Image Search Engines

Image Search Engines

All Purpose

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:
The Amazing Picture Machine Brought to you by the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory

Bengt's Photo Page Check out the Archives link from this photo enthusiast's web site

Go Graph Select photo button to search, or see the subject directory which includes: Animals, Buildings, Landscape, Nature, Transportation, Weapons, World Maps

HotBot

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."

Proteus Image Search A meta image searcher that includes Alta Vista, Amazing Picture Machine, Arthur, Lycos, and Yahoo/

Webshots "...photo screen saver / wallpaper program and photo album."

Yahoo Picture Gallery Unfortunately this site seems to have a bias towards Corbis images, which you must purchase.

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
ADAM "ADAM, the Art, Design, Architecture & Media Information Gateway, is a searchable catalogue of 2,546 Internet resources that have been carefully selected and catalogued by
professional librarians for the benefit of the UK Higher Education community."

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: January 27, 2004 11:35