Featured Client: ImageDirekt

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ImageDirekt licenses Piximilar, Idée's visual search technology

Piximilar powers the visual search functionality on the ImageDirekt stock photography website.

About ImageDirekt

ImageDirektImageDirekt GmbH is one of Germany's largest professional resellers of royalty-free stock photography. Their large-scale web portal – imagedirekt.de – hosts over one million images from several of the world's leading stock photography providers.

The Need

ImageDirekt had a challenge. Many of the clients coming to their site seeking images were English-speaking. However, the majority of ImageDirekt's image keywords were in German – and some didn't have keywords at all. While they made an effort to translate the keywords as accurately as possible, they still found it was difficult for their international clients to find the images they were looking for.

Additionally, ImageDirekt was looking for a way to enhance their image search capabilities and refine the number and type of results being returned. As their image collection continued to increase in size, so did the number of images being returned for a single query. A simple keyword search for "businessman" would return over 10,000 results. How could their clients find the right image?

The Solution

ImageDirekt licensed Piximilar – Idée's visual search solution for the stock photography industry – to enhance their keyword search, add visual search and introduce new search features to their users.

Since keywords are often poor image descriptors, allowing clients to search for images based on visual attributes such as colour, shape, texture and layout reduced the time they spent looking for an image and allowed them to find what they were looking for faster.

While visual search works beautifully in combination with keywords, it can also be used on its own to find images which share visual attributes to a source image. In fact, visitors to the ImageDirekt stock photography website can upload any image to the website and see all the images in the ImageDirekt library which resemble it – with or without keywords! Uploaded images are indexed on the fly and compared in real time to the entire image collection to retrieve similar images.

By implementing visual search on their website, ImageDirekt has not only made their images more accessible internationally – they have improved the functionality of their search by providing better options, and helping their clients find what they want faster.

Idée's visual search was introduced on the ImageDirekt portal as "VIBS" or "Visuelle Bildsuche" (visual picture search).

Finding the Image You Are Looking For Using Visual Search

Perform a visual search quickly in just four easy steps:

Step 1 - Start Your Image Search

Start your image search by using a keyword or phrase.

Enter keyword apple.

Step 2 - Choose a Source Image

Using the keyword search results, select one image as your 'Basisbild' (source photo). Select the 'änliches bild suchen' (look for similar images) icon below the image to find similar images.

Choose picture of 3 apples as source image.

Step 3 - Filter and Scan

Browse through your search results to see visually similar images regardless of keyword. If you would like to include a keyword, use the 'Ergebnis' (result) toolbar to 'filtern' (filter) a word out, or 'durchsuchen' (scan) a word in.

Use apple as the word to scan in

Upload Your Own Image

Browse through your filtered images for find what you are looking for!

Browse apple results.

Upload Your Own Image

Upload any image from your computer and search for visually similar images in ImageDirekt's image library!

If you already have a downloaded or comp image, and you would like to find similar images, use the "upload an image" feature. This feature allows you to find all the images similar to your uploaded image in the entire ImageDirekt collection.

Upload Your Own Image

  • You want to find images similar to an original you already have.
  • You are working with an image possibly downloaded from ImageDirekt, but the metadata has been stripped or the filename has changed. Use this feature to locate the image in ImageDirekt's library and see the original file information.
  • You are tasked with finding similar types of images for a project.

Upload image of leaves.

View visually similar images of leaves.

What is Piximilar?

Piximilar is powerful visual search software. It enables website users to search quickly and intuitively through very large collections for visually similar images.

Piximilar delivers visual search results with unparalleled speed and precision. Users can find the images they are looking for faster and more naturally than they could with keyword searching alone.

Using an image to search for similar images – what better way to search?

Piximilar provides:

  • Accurate and fast image search results by integrating visual search and keyword technology
  • More relevant image search results for website users
  • A new and intuitive search method to users by allowing users to search for images "more like this"
  • Minimal wait time for image retrieval