release should register and upload their work tagged with “summer2010.” The Librarians send out a special thanks to all involved in this incredible Spring 2010 Release and look forward to the fun and creative new work underway for the next one!

For more information, please have a look at the official press release.

Clip Art of the month is sponsored by Worldlabel.com, a multifunctional label manufacturer.

The Open Clip Art Library grew from a project between Jon Phillips (of Fabricatorz) and Bryce Harrington, in early 2004. From humble beginnings, it has evolved into a massive collection of over 24,000 scalable vector images, all created by 1200+ artists from around the world.

The Open Clip Art Library is an increasingly useful and powerful platform, through which, all work uploaded to the site is dedicated to the public through Creative Commons’ “Public Domain Dedicated”. Anyone can download and use the entire SVG library for any purpose, including both free and commercial works!

OCAL now boasts an easily navigable collection, made possible by new thumbnail previews. It has now become much easier to search and download clip art that suits any situation. The new site layout includes an updated theme, from Andy Fitzsimon, that emphasizes user interaction by placing more importance on the portal to upload created work, as well as displaying selections from the ever-growing collection.

Behind the scenes, members of Fabricatorz, including, among others, Bassel Safadi, Michi, Ronaldo Barbachano, and Brad Phillips, have helped push The Open Clip Art Library onto the Aiki Framework. This new PHP + MYSQL platform allows programmers to easily create and work with content management systems from the web.

Please help support the new Open Clip Art site launch by registering (if you haven’t already) and uploading artwork of your own!.

Read the entire Announcement 2.0 here and at the Fabricatorz post.

Clip Art of the Month for February 2010 will focus on Content regulation.

Whether one stands in favor of Apple’s products or against them, it’s impossible to deny Jobs and Company’s impact on our technological lives. Last week saw the unveiling of what Apple believes will become a “third category” of mobile computing: the iPad. The iPad aims at simplifying the user’s computing experience by merging elements of Apple’s existing laptop and phone releases.

In the new millennium, computing platforms have trended toward more open source solutions. While it may offer the end user a more simple and streamlined experience, the iPad also seems to assert Apple’s intention to focus on technology as a controlled gateway for proprietary consumption.

Images by Frector, adam_lowe, Minduka, flomar, and Tranberry (all above) demonstrate Apple’s influence on modern design and why it cannot be ignored. The reception of their latest product has been decidedly mixed. How will the introduction of the iPad affect the Open Clip Art Community? What ramifications might this have as open source computing progresses? Time will tell. In the meantime, feel free to share your thoughts and continue supporting Open Clip Art Library by using and contributing vector artwork.

Clip Art of the month is sponsored by Worldlabel.com, a multifunctional label manufacturer.

Going back through 2009 submissions will provide a point of reference as we search for these answers.

When used effectively, gradients can add new dimensions to vector-based imagery. The landscape designed by hrum (pictured above) combines multiple gradient layers into an effective piece of art.

Photorealistic techniques became very popular design choices for the Clip Art Community in 2009, and Chrisdesign provided an excellent example with his longsword.

Near the end of the year, placidoaps merged traditional vector graphic lines with tactical uses of gradients to give his rendering of a penguin both character and depth.

The Open Clip Art Library accepts vector art from anyone, anywhere, so help make visual landmarks in 2010 by contributing! Check out other 2009 works by Simanek and klaasvangend to get inspired.

Clip Art of the month is sponsored by Worldlabel.com, a multifunctional label manufacturer.

When you open a photo using the Open button, Fotoxx automatically sets the folder in which the photo is stored as the working directory. You can then use the Previous and Next buttons to open other photos in the directory. The Index button opens a simple photo browser that you can use to view your photo collection as thumbnails and browse it using the available navigation buttons.

The main toolbar provides quick access to Fotoxx’s image editing features. The Tags menu, for example, contains commands that let you assign one or several tags to the currently viewed photo (the Edit Tags command) and search photos by their tags (the Search Tags command). The Basic EXIF Data and All EXIF Data commands allow you to view useful photographic data stored in the photo, including camera model, exposure, ISO value, shutter speed, etc.

The Retouch menu offers commands that can help you to tweak your photos. The Red Eyes command lets you quickly fix the red eyes problem that often occurs on portrait photos, while the Brightness/Color command can be used to adjust brightness and color settings. The latter command combines several functions in one dialog window, and you can use it to tweak color balance, saturation, and brightness. Better yet, you can adjust these and other parameters only for specific parts of the photo by either adjusting the curve with the mouse or using the preset buttons. All adjustments are applied to the photo in real time, so you can immediately see the results of your tweaking. Of course, you can always undo the changes or reset the sliders by using the appropriate buttons.

Fotoxx also includes tools essential for basic photo editing, including Trim (Size -> Trim) for cropping photos, Rotate (Size -> Rotate) for rotating photos, Sharpen (Sharp -> Sharpen Image) and Reduce Noise (Sharp -> Reduce Noise) for improving image quality. None of these tools are particularly sophisticated, but they get the job done with a minimum of effort. The only niggle here is that the Trim tool lacks a cropping with aspect ratio, which would have been useful for quickly cropping photos to fit a specific photo paper size.

Fotoxx also includes the Unbend Image tool (Bend -> Unbend Image) which can come in handy to adjust perspective on the photos — a problem that often occurs on pictures of tall buildings. But the crown jewels of Fotoxx’s tool set is the HDR and Panorama features. The former is a sort of poor man’s HDR tool that allows you to combine two photos with different exposures into a single image with improved visibility of detail in both the darker and brighter areas . The entire process of creating an HDR image is fully automated: select the directory containing source images, and Fotoxx takes care of the rest. Usually, the application does a pretty good job of combining the images, but it also gives you a chance to tweak the final result by adjusting the brightness settings.

The Panorama feature makes Fotoxx a decent tool for stitching multiple images into a panorama. But before you can make use of this feature, you have to adjust two parameters: lens_mm (focal length) and lens_bow (barrel or pincushion distortion). You can do this either manually or let Fotoxx try to guess the optimal values. No matter which way you choose to go, make sure you read Fotoxx’s manual that provides a detailed description of how this can be done. The good news is that you have to set the lens parameters only once. After that, creating panoramas couldn’t be easier. Select the two images you want to stitch together, and use the mouse to align them. Press the Proceed button, and Fotoxx stitches the images. Add other images and repeat the procedure.

Fotoxx is like a pocket knife: it won’t replace your ordinary tool box, but it can be an indispensable tool for quick fixes here and now. Even if you find the basic editing tools in Fotoxx a bit limited for your taste, the Panorama tool alone makes it a good addition to your digital photography tool box.

By Dmitri Popov

Other great selections are the vector traced and tweaked, bottle below, and the celtic ornament which is useful for generating cards and letterhead. Also, if you visit Hrum’s artist page you can find more ornaments and borders which anyone may use freely for making cards, or a border for a letter.

And more recently, Hrum is creating photorealistic images like this trashcan.

Regardless, there is much more that Hrum is submitting. Please head over, register at Open Clip Art Library, and leave some reviews on the work that Hrum and others are doing at Open Clip Art Library!

1. Aviary – a powerful suite of design tools, including a full featured vector and image editor, as well as a color palette generator and custom filter and effects tool. All this horsepower runs from your browser. Laugh while you put the $300 you saved by not buying Photoshop in your pocket.

2. Pixlr - a basic image editor that allows you to quickly and easily edit images all from your browser window. Built on Flash, you will need a Flash plug in to get it to work. Pixlr is perfect for resizing and basic editing needs.

3. Photoshop Express – Adobe hits it out of the park with Photoshop Express. This web image editor is a lot of fun and has most of the tools you’ll need to get your photos ready for prime time. It has fun graphics to decorate your images, the tools to resize, crop, tweak colors and exposure, and correct red eye. It has a slick interface and is very intuitive touse. It gets the basics right and provides enough bells and whistles to make this a very solid choice for beginner and pro alike.

4. Picnik – easy online image editor with all the right tools to remove red eye, apply effects, and tweak color levels on photos. The site has tools to suit both the beginner and advanced user. You can also pull photos straight from any of several photo sharing sites including Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, Facebook, Photobucket, Webshots. For more advanced features, you can upgrade to the premium level which will set you back about $25.

5. FlauntR – creative suite with a bunch of tools allowing you to do image editing, add neat photo frames and embellishments, effects, color matching and cool mobile wallpaper creator for mobile phones. Profilr, a tool devoted to tweaking the correct size for your favorite social network sites profile photos, is bookmark worthy for its own sake. Requires registration to use.

6. FotoFlexer – decent online image editor with many tools including the ability to retouch photos, add text, shapes, and work in layers. The site is overrun with ads and has features you may think twice about using, including glitter text, animated shapes, and funky filters. Still, it is very easy to use and there are no registration hoops to go through to get started. Just upload a photo and start creating.

7. Splashup – with a sleek user interface, Splashup takes a professional approach to image editing. The tools are robust including a font leading tool (hint: l e a d i n g), layers, filters, brushes and integration with your web cam. If you’re familiar with using *cough* Photoshop, you’ll like Splashup. The ad placement is unobtrusive and the site has a more grown up feel. It also plays nice with the leading photosharing sites like Flickr, Picasa, and Facebook. No registration required to get started, Splashup lets you jump right in.

8. Pixer.us – great basic image editor with no ads and no fuss. The tools are super easy to use and feature sliders to help you manipulate your image changes. The site focuses on the basics such as resizing, color enhancement, rotating and flip and offers some special effects. There aren’t a lot of bells and whistles but sometimes it’s just better that way. Pixer.us does the basics just right and there’s no registration requirement to play.

9. SumoPaint - a full featured editor that has all the right tools including layers, shapes, clone stamp, various brushes, magic wand, etc. The user interface is not intuitive but once you figure out how to upload a photo and then find it in your gallery, you’ll be good to go. The site is geared more for users who are adept with more sophisticated software editing suites.

10. Pixenate - nice basic image editor especially for the beginner. Has easy to use interface and includes tools to help you reduce red eye, crop, resize, rotate, adjust colors and add zany graphic decorations.

Bonus tool: Skitch – For Mac only, Skitch is a terrific image editor that is dead simple easy to use and will easily become one of your favorite apps. You can easily resize images, snap ascreenshot, annotate with circles and arrows and text, drag for easy saving on the desktop, and post images online with Skitch.com. Note: this image editor is a desktop app but it’s so addictive we wanted to include it in your arsenal of image editing tools.

Here’s our top ten of photo editors. Did we miss one? Let us know what your favorite is.

By Dolores Parker