Unofficial Google Image Search By Drawing

You can perform Google Image search by drawing anything in the area provided or use your webcam to take a picture and search the web. The site also supports drag and drop features meaning that you can search the web by dropping the image from your computer.

When you open the website, you will see a blank drawing area on your screen. All you have to do is select the pencil size and color, and click on Search by Drawing button. It will display all the results related the picture you drew. It will even show you any related image Google can find on the internet.

The service only works with Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome.

Features

  • Free and simple
  • Search Google by drawing images
  • Use your webcam to take snapshots and search Google
  • Works in Firefox and Chrome

Visit: search-by-drawing.franz-enzenhofer.com

View Google Image Search results as a slideshow

This simple tool allows you to easily generate and view an online image slideshow based on search results from Google Images. The present version should be quite stable, but of course there might always be bugs.

The slideshow can further be customized by entering the “Advanced” tab on the site’s homepage. Through these controls you can control various aspects of the slideshow such as specifying dominant colors and a specific website for the images.

Features:

  • A user friendly web service.
  • Shows Google Image search results in a slideshow.
  • Lets you specify the website for the search results.
  • Lets you control the speed of the slideshow.
  • Lets you control the image size, colors, and other aspects of the slideshow.

Please note that this website and its makers are in no way affiliated with Google.

Visit: googleimageslideshow.com

Google Image Slideshow – Online slideshows from search sesults

Google Images lets us easily search for photos and other types of images. But thanks to a new web service, we can now put the results of a Google Image search into a browser slideshow. This web service is called simply Google Image Slideshow.

Google Image Slideshow is a great and simple tool that shows Google Image search results as a slideshow. To begin the slideshow all you have to do is type in your query and press the Enter key. If you want to view an image through its direct URL, there is a button for it at the top right of each image. By bringing your mouse pointer to the bottom of the image you can control the speed of the slideshow.

The slideshow can further be customized by entering the “Advanced” tab on the site’s homepage. Through these controls you can control various aspects of the slideshow such as specifying dominant colors and a specific website for the images.

Features:

  • A user friendly web service.
  • Shows Google Image search results in a slideshow.
  • Lets you specify the website for the search results.
  • Lets you control the speed of the slideshow.
  • Lets you control the image size, colors, and other aspects of the slideshow.

Visit: googleimageslideshow.com

Google Buys Picnik

It’s difficult to understand why Google didn’t develop an online photo editor: it would’ve integrated with Picasa Web Albums, Google picnikDocs and other Google services. Right now, Picasa Web Albums is just an online extension of Picasa, a popular software that lets you manage your photos. Unlike Picasa Web Albums, most Google services work online and don’t require additional applications.

Instead of migrating Picasa online, Google acquired Picnik, an online photo editor that already integrates with Picasa Web Albums and many other photo services.

“Today, we’re excited to announce that Google has acquired Picnik, one of the first sites to bring photo editing to the cloud. Using Picnik, you can crop, do touch-ups and add cool effects to your photos, all without leaving your web browser,” mentions Google’s blog.
Picnik will not be discontinued and Google promises that the service will continue to support all the existing partners, but I suspect that Flickr will no longer use it as the default photo editor.

Visit: Picnik

Top 5 Black & White Image Search Engines

There’s something magical in the absence of color and there is something unbelievably inspiring in black and white photography. This is the oldest type of photography and still the most inspiring one.

Multicolr is a Flickr-based image search engine that allows you to search by color . To see only black and white photography, all you need is to pick colors from the last row:

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Yahoo Image Search : Only few people know that Yahoo can be the best Flickr image search engine you’ve ever tried; mainly, because it has some useful search option that Flickr doesn’t. One of them is actually Black&Whit photos. Both options are accessed via Advanced search; there you can set the image color (black and white) and image source (check Flickr to only include photos from Flickr). Right there, you can also set the license filter to only search for images available for distribution:

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Corbisimages is my preferred stock images search engine that both contains a high-quality selection of creative photography and offers a robust search feature with lots of features. I first learned about it from this image search engines overview by Edward Khoo and it has been my personal favorite since then.

Besides setting it to search through black and white images only, you can filter:

  • By Type (photography or illustration);
  • By distribution rights (royalty-free or “rights managed”);
  • By editorial type (current news, documentary, fine art; entertainment):;
  • By orientation (horizontal, vertical, panorama);
  • By date when the photo was created;
  • By photographer.

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Bing Image Search : As an avid Googler, I feel bad listing both Yahoo and Bing and not mentioning Google; but here’s the truth: I love Google general search, I hate Google images search. It is both limited and irrelevant. I prefer Bing Image Search engine.

It has plenty of great search options (including a black and white filter):

  • Search by size (small, medium, large, wallpaper);
  • Search by layout (squire, tall, wide);
  • Search by style (photography or illustration);
  • Check special people search filters: just faces or including head and shoulders.

Besides, it offers a similar search option if you hover your mouse cursor over an image.

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Picsearch is a good alternative image search engine to have by hand. It doesn’t have any extraordinary search options to mention. The only reason I use it from time to time is that it provides totally different search results – something I’d never be able to find using ordinary tools like Google or Yahoo.

“Picsearch uses its own technology to crawl the web and has created a searchable index of images…. Picsearch image search technology has three main features that make it unique. It has a relevancy unrivalled on the web due to its patent-pending indexing algorithms. Also, Picsearch has a family friendliness that allows children to surf in safety as all offensive material is filtered out by our advanced filtering systems. The site is also very user friendly as it’s designed to be simple, fast and accurate.”

Besides searching for black and white photography, the tool offers a few other nifty features like:

  • Filtering by size;
  • Filtering by type (landscape versus portrait for example);
  • Showing search suggestions.

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