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Idée Labs FAQ

About Idée Labs

  1. Who is Idée?
  1. Idée Inc. develops advanced image recognition and visual search software.
  1. What is Idée Labs?
  1. Idée Labs is Idée’s technology playground for visual search and image recognition. Here you will be able to experiment and play with various implementations of Idée’s visual search technologies. Your feedback is an important part of developing these technologies, so be sure to tell us what you think!

About Idée’s Visual Search Technology

  1. What is visual search?
  1. Visual search is a method of searching through a collection of images by visual attributes such as shape, colour, texture, etc. Visual search does not rely on the use of keywords or any other metadata–it relies strictly on the appearance of the image. Unlike traditional search methods, visual search uses a query image rather than a keyword as the search input.
  1. How does visual search work?
  1. Idée’s visual search technology uses sophisticated algorithms to analyze hundreds of image attributes such as colour, shape, texture, luminosity, complexity, objects, and regions.These attributes form a compact digital signature that describes the appearance of each image, and these signatures are calculated by and indexed by our software. When performing a visual search, these signatures are quickly compared by our search engine to return visually similar results.
  1. What does visual similarity mean?
  1. Visual similarity is the degree to which images resemble each other in terms of their visual attributes. Images may have the same ‘look’ when they share characteristics such as colour, shape, texture, and luminosity (for example).
    Note that visual similarity does not necessarily mean similar subject matter. You may use keywords to further refine your visual search results.
  1. Can I license Idée's visual search technology?
  1. Yes, Idée has several products available for commercial licensing. Please get in touch to learn more.

About the Visual Search Lab

  1. What is the Visual Search Lab, and what does it do?
  1. The Visual Search Lab allows you to browse through nearly 3 million stock photos from Alamy using Idée’s Piximilar technologies to find images that look visually similar. Combine keywords with your visual search to make your results even better.
  1. How do I perform a visual search?
  1. Click on an image to retrieve visually similar images. Or enter a keyword first, and then select an image.
  1. Whose images are these?
  1. The 2.8 million stock images used by the Visual Search Lab are Alamy images. Alamy is a privately-owned stock photography firm based in the U.K.
  1. How do I see an image close up?
  1. To see the original image on Alamy, click on it so that it appears in the 'Search Image' area. Then click on the image in the 'Search Image' area.
  1. Can I purchase any of these images?
  1. Yes, images may be purchased through alamy.com. To find your search image on Alamy, click on it so that it appears in the 'Search Image' area of the lab. Then click on the image in the 'Search Image' area to get to that image on the Alamy website.
  1. What is the ‘interesting’ link?
  1. If you click on ‘Load Interesting’ and then select an image, you will see examples of real visual search results, selected by Idée to showcase the capabilities of Idée’s visual search. If you find an interesting search, please contact us for addition to the interesting search collection.
  1. My search results contain images which do not look like the query image. Why?
  1. Our visual search algorithm looks at hundreds of image attributes when doing similarity searching. You may see images in your search results which do not look like the query image overall, but they probably strongly share a few characteristics in particular.

About the Multicolr Search Lab (Flickr Set)

  1. What is the Multicolr Search Lab, and what does it do?
  1. The Multicolr Search Lab allows you to browse through 10 million of Flickr's most ‘interesting’ Creative Commons images using Idée's Piximilar technologies to find ones that share the same colours. Choose up to 10 colours from our palette of 120 different shades.
  1. How do I perform a multicolr search?
  1. Just select one or more colours from the colour palette and your search will happen automatically. Add more colours, or remove them to update your results. When you first land on the Multicolour Search Lab page, it will be blank. Just pick a colour to get started!
  1. Can I use the same colour more than once?
  1. Absolutely; using the same colour more than once increases its prominence in your search results.
  1. Whose images are these?
  1. The 10 million images used by the Multicolr Search Lab are some of Flickr’s most ‘interesting’ Creative Commons images.
  1. How do I see an image close up?
  1. To see the original image on Flickr, just click on it.

About the BYO Image Search Lab

  1. What is the BYO Image Search Lab, and what does it do?
  1. The BYO (‘Bring Your Own’) Image Search Lab allows you to submit an image to find visually similar images in the Alamy stock photo set, using Idée's Piximilar technologies.
  1. How do I perform a visual search on my image?
  1. You may either upload an image from your hard drive, or point to an image on the web. To upload an image, use the 'Image Upload' tab. Click 'Browse' to locate the image on your computer, then 'Upload' to complete the search. To point to an image on the web, use the 'Image URL' tab. Paste the address of the image in the search field and click 'Upload' to complete the search.
  1. Whose images are these?
  1. The 2.8 million stock images used by the Visual Search Lab are Alamy images. Alamy is a privately-owned stock photography firm based in the U.K.
  1. How do I see an image close up?
  1. To see the original image on Alamy, just click on it.
  1. My search results contain images which do not look like the query image. Why?
  1. Our visual search algorithm looks at over one hundred image attributes when doing similarity searching. You may see images in your search results which do not look like the query image overall, but they probably strongly share a few characteristics in particular.
  1. How does the BYO Image Search Lab search for uploaded images on-the-fly?
  1. As soon as you upload your image, Idée’s visual search algorithms instantly analyze it for hundreds of image attributes such as colour, shape, texture, luminosity, complexity, objects, and regions.
    These data form a compact digital signature that is indexed on-the-fly. Your image is searched live, by comparing its indexed signature to the nearly 3 million images in the Alamy stock photo collection. 
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