Quickly Find Creative Commons Images Using Google

Now you no longer have to open the advanced search page to restrict the Google Image Search results to Creative Commons pics or public domain images. Just click "search tools" below the search box, then click "usage rights" and pick one of the options: "labeled for reuse", "labeled for commercial reuse", "labeled for reuse with modification" or "labeled for commercial reuse with modification". You'll find many pictures from Flickr and Wikipedia.

Visit the page, find the license and make sure it's right for you. You should always link to the page, mention the author and the source. "Before reusing content that you've found, you should verify that its license is legitimate and check the exact terms of reuse stated in the license. For example, most licenses require that you give credit to the image creator when reusing an image. Google has no way of knowing whether the license is legitimate, so we aren't making any representation that the content is actually or lawfully licensed," informs Google.

Google should replace the message "Images may be subject to copyright" with the Creative Commons license.

{ via Search Engine Land }

Google's Mobile Image Search Adds Menu

Google updated the mobile interface for Image Search launched in October. I've only noticed the change in Chrome and Safari for iPhone, but it doesn't seem to be an experiment.

Google now shows a three-dot menu with options like "visit page", "view image", "send feedback" and "search by image", instead of using links. You can still swipe to go to the next or previous image result and tapping the image sends you to the most relevant page that includes it.

Google Image Search's Loading Animation

Google Image Search shows an animation below the search result's thumbnail while the original image is downloaded. As you probably noticed, Google first shows the thumbnail, which is already loaded as part of the search results page, then it replaces the thumbnail with the full-size image when you click a result.

Update: This is not a new feature. Thanks, +Sushubh Mittal.

The animation is especially useful for large images, since you may have to wait a few seconds until the images are downloaded. Here's an example and here's the animation:

Google Image Search Tests Snippets

One of the features that was removed in the current Google Image Search interface is snippets. Now Google only shows the title of the page, the domain and the size of the image in pixels. Snippets used to reveal more information about the photo or the page that includes the image, just like the snippets that are used for all the other search results.

Google considers bringing back snippets. Here's a screenshot from a Google experiment:

In this case, the snippet is quite useful, but very long: "the company's energy supply. This makes the Googleplex one of the USA's largest corporate solar installations. Unfortunately, I wasn't allowed to take photos on the roof, so here's one Google made earlier."

Google's regular interface doesn't show snippets:

Yahoo Image Search's Fullscreen Slideshow

One of the features I've always wanted to see in Google Image Search is slideshows. Google lets you quickly go to the next image result using the right arrow shortcut, but a slideshow button would make things even easier. Picasa Web search used to have this feature. I know that webmasters will say that this wastes their bandwidth, so let's get past this.

It turns out that Yahoo already has this feature. Yahoo's search results are powered by Microsoft Bing, but Yahoo has its own UI and it does a pretty good job. Yahoo uses the same infinite scrolling interface (Google borrowed it from Bing), but things look different once you click a search result. Images occupy the entire page and you can click the small "play" button at the bottom of the page to start a slideshow or just use the "p" keyboard shortcut. There are some cool zoom effects for big images and, if you use a browser that supports the HTML5 fullscreen API (Chrome/Firefox for desktop and Android, Safari for desktop), you can click the "view fullscreen" button at the top of the page and only see the images. You may want to restrict the results to large images.

Yahoo has a similar interface for the mobile search engine and it looks more like the old Google Image Search for mobile. The new Google interface has some benefits if you don't want to see all the results sequentially, but the old UI placed more emphasis on the images. The nice thing is that Yahoo has the slideshow button in the mobile interface, as well.

New Google Image Search for Mobile

Google's image search engine has a new interface for smartphones and tablets. The new UI looks just like the desktop UI, but you can use swipes to navigate between the image results.

Here are some screenshots from my Nexus 7. When you tap an image result, a black box with a bigger version of the image will open. You can also find some additional information about the image.

Swipe left to see the next image result, swipe right to go to the previous result. Gestures work just like the left/right keyboard shortcuts in the desktop interface. Tap an image to open the page that includes it.

A similar interface is available for smartphones. Here's a screenshot from an iPhone running iOS7:

Google will probably say that it changed the interface to make it more consistent and provide an unified interface for both desktop and mobile devices. There are some other advantages: you can scroll down to see more results, you can scroll up and quickly change the query or switch to web search.

I find the old interface more intuitive and better suited for mobile devices. It made it more obvious that you can use gestures by showing the previous and the next image result, search results didn't move around and you could find more information about the images. The new smartphone interface only displays the domain name and it no longer shows the title of the page and the image size (the tablet interface still shows them). Here's a screenshot of the old UI:

Google's Reverse Image Search, Now in Chrome

Google's reverse image search feature is about to become more popular, now that you can easily use it in Chrome 30+. You no longer have to install an extension, just right-click an image and click "search Google for this image".

"Search by image allows you to do a reverse image search and discover all sorts of content that's related to a specific image. For example, search using a picture of your favorite band and see search results that might include similar images, webpages about the band, and even sites that include the same picture," explains Google.

It's interesting to notice that Google uploads the image, instead of using the URL. Maybe Google wanted to make sure that you'll always get some results: not all the URLs are publicly accessible (for example: Gmail's image attachments).

Reverse image search also works for modified versions of an image, so you can use it to find more information about an image, other sites that include the image, the original source of an image. You can also use TinEye, a similar reverse image search engine.

Google Mobile Image Search Regression

Google has a great mobile interface for image search. It was launched in 2010 and improved multiple times since then. You can use swipes to go to the next image result or to the previous one. It looks like Google changed the image search UI for smartphones and tablets and now sends you to a landing page that shows the image and loads the corresponding page in the background. Intuitive gestures are gone and now you have to use the back button.

This seems to be limited to iPhones and iPads running iOS 7, so it's probably a bug. A lot of people complain about this in the Google Search Forum.

There are many reasons why the new interface is strange: loading the associated page uses more bandwidth and that's not a good idea for mobile devices, it's more difficult to check multiple search results, thumbnails are smaller and even the desktop interface shows a bigger image instead of sending users to a new page.

Google Image Search Collections

Google works on a new image search feature that lets you create collections, add image search results to your collections and annotate them. The source code includes multiple references to "collections", "notes", "folios", "clips", "groups" and the feature could integrate with Google Profiles.

For some reason, this looks like a standalone feature and notes aren't added to Google Keep.

Bing Image Search used to have a scratchpad, where users could save their images.

Google also had Notebook, a product that worked well for saving image search results. "Google Notebook is a simple way for users to save and organize their thoughts when conducting research online. This personal browser tool permits users to clip text, images, and links from the pages they're browsing, save them to an online notebook that is accessible from any computer, and share them with others," explained Google back in 2006.

{ Thanks, Florian K. }

Google's Search by Image and Special Effects

Google Image Search has a feature that lets you find images on the web by uploading the files or pasting their URLs. It's a clever feature, but it's a lot more clever than you imagined.

It's obvious that Google finds an image if exactly the same file is embedded by a web page or there's a link to that file. Google also finds images if you resize them, crop them or apply various photo effects.

Here's an image from a Wikipedia page, after resizing it and applying the pixelate effect from Picasa. Can Google find it?

Google can't find other sizes of the image, but if you look at the "Pages that include matching images" section, you'll find the image.

What if you convert the photo to black and white? Will Google's reverse image search engine be able to find it?

You'll get the same pages that include matching images:

Let's try something more difficult - apply multiple Picasa effects: soft focus, tint, filtered black-and-white and posterize. There's no way to recognize this image, right?

Wrong.

I used IrfanView to remove EXIF data and compress the image above a lot more. Here's what I got:

I edited the image in Paint and added some random shapes:

Here's the original photo:

To call this impressive is an understatement. It's a resilient algorithm that goes beyond matching pixels, colors, shapes - it understands the structure of the image, its essence.

{ The image from this post ("a red flower in the Philippines") has been licensed as Creative Commons Attribution by bingbing. Thanks, Brian Anderson. }

Navigation Arrows in Google Image Search

Google Image Search shows two arrows when you click a search results. The two buttons let you go to the previous or the next result. Until now, you could only use keyboard shortcuts (left/right arrow keys) to navigate between results.

I'm sure that website owners won't like this feature because it's much easier to go to the next image result, but users will like it. Maybe Google will also add a slideshow mode in full-screen, so that you don't have to click the "next" button over and over again.

New UI for Related Searches in Google Image Search

A few weeks ago, I posted about a new Google Image Search experiment for related searches. Now it's no longer an experiment.

Google shows some thumbnails next to the related searches, so you can preview the results and see if those queries are relevant. Until now, you had to mouse over the results to see the thumbnails.

Click one of the related searches and you can see bigger versions of the same thumbnails. There's an extra click to actually see all the results.

Tablet image results in new carousel view

(Cross-posted on the Inside Search blog)

In July, we started to evolve the Google design and experience on Android and iOS tablets by updating features like larger touch targets and enhanced image viewing to make searching faster and easier. Today, we’re building on that foundation by adding a new image carousel for viewing large image results within a few swipes.

As someone who enjoys being outdoors, I like exploring beautiful images of nature. With the new image carousel, I can discover photos of bright sea anemones or colorful lorikeet birds on my tablet in a more interactive and immersive way. Now when I tap on an image result, it’ll expand in the carousel view and I can swipe through the search results. To learn more about an image, a tap on the web page preview, title, description or URL will take me directly to the webpage. See how you can take the image carousel for a spin:





Try out the new image carousel by going to Google on your iOS or Android tablet’s browser and searching for your favorite images. This feature is currently available in over 40 languages.

I hope you enjoy searching for beautiful images in this new view.

Posted by Nathan Beach, Product Manager

New Advanced Image Search Page

Google updated the interface of the advanced image search page to look just like the corresponding Web search page. The redesigned page is easier to use, it groups the search options and includes some of the options that were only available in the sidebar.


Here's the old UI:


Why use the advanced search page instead of using the sidebar? Some of the options aren't available in the sidebar: restricting the results to a filetype, finding Creative Commons images, finding images from a domain or from a country.

There's one feature that's no longer available in the new interface. Can you find it?

Google Indexes Images a Lot Faster

Google Image Search used to have an index that wasn't updated too often. At some point, Google started to include images from Google News articles, so you could find images from recent events.



Now Google Image Search's index updates in real-time for many pages, just like the Web Search index. A few minutes after publishing a post, I was really surprised to see that an image from the post was already indexed by Google.





A search for [cartoon] restricted to the past hour returns 41 images and not all of them are from news articles and blog posts. Google Image Search still doesn't index all the images as soon as the pages are indexed by Google, but the improvements are noticeable.

New Google Search experience for tablets

(Cross-posted on the Inside Search blog)

As part of our effort to evolve the Google design and experience, we’ve improved the www.google.com search experience on tablets. We’ve simplified the layout of search results pages and increased the size of page contents like text, buttons and other touch targets to make it faster and easier to browse and interact with search results in portrait or landscape view.

The search button located below the search box provides quick access to specific types of results like Images, Videos, Places, Shopping and more. Just tap to open the search menu and select an option to see results in one category.

For image results, we focused on improvements that enhance the viewing experience such as enlarged image previews, continuous scroll, and faster loading of image thumbnails.

This improved search experience is rolling out in the coming days to iPad and Android 3.1+ tablets across 36 languages. Give it a try by going to www.google.com in your tablet’s browser.

Posted by Xiaorui Gan, Software Engineer

Google Image Search Shows More Information About Photos

Google's image search engine started to show additional information about photos after clicking the results. The landing page's sidebar includes EXIF data: camera, settings, focal length, flash usage and exposure bias.

"Additional details are found from within the image file, often saved there by the digital camera that took the picture or the application that generated the image. This data can also be manually added or changed after the image has been created. Google doesn't create or change this data in images created by others. The data is saved using the Exchangeable Image File Format (EXIF) specification and can include details about the type of camera that took the image, the camera settings (like aperture, focal length, exposure length, and flash settings), and the copyright and usage rights associated with the image by the person who created or edited the image," explains Google.

Another change is that you can click "more sizes" for other versions of the image and "similar images" for visually related images. The sidebar also includes the search result's snippet.


The sidebar can also include a list of related searches, which offer a lot of information about the image and help you find similar images:


Google should also add links to the previous and the next search result so that you don't have to go back to the list of results.

Find Recent Images in Google Image Search

Google Image Search added a filter that lets you restrict the results to the pages created in the past week. Just click "past week" in the left sidebar and you'll see a list of recent images that include labels like "20 hours ago" or "5 days ago" to show how recent they are. Google's image search engine shows the same labels even if you don't restrict the results to recent images.


The interface doesn't let you customize the date range, but you can edit the URL and replace "qdr:w" with "qdr:h" (past hour), "qdr:h20" (past 20 hours), "qdr:d" (past 24 hours), "qdr:d2" (past 2 days), "qdr:w2" (past 2 weeks), "qdr:m" (past month), "qdr:y" (past year). Another trick you can try is to type your query in Google Web Search, use the date filters from the sidebar and then click "Images" in the vertical menu. Custom date ranges don't work in Image Search yet.

Here are some examples: Beijing photos from the past year, wedding photos from the past month, Android-related images from the past 2 weeks, Tour de France photos from the past week. It's important to keep in mind that the photos may not be so recent, but they're included in recent articles, blog posts and other Web pages.

The nice thing about the "recent images" filter is that you can combine it with other advanced filters. You can sort the images by subject and restrict the results to recent images, find images that have a certain size or a predominant color and they were uploaded in the past year, find recent Creative Commons images or generate a list of recent images from a site (e.g.: cnn.com).

Find Similar Images from a Site

Google Image Search has a nifty feature that was added a couple of months ago, but it's not so easy to find. If you restrict the results to a site and click "similar" next to one of the images, Google will only show similar images from that site. For example, if you search for [paris site:wikipedia.org] and click "similar" next to a photo of the Eiffel Tour, Google will show pictures of the Eiffel Tour and other similar monuments from Paris, but only if they are included in a Wikipedia page.



It's a great way to explore a site and group related images when it's difficult to type a precise query. The top results provided by the Similar Images feature are much better than the results for [monuments in Paris site:wikipedia.org], where you can find maps, flags, logos.


It's important to note that Google Image Search's site: operator no longer takes into account the URL of the image, so if a blog includes an image from Flickr, you'll still be able to find the image when you restrict the image results to the blog's domain or subdomain. "In the past, the [site:] operator filtered based on the image URL, not based on the URL of web pages linking to the images. Now, the operator will run your search over web sites that include images, no matter where the images themselves are hosted, which removes a lot of noise from your results and gives you more control over what you're searching for."

Google Instant for Image Search

Google Instant is now available for image search results, but only as an experimental feature. After you enable "Instant on Images", Google will start to autocomplete your queries and show image results before you finish entering the query. It's a great way to try different queries and see the results almost instantly.


Unfortunately, there are some limitations that make this feature less useful. "Search by Image will not work if you opt into this experiment. Also, Instant on Images is available only if you already have Instant on Web. Finally, this experiment is enabled only for the Images search result page, not on the Google Images home page."

You can try this feature without joining Google's experiment: just append &esrch=ImagesInstant::PublicOptIn to an Image Search URL, like this or bookmark this page.

Google also added an experiment for Voice Search, which allows you to try the feature before it's available for you. Voice Search only works in Google Chrome 11+.

Google says that you can't select multiple experiments at the same time, but I've managed to enable both Voice Search and Instant on Images. For some reason, you won't be able to use Search by Image when you enable Voice Search, even if Instant on Images is disabled.