Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Flick! - Good, Cheap Database for Artists

velociraptor origami

Origami Velociraptor – what we moms do for our kids!

Recently I’ve been working on organizing my art studio. One essential part of the studio is the management on electronic files and images. I had looked at a bunch and was very disappointed. Then, I stumbled upon Flick!

As it is only $30, I figured it probably wouldn’t be that good. But, I saw the front page endorsement by the clever Tina Mammoser and decided I definitely had to try it.

I have since played around with it and love it! It is definitely able to do all that I need it to and more. Before this I have used spreadsheets, which are all alright – but with tracking customers, dealing with more images than before, etc – I just kept thinking that I needed a database. Having been a programmer, I was very tempted to build my own. But, I decided that if I could find something affordable I’d be further ahead to just buy one.

I’m thrilled with it. It’s definitely affordable. Organization is a very personal thing, so you would need to try out any system for yourself, but Flick! makes it easy with a free trial.

anklyosaurus origami

Origami Anklyosaurus – when the first step has a substep of 16 steps, you know you are in trouble!

8 comments:

Rhonda Bartoe Tucker said...

Thanks for sharing this info. Glad you are going to give it a try. Keep me posted. I'll buy it, too, on your recommendation only!

Valerie Jones said...

Rose, thanks for sharing this information! I took a look at Flick! and it's defininately worth the money. It looks like what I've been looking for.

Rose Welty said...

Rhonda, you should definitely check it out for yourself, as these types of things are highly personal. I've been using it for a few weeks and love it.

Valerie, glad you had a look. It's definitely worth the $30 upgrade over spreadsheets for me. I don't have to continually enter the same values, it has a better customer storage system than I had, etc. As well, it is lovely to see all my work catalogued like that! :D

Sydney Harper said...

Thanks for the recommendation, Rose! I'm downloading it now to take a look at it. So far it looks promising. I briefly thought I'd build my own database but I would really rather use my time doing something else.

Tina Mammoser said...

Sydney kind of summed up my reason for trying Flick! too - I could do it myself but didn't want to spend the time.

Glad you're enjoying it Rose, are you finding the 'client' part of it sufficient? I have to admit I haven't fully gotten into that bit yet, but really need to.

Rose Welty said...

Sydney, my thoughts exactly...I could do my own, but why if I've found something close to what I want?

Tina, Thank you for stopping by and commenting. For clients, I wanted to be able to tie them to pieces they've bought, hold their info, and email newsletter subscribers. Flick does all that. Admittedly, I haven't used the email function yet, which is limited to one image, but that will be enough for me and should simplify the whole newsletter process for me.

Stacy said...

Rose, it looks like Flick should be giving you and Tina a commission. :D I'm going to check it out to as soon as I recover from my last wild trip into the world of technology. By the way, I had to chuckle when I saw your dinosaurs. One of my kids got an origami set last year and I spent several hours folding. Although nothing near as complicated as what you did!!

Jo Castillo said...

Rose, I just bought Artist's Butler yesterday! I think this Flick has more options. Same price. Will see how I like this and may switch for next year. I have been using a database on Appleworks (MAC) but it is not a real database so doesn't have all the perks. It has worked well, but I wanted the ability to create mailing lists, etc., in one place. Thanks for the info.