Image search is just like normal search and similarly painstaking.
Making it less so are the dedicated image search engines.
Google Image Search is powerful but it always pays to have a few more options up your internet tool.
This is where these five image search engines come into the picture.
Cyclo.ps
In Greek mythology, it’s a giant with a single eye.
A horizontal menu and also a dropdown let you view results by respective site.
This search platform delivers both.
Clicking on the thumbnail preview takes you directly to the source.
The site is very neat and uncluttered.
Spffy (Beta)
Ferret out the image or video you want using Spffy’s multiple searches.
you could tune your stock search with options for royalty-free, rights-managed and news/archival.
Web search on Flickr can also be similarly configured for relevance.
Incogna
The Canada-based search engine company looks at thevisual shaperather than the meta-data.
This gives rather interesting results which are distinct from the others profiled here.
The image search is fast though the number of results is not plentiful.
You enter a keyword and then select an image from the results to do a similarity search.
A moving slider to control the number of images per page is the only preference tool to set.
PicSearch
Picsearch indexes the web for images and is probably the best of the lot.
The About Page of the site says that its unique search algorithm is due for a patent.
The search engine has indexed more than 3,000,000,000 images.
you could set a few preferences like an interface language.
it’s possible for you to also use normal search operators to fine-tune your search.
The site also comes with a family filter to keep out you-know-those kind of images away from the mix.
There are two things I really liked about the site.
Firstly, its speed; and secondly, theImage Directorywhich is a vast collection of subject specific images.
Oh yes, there’s a third thing to like too - it comes with aFirefox extension.
So do check the sources before you punch save.
If unable to do so, what are search engines for"hunt out a few more.
Which is your image search engine of choice?
Does yourimage searchgo beyond the biggies?
Let us into the picture.
