March 20, 2009

Find Images that Contain a Certain Color

Google Image Search has a new option that lets you restrict the results based on their color. For now, the option is not available in the user interface, but you can tweak the search results URL to try it.

Searching for [red bird] shows good results, but you can still find some unrelated images. What if you search for [bird] and restrict the results to red images? Here's the URL:

http://images.google.com/images?q=bird&imgcolor=red
(you can replace "red" with "blue", "green", "teal", "purple", "yellow", "orange", "pink", "white", "gray", "black" and "brown")



You can try the new feature using this simple drop-down:

29 comments:

  1. Great. This one is been an experimental search for Picasa 3, too.

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  2. Thanks I didn't know about it.

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  3. Thank you. I tried the same example in Italian, but the search is more efficient in English.

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  4. This filter has already appeared 1 this month ago > http://www.nowhereelse.fr/filtres-google-images-15936/

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  5. @stagueve:

    Not quite. The options that were available in that experimental sidebar are not new and can be accessed from the advanced search page. You can restrict the results to black&white images, grayscale and full color images, but you can't pick a more specific color.

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  6. @Alex: you're right, not so much color choice as in the option you're talking about.

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  7. It's available Picasa software, so could we suppose that other features could come from Picasa to Google Images? Like face recognition? :-D

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  8. tell us again how this works?

    the only thing I can find in the advanced is black&white, grayscale and full color...

    where EXACTLY would one be able to specify an exact color?

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  9. In this example, "red bird" actually gives better results.

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  10. Though I always like new Google features I'm still trying to figure out the real advantage of this option. A direct search for e.g. "blue car" or "red bird" gives me the same, if not better, results...

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  11. 2 Couleur : &imgcolor=blue,red

    ou 3 couleur :
    &imgcolor=blue,red,green
    ou &imgcolor=blue%2Cred%2Cgreen

    source : http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2009-03-21-n78.html

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  12. @Anonymous

    Yes in some ways better, but not always the same.

    "blue car" finds where someone has specifically mentioned blue in relation to the car (and because they have done so 'blue' is possibly quite relevant)

    but with the colour filter, can find blue cars, where nobody even thought to mention the car is blue.

    So its not so much for finding the really good matches, but for finding the 'long tail', the large number of images not well described, and so almost unfindable by conventional keyword searching.

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  13. nice, google endeavour to constantly improve image search and make it more usable

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  14. The option to add several color input is amazing, I was able to find a specific image I was searching for reducing the chromatic gap!

    I love it

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  15. Excellent Finding There!
    AM going to blog this.

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  16. this has been in Live search since ages...
    Check this out...

    http://search.live.com/images/results.aspx?q=bird+filterui%3acolor-color&FORM=C3IR#

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  17. @Anonymous:
    You're missing the point, since the feature you've mentioned has been available at Google since the launch of the image search engine. The new feature lets you refine the results by picking a predominant color.

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  18. As a proof, here's the advanced search page from 2001 (hosted by the Internet Archive). At that time, you could choose the number of image results displayed on a page.

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  19. This will be fantastic.Now we will get proper image rather than mixed ones.undoubtedly good invention.

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  20. hmmmmm, is not working for me either :(

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  21. Great!
    How does Google image search get these images?
    I wanna read papers. :)

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  22. I've written a greasemonkey script which allows you to select the color from the search page itself..

    http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/45544

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  23. it's not working for me either :(

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  24. Just add "&imgcolor=red" or whatever color you're looking for to a conventional image search and you will get the new color search.

    The drop-down and text field above isn't working for me either, by the way.

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  25. By using this tool we convert Binary code to ASCII text . You may quickly need to know how the computer internally intreprets a text that you could read or you may need to know what could be the textual representation of 0's and 1's that the computers uses. Either way, this tool can help you quickly find the conversion.

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