Image search is evolving rapidly. Today the machine understands much more about images than just a year ago: it can read the text on the image, see its colors and classify it based on its form, shape and textures. So which advanced image search methods can we use today?
Image search based on image content
(face / landscape / photo / product image search)
Face search has been a hot topic recently.
- Exalead has become known for integrating facial recognition technology but it still lacks some accuracy. I tried searching [Paris] there using “face” filter and did get a lot of faces (along with a few non-facial images).
- PicItUp offers a “face” filter and also fails to return only relevant results. Among other advanced image search options, the service also allows for “landscape” and image “product” search.
- Google images also employ face search (with imgtype=face added to the string) that seems to return most relevant results (well, no wonder). Google images has also recently introduced “photo content” image search.
- Face Search is a dedicated face search engine powered by Google search.
Image search based on color
- Picitup allows to set color preferences (choose among 18 colors to set the search dominating palette);
- PicSearch and Snap.com recognize between colorful and black-and-white images.
- Etsy searches only inside its own product database but its color-based search engine is both fun and pleasure to play with.
Image search based on similarity
Recently launched Tineye.com (registration required) searches for similar images online. While the database size still leaves much to be desired, this type of image “reversed” search is a great move. Like Etsy color search, that’s one of those search types requiring no keywords at all.
Comments
9 responses so far ↓
Rich Hill on Oct 8, 2008 at 9:37 am
Thanks very helpful. Now if we could just find a way to search for Creative Commons images that would be great. There is a filter on flickr but it is all very confusing.
Maing on Oct 8, 2008 at 9:38 am
The best thing about TinEye is the firefox plugin
Web Optimization & Content Development on Oct 8, 2008 at 9:43 am
Very useful when searching for images that could be used on a web that has a certain color palette or a certain theme.
Jessica Antoinette Farnsworth on Oct 8, 2008 at 11:45 am
Ann, you find the most useful things that I never knew about. Thanks and I want you to know how much your posts are appreciated.
JAF
Ann Smarty on Oct 8, 2008 at 12:21 pm
@ Jessica, thank you so much. I highly appreciate your feedback.
Charlie Anzman on Oct 9, 2008 at 12:08 am
Nice finds Ann!
Leila Boujnane on Oct 9, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Ann: great post. Thanks for mentioning our search engine TinEye. I noticed that one of your readers was wondering about creative commons search and here is an interesting link (I am biased :) since this is one of our labs) but here you go: we developed an image search lab where you can search 10 million creative commons images using colour only. You can pick up to 10 colours for your search: http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr/
Nice finds for your post!
Wpromote on Oct 17, 2008 at 6:36 pm
Thanks for posting. This is going to come in handy for future reference.
Ravindran Asari K on Nov 17, 2008 at 8:44 am
I am a librarian by profession. I am interested in online search techniques. Image searching quite interesting. I am enthused by your site. Let me know more.
Thank you
Ravindran Asari
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