Color and Image Searching — A Second Look

Searching by and about images and colors deserves a second look. Do you need a particular picture or color for a design element? Do you want to learn what names manufacturers and marketers give a color, or a color’s hexidecimal code? Would you like to create your own seamless patterns or coordinated palettes, or perhaps learn more about an image’s origin and reuse. Fortunately, there are free tools and sites that let you do all of that!

A color wheel to get everyone in the mood

Let’s start with the major search engines. Google and Bing, offer image searching, but with synonyms and tools, you can turn them into fairy precise color search engines. Let imagination ignite your synonyms, and don’t be afraid to try several of them, such as cerise, cherry,

Google color tools in action on a colorful background

and poppy, and pair your synonyms with the sort of image you want, such as background, pattern, digital paper, or fabric. Remember, however, that many images are copyrighted!


In addition, Google Image searching has its own color tools (see above). You can reach these tools through Google Advanced Image Search, or you can have them pop up after you see search results by clicking tools. A choice of twelve colors is one of your options. Select a color, and see results that are at least close to the color you deisre.

Here is Google image searching Once you find a favorite image in either Google or Bing, you can switch to image search by selecting it. Both search engines provide at least six related images or products (images only in Google) to the right of your selection. Again, these images are copyrighted.

Tineye Multicolor Search in action To find images by color and word, that are licensed through Creative Commons, and safer to use in projects and presentations, try Tineye Labs MultiColor Search retrieves results based on a color you choose from a chart plus one or more image tags.

By contrast, Tineye’s Color Extractor gives colors, their percentages, names, and even hexidecimal values, which are useful in web design. Just copy an image URL, upload or drag and image, and select .


Sharpies are a link to Tineye's Color Extractor in Action

Look at all those synonyms for midnight colored paint in Easy RGB For multiple color names, colors that share a name, or a color’s commercial names, EasyRGB finds what you need.

With Color Compare, input a descriptive word for your color. This search engine is most amusing when you input names that do not seem related to colors at all: for example Chinese or Turkish or names with origins in other languages.

When you find a color you like, click it to compare to commercially available shades. Though EasyRGB gives a fair amount of technical data, the variety of color names can amuse anyone. Click on the Compare Button to see for yourself.

Compare button lets you see a lot more

To learn, a web color’s commerical name, EasyRGB’s Color Matcher works magic. Just remember to set it to HTML and have your color’s hexidecimal code ready. For more interesting names, and less precise matches, choose a paint company name rather than All Collections in the collections scroll box.

Color matcher box at EasyRGB set for html colors

EasyRGB also offers a palette tool. The Create tool, finds complementary and not quite opposite colors. This can be a good starting point, for contrasting color scheme.

EasyRGB's not so complementary palette

But for palette design at its best there’s Colour Lovers and Color Combos If you register on either site, you can create and save color palettes, and Color Lovers also lets you design and save your own shapes and seamless patterns with a somewhat clunky, online editor (figure on right). The figure below is a color palette from Color Combos .

Color Combos palette taken from an image

Colors and palettes on Color Lovers

And to track down an image’s original author, date or creation, and instances of reuse, there is TinEye’s image match . To use Tineye, right click on the image in question, and select image location. Paste this into Tineye’s search box and go. For right click protected pages, take a screen shot, crop to teh image, save the image, and then use the option on the search box to upload it. The Media Lab in most CatLabs can help you capture the image. TinEye shows similar images, older, and newer versions of the image, and also gives the URLs for all its current homes. TineEye works wonders for images collected on Pinterest or that adorn web pages, but have no author credit.

TinEye's Image Search Box

So when you’re ready to learn an image’s history, find a particular color of design element, learn a color’s many names, or even create your own seamless patterns, and palettes, there are internet tools and sites for you. Have fun.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *