Have you tried the cool visual search feature on the Danita Delimont website? Visual searching is a fabulous alternative to keyword-only searches.

Now that photo researchers and editors have begun using the visual search feature, we’re sometimes asked, “How do I know when I’m done?”

Great question! A keyword-only search might produce 10, 20, or even 40 pages of results. With a keyword-only search, you know you’re done when you’ve looked at every image – even if it takes hours.

Visual searching, on the other hand, continuously re-sorts images based on visual clues you provide by using the “eyeball” icon and the “Find More Like These” tool to promote good visual matches and demote poor visual matches. Very quickly, usually after only two or three re-sorts, the best visual matches pop right to the top of the search results.

Visual searching will quickly make you a believer that the “perfect” image won’t be buried in the search results. The image you want will be in the first two pages of search results, or it won’t be found at all.

To see why, let’s compare a keyword-only search to a visual search.

In this example, photo researcher Beth needs a vertical image of a sunset. The sun’s orb must be in the upper right and there must be a solid color at the bottom – either land or water – for placing text. A horizontal image is okay if it can be cropped into a vertical. Beth goes to the Danita Delimont web site, enters the word “sunset” in the search box, and finds 2,290 sunset images.

Yikes! Even with 96 images per page, Beth has 24 pages of results to look through. Instead, she tries to refine the search with more keywords – orb, water, dramatic light – but each new word takes her further away from the type of image she wants. After slogging through more than 1,000 images, Beth finds just the right shot. Total search time: 30+ minutes.

Let’s try that sunset search again, this time with visual searching.

Beth starts with the 2,290 sunset images produced by the keyword search, and then scrolls down until she finds one image that’s somewhat close to what her art director wants. She clicks the eyeball icon beneath that image, giving the visual search feature its first real clue to what she needs.

Immediately, the top of the first search results page fills up with sunsets that are all very close to what Beth wants. After one trip to the “Find More Like These” box, she’s got exactly the image she visualized, and it’s right at the top of the first page of search results. In fact, she’s found half a dozen images that would be great for the job. Total search time? Less than two minutes. Plus, Beth doesn’t worry about missing a “better” image buried further down in the search results.

Users tell us that if they don’t change their minds about what they want during the sorting process, the best results usually appear after just two or three re-sorts.