More Functionality Added to Google Image Search: Color Filter

Article by George Norman (Cybersecurity Editor)

on 09 Apr 2009

Search engine giant Google has added yet another useful feature to its images-dedicated section, Google Image Search. The feature allows you to select the color related to the images you wish to appear in the search results. The fact of the matter is that this function was available before, but you needed to add a piece of code to the URL in order for the results to be filtered according to color. Now all you have to do is click the color of your choice and the results will be filtered according to that choice.

Software Engineer Donal Tanguay comments: “'I’m happy to announce that you too can use our color filter in your own image searches. Just search for something the way you normally would. On the results page, click on the "All colors" drop down in the blue bar and choose a color. You can also combine the color filter with any other image filter to further refine your search. For example, if you're looking for an image of an orange butterfly, try restricting to photos or clip art. Color is one of the basic visual elements of an image. Whether you're browsing through photos of sea creatures and flowers or searching for the perfect orange butterfly, we hope you like our new color filter.”

According to Google, the feature will be rolled out gradually, so if you do not see it in your Image Search page just yet, you have two options at your disposal:
- Wait until the feature’s functionality is made available to you.
- Manually filter images by color. You have to add the “imgcolor=green” to the URL in order to filter the results according to the color green, or “imgcolor=blue,red” to filter them according to blue and red.

The latest functionality that Google has added to the Image Search engine is autosuggest support – details here.

Here is a little example. We’ve done a search for flower: first with no color filter, then with the red filter turned on and then with the yellow filter turned on. Images below.










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