Corel Gallery

Revision as of 17:33, 1 October 2020

Corel Gallery was a vector clipart product released by Corel around 1993-94. The first version came loaded with 10,000 clipart files in the BMF format on the PC and the PICT format on the Macintosh. The proprietary BMF format meant you had to use the included Gallery software to then copy & paste into other applications or export into another format for use in your other documents. Later versions of Gallery used .CCX or .CMX for the ClipArt format.^[1]

There are some references alleging the format is a Corel Flow image format, but no evidence to support. Also not to be confused with other formats named BMF.

It's not clear what BMF stands for. Some format lists say Binary Material Format, but that does not seem plausible.

Starting in Gallery 2, Corel used a .GAL format to reference groups of ClipArt. This OLE container referenced multiple .CMX or .CCX files and their thumbnails.

File Identification

BMF files headers all begin with ascii "@CorelBMF\n\rCorel Corporation". In the OLE-based format, the first three directory entry names are often _ITEM_, _DATA_ and _INFO_. The names _ALBUM_ and _THUMBNAIL_ follow later.

Sample files

• ArtShow 6 GAL examples found in ALBUMS subdirectry of ARTSHOW6 directory.

Software

• Gallery Software and Sample files
• Gallery 3 Software and Sample files
• XnView (can display the BMF preview image)
• Structured Storage Viewer (can display structure and elements of OLE based gallery)

Links

• Corel GALLERY™ for Windows® (archived)
• BMF Description
• InfoWorld May 2, 1994
• Twitter Gallery 1994 feed
• Corel Ships Corel GALLERY 2
• Corel First to Market with One Million Images (Gallery 3)

References

1. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20001005011336/http://kb.corel.com/kbdocs/MISC/CLIPARTGALLERIESWIN/CLIPARTGALLERIESWIN_101559.htm