What is Cumulus Desktop 3.0?

Cumulus 3.0 stores information about your media files — graphics, movies, and sounds, for example — in a database catalog structured much like your Macintosh desktop: You have catalogs, categories, records, and status, which are analogous to your Mac’s volumes, folders, files, and labels. With a theoretical limit of somewhere between 50,000 and 200,000 records, you’ll probably run out of disk space before you run out of catalog. You can link and search multiple catalogs with Cumulus’ powerful search engine, so catalogs stored on CD-ROM also can be accessed along with the catalog on your hard drive. Graphics, multimedia, and Web professionals are the natural beneficiaries of all this database technology, but many other computer users can probably put Cumulus to good use.

Cataloging is easy — just drag and drop a volume, folder, or file onto either a category heading in the category window or an open Catalog Window to initiate cataloging — that is, if Cumulus recognizes the file type via one of its many internal file filters. Files are cataloged automatically not only by name (with a custom icon for display in the catalog window) but also by any keywords or text included in the files. Besides an unlimited number of categories, records also have a status (there are 256 user-assigned labels), which adds even more cataloging flexibility. Each record’s notes can contain up to eight pages of searchable text.

But what if Cumulus doesn’t have a filter for files created by that shareware application you just downloaded? No problem. Cumulus comes with a small utility, Cumulus FilterGenerator, that quickly creates file filters. My copy of Cumulus didn’t know an EMAGIC LogicAudio file from a Macromedia Director or Sound Designer 2 file. I created the filters easily, saved them into Cumulus’ File Filters Folder, and launched Cumulus. I then cataloged all my media files tout de suite. Sweet!

Cumulus takes the idea of keywords and runs with it: Keywords are now categories and are depicted hierarchically in the category window just as the Finder displays a volume and its contents. New categories are easy to create, and categories (even aliases of categories) can nestle inside other categories. You can import categories as text or take them from other Cumulus catalogs, so you can easily enlarge your catalog database and all catalogs will have a similar category structure. Because the organization is displayed graphically, it’s easy to visualize and edit.

The search capabilities of Cumulus are second to none. The separate search window has two main sections: The top defines the search conditions (criteria, operator, and value), and the bottom controls or modifies the search action. The search condition operators (for example, “is,” “is not,” “contains,” “does not contain”) are powerful and contextually related to the dozen or so criteria, which include the following, among others: image name, file name, file type, resolution, and color. The results quickly display in the catalog window as text or thumbnails with information about each record. Your source files (if available) can easily be opened or copied via menus or key commands, or dragged and dropped into other applications or locations.

Cumulus 3.0 has two problems. The first is the relatively sluggish drawing of thumbnails each time the catalog window fills or redraws — this occurs if you don’t up Cumulus’ memory allotment to at least 6MB. The second involves using files from a Wintel source, such as a CD-ROM. Cumulus opens and catalogs files based on information from the resource fork (which is nonexistent in a DOS-type file), so we couldn’t get Cumulus to catalog a disc of otherwise usable GIFs. A custom filter didn’t solve the problem, but there’s a workaround: Save all files into a temporary folder with an appropriate file type and creator code, and catalog that folder instead. Then, because Cumulus is very handy at categories, manipulate the categories to reflect the actual source of the files.

The Desktop Plus version (which handles multiuser work environments across servers, costs $595 and adds AppleScriptability, an Internet-based image server, and a royalty-free browser) properly catalogs all files, because it also uses the file extender to classify All in all, not many gripes about a program that’s as powerful as it is inexpensive.

Now there’s no reason, even if you use only the personal edition, why you can’t find that once-in-a-lifetime photo of an alien abduction/appendectomy that was taken April 1 at Area 51, in TIFF format in 3D.

d'Andrea, Richard. (July 1997). Cumulus 3.0. MacAddict. (pg. 68).

Download Cumulus Desktop 3.0 for Mac

Architecture

68K + PPC (FAT)

Compatibility notes

Emulating this? It could probably run under: Basilisk II