San Francisco — It seems that another race has just begun–Image search is the latest sphere of intense competition between Google, Yahoo, and now Bing. Today, Google Images released some search options to make it easier to filter a search by color, type (face, photo, clip art, line drawing), and file size.
The new features are pretty simple and offers instant access to existing tools that could save you some valuable searching time if you want to narrow down your image search to get the most accurate search results. These tools include search by color and image type.
Color search option will show images that are only in color or only in black and white, or even images that consists of a specific color, such as red, pink or green.
Also, the image search include Type search option that lets you trim down your results whether you are searching for a specific kind of image, such as a photo, clip art, line drawing or face. Moreover, the Size option enables you to define specific sizes aside from the usual image sized that users are searching for.
We have also revamped our size search, Google said on its official blog. In addition to selecting from commonly searched-for sizes, now you can search for an exact image size or any image larger than a certain size. You can find images of practically any size, including 70 megapixels or more.
Essentially, these image search options makes it easier for users to combine search options to get the best search results faster while at the same time providing Google with a way to introduce more search options in the future.
While this is incredibly useful, it is not new, most of these filters were previously available in “Advanced” search, but now they are moved over to the left-hand column. Simply click “Show options…” in the blue bar on the search results page to try out any of these tools. You can choose more than one option to automatically trim down your search.
Another option Google could add is sorting by images with a Creative Commons license. It already does this in its advanced search options, but it is hidden there.
Yahoo and Bing boasts similar filtering options. Nevertheless, Google’s color filter is the most advanced, it lets you to sort by 12 different colors, whereas Bing and Yahoo only allow you sort by color or black-and-white images.