Google Image Search is one of those road-less-taken type of utilities which become incredibly useful if you know how to use it. Pretty much everyone uses it for looking up pictures of the occasional celebrity, companies and places. But you can also use it to look for very large photos for a new wallpaper, search for copyright free images, and images of particular file types.

google-image-search

1. Search For Any Image Filetype

Let’s say you are interested in finding an image of an exotic car but you are only want JPEG files for whatever reason. You can easily do that with Google Image Search. The trick is to know a little something about restricting results to just the desired file type. Here, try this out – search for
lamborghini filetype:jpeg

Try it here. I have tested this trick on GIF, PNG, TIFF, BMP, SVG file types and they all seem to work.

2. One Size Doesn’t Fit All

Looking for a wallpaper sized image for your computer. Add another parameter to the Google search results url for any size that you want. From 1920×1400 px wallpapers to 25×25 px icons and small images you can find a lot of different options.

  • For extra large images like wallpapers add &imgsz=huge.
  • For large images add &imgsz=xxlarge
  • For medium sized images add &imgsz=small|medium|large|xlarge
  • For small images such as icons add &imgsz=icon

3. Differentiate Between People & Objects

Do you get confused when you search for jasmine and get pictures of flowers mixed in with pictures of the animated character (from Aladdin)? Want to search for just peoples’ faces? Add &imgtype=face to the image search results url. This will restrict your results to only pictures of human faces. Try it here. A similar feature in the same category is line diagrams which can be useful to some. For line diagrams add &imgtype=lineart to the image search results url.

4. License Free Images

Many of us like to search for images on Google which are not bound by restrictive copyright licenses. These are mostly images with creative commons license which most cases allow others to be able to use the image for non-commercial purposes. In simpler terms it means you can use it on your blog without paying a hefty licensing fee. To restrict your Google image search for only creative commons add this parameter to your image search results url – &as_rights=(cc_publicdomain|cc_attribute).-(cc_noncommercial|cc_nonderived) .

5. Paintings By Famous Artists

Some days don’t you want to connect with the artist within you? But if you are like me you would probably be too lazy to go to an art museum. Or if you are in New York like me you are too lazy to go to the Met or Moma or The New Museum of Contemporary Art or the several others. On those days just search for the artists name to pull up a collection of their most famous artwork. Try a search for Van Gogh or Picasso or any of your favorite artists.

6. Quickly Turn Off Safe Search

Want to turn off safe search on your image search results without going through the options and setting your preferences? Just add this parameter – &safe=off and enjoy the unrestricted pictures on your search. Use wisely ;)