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

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

A typical search:

1. The typical search process begins with a new keyword search.
   
2. Use a keyword or two to start your search, and you will get many results.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Select the image you like.
   

Transition in Stock Photography Search

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

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.

Why I love visual search - Top Ten List

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?

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.