Xcavator Blog – Thoughts, Articles, and Resources by Photo Search Experts at Xcavator.net

Tip: Using the Lightbox

2008-06-09T10:47:00.000-07:00

The Lightbox at xcavator.net allows you to store images you are interested in. Those images will still be there when you come back to the site later, as long as you are using the same web browser. Additionally, the Email It function allows you to send the agency links to anyone you wish for collaboration on selecting images. You can also use Email It to send these links to your own email address!

Tip: Our DEMO link is a valuable resource

2008-05-21T12:19:00.000-07:00

Check out our DEMO - a video introduction of how to use the search tools at xcavator.net. You will hear our CEO Bryan Calkins walking you through a few interesting examples that show how to use Image Search, Color Search, and interactive Image Search. It also gives a few examples of how keywords interact with these tools (as discussed in our last posting). Just click on the DEMO link at the top of the site and click the PLAY button.

Tip: Using keywords with a photo in the Image Search box

2008-05-16T11:12:00.000-07:00

Keywords get you started on a search, but they can also be used to refine your search when you've added a photo to the Image Search box at the top left of the site. Here's how:

1. If you want to find more images that are pretty much EXACTLY like the photo in the Image Search box, clear all keywords and hit GO for a new search. Our search will combine the visual information and the tags from the photo and find very similar photos.

2. If you want to refine the image in a particular direction of subject matter, type a keyword in the text search box with the photo remaining in the Image Search box. For example, you could have a picture of a car in the Image Search box and could be looking at similar photos of other cars. Typing in 'sports car' in the text box will refine the search in that direction. 'Economy car' will refine it in a different direction. But in all cases the photos in the search results will have some visual similarity to the photo in the Image Search box.

3. You can also click on any of the tags associated with the photo in the Image Search box - they are presented below the text search box. This will pop them up to the text search box, and place more emphasis on this particular tag (or tags - you can use more than one).

Try it! It's fun.

Subscribe! We've added an RSS feed to our blog

2008-05-13T07:22:00.000-07:00

If you'd like to be automatically kept up to date on new blog entries at The Xcavator Blog, click on the orange Live Bookmarks link at the right and sign up. It's just a couple of easy steps.

Who's using xcavator.net?

2008-05-05T14:42:00.000-07:00

Thanks for all your emails. We thought everyone would like to know who’s using xcavator.net. We’ve heard praise and love for our service from website and graphic designers, creative directors, banner ad designers, poster designers, editors, publishers, marketers, book and CD cover designers, people inside companies that that just do a lot of communications work, and more. We’ve cut the amount of time they need to find the perfect stock photo, and they love it!

Are we meeting your needs? We want to hear from you.

2008-04-25T17:40:00.000-07:00

We are celebrating the One Month Anniversary of the Xcavator Blog, and we'd like to ask how we are doing in meeting your needs. Is the blog on topic for you? What can we do to our site to improve its features or provide more spot-on content? Please use the Contact Us link in the upper navigation bar of the xcavator.net site or this blog anytime to let us know what's on your mind. We are committing to the Xcavator Community that we will answer each and every piece of mail we get within 24 hours.

A Quick Example How to Use the Powerful Xcavator.net Tool

2008-04-20T21:18:00.000-07:00

On Xcavator.net, you can search by keyword, category or provider.

A typical search:

The typical search process begins with a new keyword search.
Use a keyword or two to start your search, and you will get many results.
Click on items you like and select the match button to begin visual image search. Or, drag and drop an image you like into the image search box in the upper left of the page. Either of these gives more specific options now in your search results.
Choose a new image you like and bring this again to the search box in the upper left. Or, drag the image into the upper left image search box.
Select the image you like.

The internal workings of the xcavator search technology

2008-04-16T13:10:00.000-07:00

If you’ve already played or worked with xcavator.net, you may have become curious about how it works. Here is a brief description of its inner mechanics.

Xcavator.net provides several tools for finding the right image. You may:

1) Narrow search results with images by using keywords;

2) Select images with a certain dominant color;

3) Find images that look similar to a selected reference image, and finally;

4) Interactively choose certain parts in the reference image to make them and their spatial relationship more prominent when searching for similar images - the 'traces' function.

In our solution, all these tools are implemented with just two distinct search engines: one for keywords, dominant color and image similarity and the other for the 'traces' interactive visual search. The former one is based on so-called indexing techniques, so I call it index search, which combines visual and text information into a single data structure and produces results very quickly, regardless of the size of an image collection. The results of our indexed search are superb for this class of algorithms, and we can handle significantly larger image collections than our competitors.

The purpose of the second interactive search engine is to further tune the search results to specific user needs. Interactive search is much more accurate and specific than the index search because the user can select important image parts and skip unimportant ones. We call this 'traces' on the site because the user can pick points of interest or trace through a feature or feature using the mouse. The interactive search is applied to the results of the index search as a refinement tool, and it brings the best images to the top of the search results based on this additional user-defined search criteria.

There is a lot of interesting things to be said about the interactive search. I’ll cover this topic in one of my next posts. Meanwhile, I highly recommend watching our Video Intro to learn how to use our search engines in the most efficient manner.

Transition in Stock Photography Search

2008-04-11T22:49:00.000-07:00

In the last ten years I’ve worked with a large number of stock photography websites. For my clients, I would not particularly enjoy the task of finding the perfect image for their company website home page. I would typically visit Corbis.com or Gettyimages.com in Firefox and execute possible searches. Each search would be opened in a new browser tab for later drill down. One out of twenty searches would find that amazing image I needed. Utilizing advanced search rarely worked faster, usually pulling up zero results based on my request. Sometimes the search for the right image may take an hour or two if for a huge website with specific needs.

It has been a pleasure working with Xcavator.net. If this tool had been around many years ago, I would have certainly saved a lot of time. I also would have found more of the right kind of images I was looking for to choose from.

It does take a couple of minutes to get used to the power behind the Xcavator.net search tool. Once a person acclimates to the strength of this tool, it is truly a pleasure to search for stock photography. I find it amazing how much time the right tool can save.

Keyword search often gets you everything you don’t want

2008-04-07T14:40:00.000-07:00

OK, here is the scenario. You are working in an ad agency and your job is fairly simple. You search the Internet for photographs / images required by the design team at your ad agency, narrow the choices down to three and forward them to your immediate boss. A meeting is about to start with the client who wants a redo of their campaign and you have twenty minutes. The description of the required photo is “an oldish woman in white dress smiling and playing tennis with a green or blue backdrop”. Well, did you say your job was simple?

You rush to your PC, open all the famous stock photo sites and type “old woman playing tennis white dress” in their search boxes and all you get is “0 results found” or “No files found”. But you recall coming across photos like this on these same sites. Time: 15 minutes remaining. OK, you say, let me try “woman playing tennis in a white dress”. 0 results / files found. Time remaining: 12 minutes. Now you are getting furious. You have no choice but to put the simplest of search terms “woman playing tennis” and of course you are flooded with hundreds of search results with young, old, women, couples, in all possible colors of dress, playing or just standing with a tennis racket and also a few with a table tennis paddle. Blue or green backdrop? May God help you. You know you are not going to make it in the remaining 8 minutes.

Is your job simple? No! You have one of the toughest jobs around. This is the predicament of people like you in ad agencies, and the larger creative community – just about anyone searching for a copyrighted image on the net. And this is where http://www.xcavator.net comes to your rescue. Check it out to make your tasks simpler, and of course, you can get the exact search results you need in much less than 20 minutes.

What Stock Buyers are Looking For - The Big Picture

2008-04-03T20:33:00.000-07:00

A picture is worth a thousand words. It really is as simple as that. Photos can convey a world of emotions and several messages, often more powerfully and instantly than, say, a well-written 3 paragraph article.

Great sellers of stock know this. They take a lot of good pictures just like everyone else, of course – but they submit to stock agencies the powerful, compelling images that will most likely convey an idea or thought, because they know these photos will sell. Think of how hard the creative community works to come up with words or catch phrases to convey a message in a powerful way. They want something that will get the client and the market buzzing, with those words on everyone’s lips.

So if you’re a seller of stock – give them the visual equivalent of that fantastic catch phrase – and it will sell! It really is as simple as that.

Submitted by Joanne Evers, Director of Online Marketing, Domain Home

Why I love visual search - Top Ten List

2008-03-27T19:55:00.000-07:00

1. I can start searching the way I think – by design elements as well as words.

2. Sometimes I need to match photo colors to a creative piece, and it has to be pretty exact.

3. I find the right stuff a lot faster than by trying 15 or 20 text searches.

4. The xcavator traces function allows me to specify photo composition or key features.

5. It’s a lot more fun! Like a toy or a game.

6. The color wheel on the Advanced Search page is really precise – really helpful.

7. I also sell photography through agencies – I can quickly check out which one needs what I have using visual search at xcavator.net.

8. The xcavator.net site gives fast results, and I can quickly look at 40 images at a time.

9. Big databases of images aren’t overwhelming anymore.

10. I can find stuff CHEAPER that still works for a project.

Submitted by Jen Hanover, Freelance graphic artist – Web, Print, and Video

What Happened When the Stock Photo Business Moved Online?

2008-03-23T17:09:00.000-07:00

In the old days (the mid-90s) the stock photo business was not on the Internet. People would shop for photography by requesting samples on CDs. In ancient times, a sales rep would show up with a large glossy book that showcased photos in a particular category of interest. Sometimes a buyer wanted to see more than one category, so these sales people never needed to go to the gym. But the Internet changed all that. In the very late 90s, companies began sprouting up that had images online. These companies enabled people to browse using keywords, and make selections without assistance, while sitting in a comfortable desk chair. Shopping carts and broadband were added later, and a person didn’t need to even pick up the phone to buy something and download it.

This revolutionized the stock business, and reverberations are still being felt. Many new market entrants used this new Internet distribution model as a platform to create a lower priced tier called the Microstock agency – where photos could be purchased for just a few dollars. Quite a bit of market share was gained by the Microstock entrants, at the expense of the larger, well-established players. At the same time, these larger players were buying up niche agencies that had extensive collections of Rights Managed and traditional Royalty Free photography. So what’s the end result? The big players got even bigger, and the new players in the new Microstock category continued to gain significant market share.

This is a fantastic new world for the stock photo buyer, as there is more inventory than ever at a wide variety of price points. In 2008, equilibrium may be setting in between the various categories. Experienced stock photo buyers know that they need to spend the extra money on a Rights Managed image for a certain project need, but can use Microstock to get something perfectly great for another project at a bargain price. The market share numbers and average price points may still be moving around a bit, but all three categories remain vital – Rights Managed, traditional Royalty Free, and Microstock.

At xcavator.net, we are catering to busy stock photo buyers in a new way. They can see right away that we’ve got millions of images in multiple categories, and use our visual search tools to quickly find exactly what they need.

Welcome to the xcavator.net Blog!

2008-03-23T14:42:00.000-07:00

Welcome to our brand new xcavator.net blog. We created it to provide exciting tidbits and perspectives about the stock photo market. Our authors will discuss how technology has changed the industry and will continue to have a major impact. We'll be posting news, product update information about xcavator.net, helpful tips on searching for stock, and occasional thoughts beyond these topics. We’ve got experts ready to submit articles – our management team, stock buyers, photographers, technologists, dreamers, and more.

Our goal is to give you the information you need to really enjoy using xcavator.net and to keep you updated on the market. There's a ton of new and exciting news to tell you about, so stay tuned.

We appreciate your interest, and hope you’ll check out our site and this blog often. Both will see a great deal of new content in the months ahead.