Searching for photos on the Web takes way too much time. There are simply too many photos to sort through and not enough good ones. Image search is a major priority for all the big search engines (Google, Yahoo, and Bing), and they’ve all been tweaking their image search to make it better. But for the longest time, Flickr (which is owned by Yahoo, but separate from Yahoo Image Search) has been my default image search engine because that is where I can usually find the best photos.
Flickr’s been coasting. Its image search hasn’t been updated in a while—until today. But once again it has turned up the awesome on image search.
For the longest time, image search results on Flickr would be returned as a single column of fairly large images that you’d have to scroll down and tab through to get to more pages. You could filter the images by “recent,” “relevant,” or “interesting.” Now that scroll view is still available (it is called “detail”), but the default view shows small thumbnails scattered across the page. As you resize the browser window, you get more or fewer images automatically. You can also hover over an image for more information (such as number of views, comments, and faves, as well as tags, location, and date) without clicking through. (They should add licensing and copyright information as well). These new features help save time by giving you a better preview of each photo, similar to what Yahoo is doing with its main image search.
You can also view by medium-sized thumbnails and, my favorite, in slideshow mode, which takes over your whole screen and shows each image huge on a black background with a thumbnail navigation ribbon along the bottom. The slideshow view is much more immersive and feels more like a desktop photo app.
You can still sort by “recent” or “interesting” (”relevant” is no longer an option though). There is also a new drop-down menu that lets you search everyone’s photos, or only your photostream, that of your contacts, friends and family, or special collections such as Creative Commons images or Getty photos. Some of these options were only available in advanced search before. Again, this helps remove steps in the search process. All in all, I think Flickr just kept me from jumping ship.
Excellent image search, the best I ever seen.
Flickr has always been one of my favorite sources for images – the creative commons licensed ones are great for bloggers and publishers who want unique images but don’t have a huge budget. And besides, it helps to promote amateur photographers and such and that is always a positive.
Flickr now theres a website I have not used for a while however it was a website that I was always tuned to flicking through different pictures of the places I have visited or wanted to visit
Just a rip off of cooliris.
Flickr is cool, I like for uploading family gatherings. It’s like a onlin scrap book.
lol, i saw this happen about 3 weeks ago, and for four days in a row, i though maybe i had an option enabled. Maybe just random luck?
can anyone maybe confirm, or am i just going crazy. O.o
it was randomly enabled for a selection of flickr members earlier than the full launch.
Can’t wait for Google to come out with their own modified image search =)
one word: cooliris
It is just the user experience design and new functionalities, nothing technichal interesting.
Sort of being disappointed after I read this long article without any new information.
So, nothing that hasn’t been done before then?
way to turn up the awesome.
For the “cooliris” commenters — Flickr’s slideshow function has always looked like that (at least for the four years I’ve been on Flickr).
As a regular Flickr user, I usually complain about the changes, because they “fix” something that’s not broken. But this time they did the right thing. Flickr’s search was laborious at best, until now. The new tweaks are very enjoyable.
One correction to the above story: “hover over an image” just brings up a letter “i” and clicking on the letter “i” gets you the more information.
nope, it’s been like that for about 2 years now. Started 4 months after the first version of PicLens was out.
I love Flickr! 95% of my business comes from Flickr.
For those that use Flickr, this is an awesome enhancement. I actually use Flickr search to get photography ideas while I’m traveling.
Flickr is a great resource for images. Yahoo! Image Search had a fantastic integration of Flickr images in their image search. Wonder what happens to that after Yahoo! search got binged. Will Yahoo! open Flickr for Image search on Bing as well?
As far as I understand it, Bing will give Image search results to Yahoo!. Over and above that, Yahoo! will be able to insert results from Flickr, and show them on the results page.
The only benefit Bing will get is an increased traffic and more information about what people view and click.
Yahoo! Image Search will have more results than Bing, because Bing doesn’t have Flickr. Flickr isn’t anyway part of the deal.
Is anyone familiar with Flickriver? http://flickriv...me/interesting/
I especially like the fact that you can quickly tell if the photo is part of Creative Commons by clicking on that “i”.
Another cool image search engine is on a site called tineye.com
You upload a picture, it finds duplicates all over the web in different sizes, etc….even if it’s been photoshopped a bit.
No clue how they do it though.
Major veto.. I just tried searching “spain” and it found no results…
Update: ok, so I have to click on “tags” instead of “full text” to get useful results? No why would the useful option not be the default?
there are still some bugs that need to be shaken out.
i just tried searching for spain right now and it worked in full text mode.
I don’t like how searching for tags is not the default.
The first search I tried was for a local mountain range, the first returned image was a shot of a beach.
although i no longer have a flickr account because i closed my yahoo mail account, i love flickr and i use it even more than i use google images…although google images was the source to go to for generic photos for basic research especially when flickr wasn’t in existence. good to see the site is always updating itself.
I wish people had a setting to turn up the awesome, anyway.. I was checking this out earlier and it definitely feels like there is a large portion of awesome available on Flickr now!!
Flickr is my favorite of all online image companies.
*
Flickr is my favorite of all online image companies.