Finding and Using Good Images

You can look for images using an advanced search, just as you would for searching the web.

Try an Advanced Image Search now!

Use an image to search, instead of words!

This is useful for:

• Figuring out what your image is - if there are other images like it you may find websites that describe what you're seeing.
• Figuring out if it's a hoax - we've all become skeptical of retouched images, but sometimes it can be hard to judge.
• Find other images that have similar content: people, locations, style of artwork, style of image.

You can sort your Google Image results in a variety of ways to get the results you are looking for.

One way to start is to search by subject. This video covers how searching by subject works:

But now the subjects are listed across the top of your results, like this:

You can also narrow your search with these options by clicking on Search tools:

Size - Having a good quality image for your project means finding one that is the right size. You can search by small, medium or large, or customize your size if you know exactly the size image you need.

Color - The color search looks for images that are mostly the color you choose, so sometimes you need to be a little creative. If you search for "house" and then search by blue you'll mostly find blue houses in your results, but some are other colors with blue skies behind them. A search for "house" and then search by green has more mixed results.

Type - Type narrows your search not by format of the image, but by: face, images with faces; photo; clip art; and line art. Try searching for "house" then refining your search by green. Then check out the different results you get when you search face, photo, clip art, and line art. What are the different messages, ideas or objects the different type of images convey?

Time - If you are looking for a photo of an event, news or a particular time period you can narrow your search to the right time frame. The time frame is from when the image was uploaded, not when it was taken, so keep in mind that this will work only for images recently uploaded!

Usage rights - The usage rights menu lets you sort images labeled with Creative Commons Licenses. This means the image creator wants you to use their image in a creative way. Each image may have different rules for use, so keep an eye on how you can use it!

More tools - Under the "more tools" label you'll find an option to see the size of the images in your results in a small caption at the bottom of each image.