SEARCH TIPS
The Search Box
Enter words in the search box to describe the stock photos you are looking for.
- Keep it as simple as possible. A search for man and hat or simply man hat will give much better results than a man wearing a hat because photographers will include keywords with their images like man and hat but are unlikely to include wearing.
- If you already have the id number of an image you wish to view or buy, you can enter the id in the search box and click the 'search' button eg. pd121116
- The search is not case sensitive so you can use UPPER or lower case words.
- The search supports Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT):
- A search for elephant and seal will only find photos with both the word elephant and the word seal in the title or keywords. You would use this to find images of elephant seals and exclude images of elephants.
- A search for football or soccer will find images with either football or soccer or both.
- A search for elephant not seal will find photos with elephant as long as there was NOT the word seal as well. You would use this to find images of elephants and exclude images of elephant seals.
- You can use as many Boolean operators as you like eg. elephant not seal not castle not statue not painting
- If you use more than one word the search has to find ALL the words to get a match. eg. elephant seal will find images with both elephant and seal but not just one. This is the same as the Boolean elephant and seal.
- If you use speech marks around a phrase the search must match that exact phrase. eg. "london bridge" will find images of London Bridge but not other bridges in London (a search for london bridge without speech marks will find any images with the words London and bridge in the title or keywords, ie it will find Tower Bridge, London).
- The search facility is a Smart Search and tries to some extent to match how people think:
- The following words are ignored: a, al, an, at, de, el, le, la, image, in, of, on, photo, picture, the, to, with. This is to create meaningful results for searches such as photos of a man with a hat on.
- To avoid getting inaccurate results because of ignored words, try using speech marks. ie "Tower of London" is better than Tower of London.
- If someone searches for cats they often mean 'pictures of cats' rather than 'pictures of more than one cat'. Thus, a search for cats will also find a single cat. This also works for common irregular plurals. ie foxes will find a fox and butterflies will find a butterfly.
For other irregular plurals use the OR operator eg. goose or geese
- For words more than 5 letters long, the search will match words within longer words. ie threat will also match threaten, threatened, threatening.
To avoid this and get an exact match, put speech marks and spaces around the word eg. " threat ".
- Words of 5 letters or less will not match words within longer words because of the number of mismatches (eg. lion in dandelion). However you can force a short word to match longer words by using a * symbol. The * symbol is a 'wildcard' and means 'allow any letters in place of the *'. eg. lion* will match lioness, *lion will match dandelion and *lion* will match lioness, dandelion and also millionaire.
- You can also use the * symbol to match irregular plurals eg. child* will match children.
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Release Required
If you intend to use an image for advertising purposes you will generally need a model or property release. A model release refers to recognisable people within an image. A property release refers to recognisable 'property' (buildings, paintings, logos etc). Images used for book covers will generally need to be covered by relevant releases as well. The stock photos displayed when you tick 'Release Required' wil have either a model release or a property release, but not necessarily both. Click on a thumbnail image to view an enlarged version and the specific release details will be displayed below the image. |
Orientation
By default the search will display images of all orientations (horizontal, vertical, square and panoramic). If you wish to only search for images of a particular orientation or orientations (eg. vertical and horizontal images for use on a book or magazine cover) then remove the ticks from the orientation boxes you don't require. |
Print Size
This is an estimate of the size limit at which an image can be printed. The estimates are for printing at 300dpi (dots per inch). The high res or film version of all the images displayed on the website should be at least large enough to be printed as a full page magazine cover at 300 dpi. For 35mm film, we have assessed that it can be scanned at 4000dpi, which would allow printing at up to about 19 inches (46cm) length at 300dpi.
- If you need a stock photo for a magazine cover or smaller, leave the Print Size at the default of 10in/25cm (up to 10inches / 25cm longest side) as all images should be large enough.
- If you need a stock photo for a double page spread in a magazine (up to 16 inches / 40 cm longest side) change the Print Size to 17in/42cm (up to 17inches / 42cm longest side) and all images should be large enough.
- 32in/80cm represents medium format film (6 by 4.5cm, 6 by 6cm, 6 by 7cm film)
- 32in+ (80cm+) represents large format film (5 by 4 inch film for instance)
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Images per Page
By default the search will display 20 images on a page and links will be provided at the bottom of the results page for you to view more images. By altering the Images per Page dropdown you can increase or decrease the number of images you wish displayed on a page. |
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