N.B. Image search engines don't just search for the image but include text associated with the image. The keywords you use play a major role in getting relevant results - so remember to tweak your keywords if you are not satisfied with the results.
Google Image Search
Google's image search engine follows the familiar web search engine's format. It has the search options panel to the left to make it easy to refine image searches and to get the exact images you need. We will explore this through a demonstration.Hands-on Demonstration
- Right click on Google Images (open in a new window / tab)
- Search for Sport
- Note: Size of images, Type of image, Colour - left hand column.
- Choose any of the options and play around to see what results you get.
You could use any combination of the search criteria at the same time. Did you notice the Find similar images link under some of the images?
Many of these options can also be found in Advanced image search. Copyright is an important issue with image use so it is very useful to have the option to filter your image search by Usage rights.
- Click on Advanced image search - note Usage Rights (2nd from bottom).
Just note that it is still your responsibility to make sure of copyright issues of any image you find on the web, even if you use the Usage rights filter.
Update: Google has added new features to their search engine. The feature that is most useful in our work is this: Drag and drop an image from the web or your computer into the search box and Google will find similar images. See their website for more information
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Other image search engines
All the general web search engines we looked at previously have image search engines – Yahoo image search , Bing image search and Exalead image search. Features they all have in common are:
- Size options
- Colour and black & white options
- Style options – photo, illustration
- Layout / orientation
More image search engines to try out:
- Flickr - though not strictly speaking an image search engine - has a huge database of images, but be aware of copyright issues. It's local search engine has a Creative Commons search filter. (Yahoo owns Flickr, so you will see a lot of images from the Flickr database in a Yahoo image search result.)
- Imagery - Hold your mouse over the image to see the type, size and URL. It also gives you the option to open the source page or to open the image in a new window. The filter options are listed under the Preferences tab.
- Picsearch - simple to use with most of the search options and filters you would expect from image search engines.
DISCOVERY EXERCISES
Use Google's image search engine and one or two of the other search engines for the following exercises:- Search for an illustration of the three types of volcanoes for a primary school student.
- A student wants to make a title page for her Japanese language school book. She is looking for Japanese symbols (that she could colour in) but not the characters of Japanese writing.
- Images that illustrate levers in the human body for a Year 10 physics assignment.
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Go to 6b. Video Search Engines
Updated: October 2011
