Although you can find icons and clip art with the all-purpose image search
engines, these image types all have their own specialized engines, which
is why I put them in their own category. Please keep in mind that most
materials that you will find with these search tools are copyright protected,
and that you should ask for permission before you use them.
All Purpose Image Search Engines
The Top Four:
Google
According to Kevin Elliott in an article from about.com, Google's
new image search engine claims a database of 150 million images, while
Fast covers 25 million, followed by Diggit! with 12 million and Ditto
with 6 million. Diggit! unfortunately is no longer in business, and has
a "for sale" sign on its homepage.
All
the Web / Fast Multimedia Search
In the advanced search option, All the Web offers choices format (jpeg,
gif, bmp) and image characteristics (color, gray, line art) Lycos
Multimedia Search shares same core technology as Fast/AllTheWeb, according
to Elliott (June 25, 2001)
Ditto.com
This is a wonderful tool to find pictures! From some test searches that
I did, I had better results than with most of the commercial image companies.
Ditto.com, formerly known as Arriba Soft Corp., is involved in a significant
copyright lawsuit, "Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corp." On Feb. 6, 2002,
a panel of judges ruled use of thumbnails by Ditto.com was fair use, but
their use of Kelly's full sized images violated copyright law. (Fausett,
2002)
AltaVista Image
Search
Alta Vista has a distribution agreement with Getty Imagesart.com and Eyewire,
(Oct. 25, 1999, PR newswire) so you will get biased results from their
search engine.
The Rest, arranged alphabetically:
Image Finder
from Berkeley Digital Library SunSITE. This has a multiple list of site
search tools: Architectural Images | DL SunSITE | Fort Worth Star-Telegram
| Images 1 (Nat'l Library of Aust.) | Library of Congress | Library of
Virginia | NASA | NAU Cline Library | PictureAustralia | Smithsonian Institution
Mamma.com A meta-engine and "The mother of all search engines". Select "Images" and then type in your search.
Picsearch.com According to their web site, picsearch "has a relevancy unrivalled on the web due to it's 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."
Webshots "...photo screen saver / wallpaper program and photo album."
Icon/Clip Art Search Tools
Clip Art
Review List of photo resources. (Some are already listed in the
bank)
The Icon Browser (In Knight (1998) Also referred to in Media Builder. MetaLab, University of North Carolina
Webplaces.com Clip Art Searcher In Knight (1998) Includes Answers, Hotbot, Lycos, Filez, 1-Click (some of these also search for images and sounds) Enter the word for the image that you want and add gif or jpg extensions and then do your search.
More Specialized, Subject Area
Engines
Artcyclopedia "The
fine art search engine."
Public Health Image Library
"PHIL is an extensive collection of still images, image sets, and
multimedia files related to public health." Most of the images in
the collection are in the public domain and are thus free of any copyright
restrictions, but see the PHIL site for conditions of use.
Permission must be obtained for non-public domain images
You are responsible for obeying copyright laws and any conditions stated on the sites that you access.
.
Last Updated: 10-Jun-2009 2:12 PM