Clip art, in the graphic arts

Graphic arts

A type of fine art, graphic art covers a broad range of art forms. Graphic art is typically two-dimensional and includes calligraphy, photography, drawing, painting, printmaking, lithography, typography, serigraphy , and bindery. Graphic art also consists of drawn plans and layouts for interior...

, refers to pre-made images used to illustrate any medium. Today, clip art is used extensively in both personal and commercial projects, ranging from home-printed greeting cards to commercial candles. Clip art comes in many forms, both electronic and printed. However, most clip art today is created, distributed, and used in an electronic form. Since its inception, clip art has evolved to include a wide variety of content, file formats, illustration styles, and licensing restrictions. Clip art is generally composed exclusively of illustrations (created by hand or by computer software), and does not include stock photography

Stock photography

Stock photography is the supply of photographs licensed for specific uses. It is used to fulfill the needs of creative assignments instead of hiring a photographer. Today, stock images can be presented in searchable online databases. They can be purchased and delivered online...

.

History

The term "clip art" originated through the practice of physically cutting images from pre-existing printed works for use in other publishing projects. Before the advent of computers in publishing, clip art was used through a process called paste up

Paste up

Paste up refers to a method of creating or laying out publication pages that predates the use of the now-standard computerized page design desktop publishing programs. Completed, or camera-ready, pages are known as mechanicals or mechanical art...

. Many clip art images in this era qualified as line art

Line art

Line art is any image that consists of distinct straight and curved lines placed against a background, without gradations in shade or hue to represent two-dimensional or three-dimensional objects...

. In this process, the clip art images are cut out by hand, then attached via adhesives to a board representing a scale size of the finished, printed work. After the addition of text and art created through phototypesetting

Phototypesetting

Phototypesetting was a method of setting type, rendered obsolete with the popularity of the personal computer and desktop publishing software, that uses a photographic process to generate columns of type on a scroll of photographic paper...

, the finished, camera-ready pages are called mechanicals. Since the 1990s, nearly all publishers have replaced the paste up process with desktop publishing

Desktop publishing

Desktop publishing is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal computer.The term has been used for publishing at all levels, from small-circulation documents such as local newsletters to books, magazines and newspapers...

.

After the introduction of mass-produced personal computers such as the IBM PC

IBM PC

The IBM Personal Computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform. It is IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12, 1981...

 in 1981 and the Apple Macintosh in 1984, the widespread use of clip art by consumers became possible through the invention of desktop publishing. For the IBM PC, the first library of professionally drawn clip art was provided with VCN ExecuVision

VCN ExecuVision

VCN ExecuVision was the first presentation program for the personal computer. This program allowed users the ability to manipulate graphics and text not just for business data, but for all communication purposes...

, introduced in 1983. These images were used in business presentations, as well as for other types of presentations. Many people credit Apple Computer with providing desktop publishing with the tools required to make it a reality for consumers, with the introduction of the Macintosh's graphical user interface

Graphical user interface

In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...

 (GUI) in 1984 and the LaserWriter

LaserWriter

The LaserWriter was a laser printer with built-in PostScript interpreter introduced by Apple in 1985. It was one of the first laser printers available to the mass market...

 laser printer

Laser printer

A laser printer is a common type of computer printer that rapidly produces high quality text and graphics on plain paper. As with digital photocopiers and multifunction printers , laser printers employ a xerographic printing process, but differ from analog photocopiers in that the image is produced...

 in late 1985. After software maker Aldus

Aldus

Aldus Corporation, named after the 15th-century Venetian printer Aldus Manutius, was the inventor of the groundbreaking PageMaker software, a program that is generally credited with creating the desktop publishing field. The company was founded by Jeremy Jaech, Mark Sundstrom, Mike Templeman,...

 introduced PageMaker in 1985, professional quality desktop publishing became possible with consumer desktop computers.

After 1986, desktop publishing generated a widespread need for pre-made, electronic images as consumers began to produce newsletters and brochures using their own computers. Electronic clip art emerged to fill the need. Early electronic clip art was simple line art or bitmap

Bitmap

In computer graphics, a bitmap or pixmap is a type of memory organization or image file format used to store digital images. The term bitmap comes from the computer programming terminology, meaning just a map of bits, a spatially mapped array of bits. Now, along with pixmap, it commonly refers to...

 images due to the lack of sophisticated electronic illustration tools. With the introduction of the Apple Macintosh program MacPaint

MacPaint

MacPaint was a bitmap-based graphics painting software program developed by Apple Computer and released with the original Macintosh personal computer on January 22, 1984. It was sold separately for US$195 with its word processor counterpart, MacWrite. MacPaint was notable because it could generate...

, consumers were provided the ability to edit and use bitmapped clip art for the first time.

One of the first successful electronic clip art pioneers was T/Maker Company, a Mountain View, California

Mountain View, California

-Downtown:Mountain View has a pedestrian-friendly downtown centered on Castro Street. The downtown area consists of the seven blocks of Castro Street from the Downtown Mountain View Station transit center in the north to the intersection with El Camino Real in the south...

 company which had its early roots with an alternative word processor, WriteNow

WriteNow

WriteNow was one of the two original word processor applications developed for the launch of the Apple Macintosh in 1984, and was the primary word processor for computers manufactured by NeXT....

, commissioned for the Macintosh by Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs

Steven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...

. Beginning in 1984, T/Maker took advantage of the capability of the Macintosh to provide bitmapped graphics in black and white; by publishing small, retail collections of these images under the brand name "ClickArt." The first version of "ClickArt" was a mixed collection of images designed for personal use. The illustrators who created the first "serious" clip art for business/organizational (professional) use were Mike Mathis, Joan Shogren, and Dennis Fregger

Dennis Fregger

Dennis Fregger was on the team that produced the "serious" clip art images. These black and white, bitmapped images were the first ones designed for business/organizational use and were published by T/Maker as "ClickArt Publications" in 1984...

; published by T/Maker

T/Maker

T/Maker Company was an early personal computer software company. Created in 1979 by software engineer Peter Roizen , the original product, "Table Maker," later shortened to "T/Maker," was one of the first spreadsheet programs designed for the personal computer user...

 in 1984 as "ClickArt Publications."

In 1986, Adobe Systems

Adobe Systems

Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...

 introduced Adobe Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Adobe Systems. Illustrator is similar in scope, intended market, and functionality to its competitors, CorelDraw, Xara Designer Pro and Macromedia FreeHand....

 for the Macintosh, allowing home computer users the first opportunity to manipulate vector art in a GUI. This made the higher-resolution vector art possible and in 1987 T/Maker published the first vector-based clip art images, despite widespread unfamiliarity with the bezier curves required to edit vector art. However, graphic designers and many consumers quickly realized the enormous advantages of vector art, and T/Maker's clip art became the gold standard

Gold standard

The gold standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is a fixed mass of gold. There are distinct kinds of gold standard...

 of the industry in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 1994, T/Maker was sold to Deluxe Corp and then two years later to its main rival, Broderbund.

With widespread adoption of the CD-ROM in the early 1990s, several pre-computer clip art companies such as Dover Publications

Dover Publications

Dover Publications is an American book publisher founded in 1941 by Hayward Cirker and his wife, Blanche. It publishes primarily reissues, books no longer published by their original publishers. These are often, but not always, books in the public domain. The original published editions may be...

 also began offering electronic clip art.

The mid-1990s ushered in more innovation in the clip art industry, as well as a marketing focus on quantity over quality. Even T/Maker, whose success was built upon selling small, high quality clip art packages of approximately 200 images, began to get interested in the volume clip art market. In March, 1995, T/Maker became the exclusive publisher of over 500,000 copyright-free images which was, at the time, one of the world's largest clip art libraries. This licensing agreement was subsequently transferred to Broderbund.

Also during this period, word processing companies, including Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

, began offering clip art as a built-in feature of their products. In 1996, Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS , the Apple Macintosh , the AT&T Unix PC , Atari ST , SCO UNIX,...

 6.0 included only 82 WMF

Windows Metafile

Windows Metafile is a graphics file format on Microsoft Windows systems, originally designed in the 1990s. Windows Metafiles are intended to be portable between applications and may contain both vector graphics and bitmap components....

 clip art files as part of its default installation. Today, Microsoft offers clip art as part of over 140,000 media elements in the Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office is a non-free commercial office suite of inter-related desktop applications, servers and services for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, introduced by Microsoft in August 1, 1989. Initially a marketing term for a bundled set of applications, the first version of...

 product suite.

Other companies such as Nova Development and Clip Art Incorporated also pioneered the marketing of large clip art collections in the late 1990s, including Nova's "Art Explosion" series, which sold clip art in increasingly large libraries up to a million images.

Between 1998 and 2001, T/Maker's clip art assets were sold each year as a result of some of the largest mergers and acquisitions in the computer software industry, including those of The Learning Company

The Learning Company

The Learning Company is an American educational software company, founded in 1980. It produced a grade-based system similar to Knowledge Adventure's JumpStart series. The products for preschoolers through second graders feature Reader Rabbit, and software for more advanced students features The...

 (in 1998) and Mattel

Mattel

Mattel, Inc. is the world's largest toy company based on revenue. The products it produces include Fisher Price, Barbie dolls, Hot Wheels and Matchbox toys, Masters of the Universe, American Girl dolls, board games, and, in the early 1980s, video game consoles. The company's name is derived from...

 (in 1999). All of T/Maker's clip art is currently marketed through the Broderbund division of the Irish company Riverdeep

Riverdeep

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Learning Technology originally started as Riverdeep Interactive Learning, is a publishing house for educational online and CD-ROM products based in San Francisco and Dublin, Ireland. Founded in 1995, Riverdeep was principally the creation of the Irish ex-investment banker...

.

In the early 2000s, the World Wide Web

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

 continued to gain popularity as a retail software distribution channel, and several companies pioneered the sale of clip art through online, searchable libraries, including Clipart.com (part of Jupiter Media), WeddingClipart.com (part of Letters and Arts Incorporated), and GraphicsFactory.com (part of Clip Art Incorporated). Because of the Web, clip art is now not only sold through retail channels as packaged bundles of images, but also as individual images and subscriptions to entire libraries (which allow you to download an unlimited number of images for the duration of the subscription).

In the mid-2000s, the clip art market is segmented in several different ways, including the data type, the art style, the delivery medium, and the marketing method.

Clip art is divided into two different data types represented by many different file formats: bitmap

Bitmap

In computer graphics, a bitmap or pixmap is a type of memory organization or image file format used to store digital images. The term bitmap comes from the computer programming terminology, meaning just a map of bits, a spatially mapped array of bits. Now, along with pixmap, it commonly refers to...

 and vector art. Clip art vendors may provide images of just one type or both. The delivery medium of a clip art product varies from different types of traditionally boxed retail packages to online download sites. Clip art is sold via both traditional and web-based retail channels (as with Nova Development products), as well as via online, searchable libraries (as with Clipart.com). Clip art vendors typically market clip art by focusing either on quantity or vertical market specialty. The marketing method often goes hand in hand with the art style of the clip art sold.

To compete largely on quantity, some clip art vendors must produce or license new and old clip art collections in volume. Clip art marketed in this way is often less expensive but simpler in structure and detail, as is typified by cartoons, line art, and symbols (e.g. Nova Development, http://www.iClipart.com and http://www.GraphicsFactory.com). Clip art which is sold according to smaller, specialized subject genres tends to be more complex, modern, detailed, and expensive (e.g. WeddingClipart.com, GoodSalt.com).

File Formats

Electronic clip art is available in several different file formats. It is important for clip art users to understand the differences between file formats so that they can use an appropriate image file and get the resolution and detail results they need.

Clip art file formats are divided into 2 different types: bitmap

Bitmap

In computer graphics, a bitmap or pixmap is a type of memory organization or image file format used to store digital images. The term bitmap comes from the computer programming terminology, meaning just a map of bits, a spatially mapped array of bits. Now, along with pixmap, it commonly refers to...

 or vector graphics

Vector graphics

Vector graphics is the use of geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and shapes or polygon, which are all based on mathematical expressions, to represent images in computer graphics...

.

Bitmap

Bitmap

In computer graphics, a bitmap or pixmap is a type of memory organization or image file format used to store digital images. The term bitmap comes from the computer programming terminology, meaning just a map of bits, a spatially mapped array of bits. Now, along with pixmap, it commonly refers to...

 (or "rasterized") file formats are used to describe rectangular images made up of a grid of multicolored or black and white pixels. Scanned photos, for example, make use of a bitmap file format. Bitmap images are always limited in quality by their resolution, which must be fixed at the time the file is created. If the image is not rectangular, then it is saved on a default background color (usually white) defined by the smallest bounding rectangle in which the image fits.

Because of their fixed resolution, printing bitmap images can easily produce grainy, jaggy, or blurry results if the resolution is not ideally suited to the printer resolution. In addition, bitmap images become grainy when they are scaled larger than their intended resolution. A few bitmap file formats (such as Apple's PICT

PICT

PICT is a graphics file format introduced on the original Apple Macintosh computer as its standard metafile format. It allows the interchange of graphics , and some limited text support, between Mac applications, and was the native graphics format of QuickDraw.The original version, PICT 1, was...

 format) support alpha channels, which allow bitmap images to have transparent backgrounds or an image selection which uses antialiasing. Most common web-based file formats such as GIF, JPEG

JPEG

In computing, JPEG . The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality....

, and PNG are bitmap file formats. The GIF file format is one of the simplest, low-resolution bitmap file formats, only supporting 256 colors per image. As a result, however, GIF files can be extremely small in file size. Other common bitmap file formats are BMP (Windows bitmap

Windows bitmap

The BMP File Format, also known as Bitmap Image File or Device Independent Bitmap file format or simply a Bitmap, is a Raster graphics image file format used to store bitmap digital images, independently of the display device , especially on Microsoft Windows and OS/2 operating systems.The BMP...

), TGA

TGA

TGA may refer to:* The Grand Arkanum, A Nerdcore Hiphop Crew coming out of Worcester, Massachusetts consisting of Danny Fantom, The Prophet, Griffen, Kid Ikarus, and DJ Big Spoon* Thermogravimetric Analysis, materials testing procedure...

, and TIFF. Most clip art is provided in a low resolution, bitmap file format which is unsuitable for scaling, transparent backgrounds, or good-quality printed materials. However, bitmap file formats are ideal for photos, especially when combined with lossy data compression algorithms such as those available for JPEG files.

In contrast to the grid format of bitmap images, Vector graphics

Vector graphics

Vector graphics is the use of geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and shapes or polygon, which are all based on mathematical expressions, to represent images in computer graphics...

 file formats use geometric modeling to describe an image as a series of points, lines, curves, and polygons. Because the image is described using geometric data instead of fixed pixels, the image can be scaled to any size while retaining "resolution independence", meaning that the image can be printed at the highest resolution a printer supports, resulting in a clear, crisp image. Vector file formats are usually superior in resolution and ease of editing as compared to bitmap file formats, but are not as widely supported by software and are not well-suited for storing pixel-specific data such as scanned photographs. In the early years of electronic clip art, vector illustrations were limited to simple line art representations. However, by the early 2000s, vector illustration tools could produce virtually the same illustrations as bitmap illustration tools, while still providing all of the advantages of vector file formats. The most common vector file format is Adobe's EPS (Encapsulated PostScript

Encapsulated PostScript

Encapsulated PostScript, or EPS, is a DSC-conforming PostScript document with additional restrictions which is intended to be usable as a graphics file format...

) file format. Microsoft has a much simpler, less sophisticated vector file format called WMF (Windows Metafile

Windows Metafile

Windows Metafile is a graphics file format on Microsoft Windows systems, originally designed in the 1990s. Windows Metafiles are intended to be portable between applications and may contain both vector graphics and bitmap components....

). The World Wide Web Consortium

World Wide Web Consortium

The World Wide Web Consortium is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web .Founded and headed by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations which maintain full-time staff for the purpose of working together in the development of standards for the...

 has developed a new, XML

XML

Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....

-based vector file format called SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics

Scalable Vector Graphics

Scalable Vector Graphics is a family of specifications of an XML-based file format for describing two-dimensional vector graphics, both static and dynamic . The SVG specification is an open standard that has been under development by the World Wide Web Consortium since 1999.SVG images and their...

) which may be supported by all web browsers in the future (Firefox and Opera

Opera (web browser)

Opera is a web browser and Internet suite developed by Opera Software with over 200 million users worldwide. The browser handles common Internet-related tasks such as displaying web sites, sending and receiving e-mail messages, managing contacts, chatting on IRC, downloading files via BitTorrent,...

 currently support the format). For those with image-editing experience or interest to work with vector file formats, vector clip art provides the most flexible, highest quality images.

Image Rights

All clip art usage is governed by the terms of individual copyrights and usage rights. The copyright and usage rights of a clip art image are important to understand so that the image is used in a legal, permitted way. The three most common categories of image rights are royalty free

Royalty free

Royalty-Free, or RF, refers to the right to use copyrighted material or intellectual property without the need to pay royalties for each use or per volume sold, or some time period of use or sales.-Computer standards:...

, rights managed

Rights Managed

Rights Managed, or RM, in photography and the stock photo industry, refers to a copyright license which, if purchased by a user, allows the one time use of the photo as specified by the license. If the user wants to use the photo for other uses an additional license needs to be purchased. RM...

, and public domain

Public domain

Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...

.

Most commercial clip art is sold with a limited royalty free license which allows customers to use the image for most personal, educational and non-profit applications. Some royalty free clip art also includes limited commercial rights (the right to use images in for-profit products). However, royalty free image rights often vary from vendor to vendor.

Some fine art clip art is still sold on a rights managed basis. However this type of image rights have seen a steep decline in the past 20 years as royalty free licenses have become the preferred model for clip art.

Public domain images continue to be one of the most popular types of clip art because the image rights are free. However, many images are erroneously described as part of the public domain are actually copyrighted, and thus illegal to use without proper permissions. The main cause for this confusion is because once a public domain image is redrawn or edited in any way, it becomes a brand new image which is copyrightable by the editor.

The United States District Court ruled in 1999 as part of Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp that exact copies of public domain images were not restricted under US copyright law, however the scope of this ruling only applies to photographs currently. It is originality, not skill, neither experience nor effort, which affects copyrightability of derivative images. In fact, the US Supreme Court in Feist v. Rural ruled that the difficulty of labor and expenses must be rejected as considerations in copyrightability.

Copyright on other clipart stands in contrast to exact replica photographs of paintings. The large clip art libraries produced by Dover Publications or the University of South Florida's Clipart ETC project are based on public domain images, but because they have been scanned and edited by hand, they are now derivative works and copyrighted, subject to very specific usage policies. In order for a clip art image based on a public domain source to be truly in the public domain, the proper rights must be granted by the individual or organization which digitized and edited the original source of the image.

The popularity of the Web has facilitated widespread copying of pirated clip art which is then sold or given away as "free clip art". The reality is that most clip art touted as "free" is actually illegally distributed. Virtually all images published after January 1, 1923 still have copyright protection under the federal laws of most countries. Images published prior to 1923 need to be carefully researched to make sure they are in the public domain

Public domain

Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...

. Creative Commons

Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...

 licenses is the forefront of the copyleft

Copyleft

Copyleft is a play on the word copyright to describe the practice of using copyright law to offer the right to distribute copies and modified versions of a work and requiring that the same rights be preserved in modified versions of the work...

 movement or a new form of free digital clipart and photo image distribution. Many website such as Flickr

Flickr

Flickr is an image hosting and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community that was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to...

 and Interartcenter

Interartcenter

InterArtCenter social network is a popular online community for international digital and fine art artists. Canadian multimedia artist George Grie initiated it in 2002 as a personal artwork portfolio. InterArtCenter Inc. is located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and hosted by Yahoo! Inc....

 use Creative Commons as an alternative to the full attribution copyrights.

The exception for clip art illustrations created after 1923 are those which are specifically donated to the public domain by the artist or publisher. For vector art, the open source community established the Open Clip Art Library

Open Clip Art Library

The Open Clip Art Library project aims to create a collection of vector clip art that is free content.- History :The project started in early 2004 by Inkscape developers Jon Phillips and Bryce Harrington to collect designs of flags from all around the world, having been inspired by the efforts to...

in 2004 as a clearinghouse for images which are legitimately donated to the public domain by their copyright owners. By 2010, the library contained near 40,000 vector images.