Speed up your image search and find the images you want by making the most of the search filters we have on offer.
This guide takes you through where to search for an image on Alamy and how each of the search filters can help you narrow things down until you find the perfect images.
Let’s start with the homepage
Start your image search on the Alamy home page. Just enter the keywords for your image search, for example, ‘Landscapes’.
From the homepage, you’ll be able to choose which type of image you’d like to search for from a drop-down list. Choose from ‘All images’ (the default), ‘Photographs’, ‘Vectors’, ‘Illustrations’ or ‘Mobile’ images, or select ‘Footage’ if you want to see video clip results.
Once you’ve entered your search terms and picked the image results you want, just click the blue search button.
Search results page
Once you’re on the search results page you’ll see all the images related to your search term, as well as a row of search filters across the top of the page.
These filters let you perform a more specific image search that’ll help narrow down the search results and make them as relevant as possible to your search. Below, we give you an overview of each of the filters.
Search filter #1 – People
This filter lets you search for images that include any of the following:
- Number of people – choose from images with 0 – 4 people, or a group of people
- Age – set the age range of the people who feature in the image. There are a several options available ranging from ‘baby’ to ‘senior’ and everything in-between
- Ethnicity – narrow your results to feature people from specific ethnic backgrounds
Search filter #2 – Location
If you need to find images that focus on a particular location, this filter can help you out! Search for images taken in any of these three locations: USA, UK and Europe.
The example below is from an image search for ‘landscapes’ with 3 filters applied.
2 ‘people’ filters: ‘1 person’ and ‘Adult’ and 1 location filter: ‘USA’
Search filter #3 – Image
If you’re looking for an image of a particular size, orientation or featuring a certain colour, the ‘Image’ filter is really useful. You can pick from the following:
- Orientation – filter your results to show landscape, portrait, square or panoramic images
- Colour – enter the hex code of a colour or use the colour wheel to bring up images that feature a certain colour. You can also filter by ‘Black & white’ images or select ‘cut outs’
- Minimum file size – if you need a specific file size for a project, you can filter out the images that are too small for your needs by selecting the minimum file size you want to see. You can find more information about image file sizes in our blog ‘How to find out if an image file size is big enough’
Search filter #4 – Viewpoint
Looking for an image taken from a particular angle? No problem. This filter lets you search for images taken from the following viewpoints: profile, front, rear or side.
Search filter #5 – Date taken
This is helpful if you want to find images that were taken within a specific time frame, or even just want to see the most recently added content on Alamy. You can choose from our pre-set date ranges, from 7 days to 2 years, or enter a custom date to find the image you need.
The below example shows search results for the ‘landscape’ search term, with the following filters applied:
Orientation: ‘Landscape’ Colour: ‘Black & white’ Viewpoint: ‘Front’ Date taken: ‘Last 2 years’
Search filter #6 – Advanced Search
Our advanced search filter is a great option if you want to search for images taken by a particular photographer or agency, or if you want to add more details to your image search. You can search by contributor name, or amend your search terms to return results that include or exclude specific words or a phrase.
Some more handy blogs to help your image search:
Speed up your image searches with these top tips