Visual Search

Cloudinary Visual Search is an Assets feature that provides another way to search your Media Library. Find images based on their visual content, as opposed to their name or metadata, to increase image discoverability.

Overview

You can search visually, either by image or by text:

• Visual Search by Image: Allows you to find matches for a certain image in your product environment. For example, you can select an image of a woman at the top of a purple mountain, and images sharing similar traits will be retrieved.

• Visual Search by Image URL: Allows you to find matches for an image hosted on any web platform. For instance, you can input the URL of an image hosted on a website, like https://example.com/image.jpg, featuring a gold bracelet, and images in your product environment sharing similar traits will be retrieved.

• Visual Search by Text: Allows you to type in a word or phrase to find images that visually match the concept you described. For example, if you type the phrase cold night, images that visually represent that concept will be retrieved.

When you run a visual search, the images in the Media Library are scored based on how similar they are to the image you selected or the concept you typed. Matching images are then returned by score, from most to least similar.

Searching for images based on visual similarity rather than by metadata allows you to:

• Find images even if they aren't tagged or named descriptively.
• Find duplicates.
• Find images by visual characteristics that might not be included in a description.
• Gather images that are similar in appearance.
• Increase the discoverability of your images.

Searching by image

You can select any image in your product environment and find other images that are similar to it.

To search by matching image:

• From any page in the Media Library, right-click or click the (3-dots) options menu of an asset and select Find Similar Image.

Searching by image URL

You can paste a URL of an image hosted on any web platform and find images in your product environment that are similar to it.

To search by image URL:

1. Navigate to the Visual Search by clicking the Assets tab from the top of the Media Library, and select Visual Search from the search navigation drop-down menu.

2. Click the camera icon in the Visual Search textbox.

3. In the dialog box that opens, paste the image URL and click Search.

Searching by text

You can type in a search text to find images that are visual similar to the concept you enter.

To search by text:

1. Navigate to the Visual Search by clicking the Assets tab from the top of the Media Library, and select Visual Search from the search navigation drop-down menu.

2. Enter your search word or phrase and see the matching results: