Researching Images More Effectively

Why do the Research Yourself?

As your own image researcher, you have greater control and flexibility when searching for an image. You might begin a search with one concept, but realize after seeing the search results, that another idea is much more suitable for your design. Performing your own research allows you to easily modify the search criteria to generate more fitting results.

Often times, you may have several abstract ideas in mind but find that it is difficult to articulate them. Explaining this to someone who is tasked to do the image research for you could be more time consuming than researching for yourself. In this case, performing your own research saves you time and can lead to unexpected and interesting new ideas.

Getting Started with the Basics

For a basic search, start at the Keyword Search box and type a broad keyword related to your search, such as "woman," into the "Search Terms" box. You can expand your search by selecting a category and selecting some of the filters. Try this out by choosing the category "Beauty/Fashion" and checking the "Exclude Editorial" filter along with the keyword "woman." Watch as the results return with plenty of images to choose from.

This search option is most useful when you want to find an image that is simple and straightforward. However, when your design project calls for a more targeted image (such as a specific style, expression on a person's face, clothing), you will want to narrow down your search.

Narrow Your Search

If you want fewer and more specialized results, try using more keywords. Choose more filters or use more focused keywords or keyword combinations.

Rules of Thumb

- Keep in mind that our search functionality does not search for partial words, so the two terms that you enter into the search box will both need to be found in the keywords for the image. For example, if you are looking for an image of a backyard, you would have to do a search for: backyard as opposed to: back yard. Unless a submitter also tagged their image with the separate keywords: back and yard, the latter search option might generate results that are completely unrelated to backyards.

- If you do want to use two separate words, use quotations to convey multiple words as a phrase (a phrase being more than one word). An example of this is "New Years," which would generate images of fireworks, whereas the words New Years might retrieve images of birthday balloons.

- You don't need to type in the words AND or OR.

- Exclude Keywords: This will act as a NOT statement allowing users to exclude images which contain keywords they are not looking for. So instead of entering in the word NOT before a word, simply type the words into the "Exclude Keywords" field and follow the same search principles that are listed above. An example of this is using the word ketchup as a search term and entering the words hot dog into the exclude keywords field.

Go Conceptual and Literal

Be Conceptual

What is the general feeling or emotion of the image that you are looking for? What are some of the broader terms that can be related? Some examples include desire, grunge, abstract, and so on.

Be Literal

Use specific terms such as car, cat or baseball to describe what you are looking for. Then refine your search accordingly.

Photographer Name

If you have a particular photographer/submitter in mind, entering their name in the "Photographer Name" field will bring up their image gallery. From there, you can refine your search even more by entering keywords and selecting filters.

Sometimes you may find yourself in the situation where you have no idea of what you are looking for until you've stumbled upon an image that aesthetically matches your design needs. Unfortunately the image itself may not always be fitting but that doesn't mean that your search ends there. You may find similar images by searching within the photographer/submitter's gallery. Click on the photographer/submitter's name to view their gallery, then click on the "search within this portfolio" link that appears right under the "Portfolio for: <<photographer/submitter name>>" text in the upper left corner. From there, you can begin to refine your search.

Refining with More Filters

Some additional filters that are helpful when searching for an image are listed below and can be referenced in our previous newsletters.

• Search by Color

• SafeSearch

• Model Released

• Exclude Editorial

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. With these tips in mind, go find that image.