60) picsearch
http://www.picsearch.com/

picsearch is an image search engine that uses its own technology to crawl the Web and index the images. The Terms of Use says the images are protected by copyright. If you want to use any image found through picsearch, contact the webmaster or the copyright holder to get permission or it may be clearly stated on the Web site where you find the picture. This page also explains how you can prevent your pictures from being included in picsearch.

Family filters are in place at all times, so parents don't have to worry about kids turning off the filter. Help explains how to search and how to improve your results. Preferences allow you to change the interface language (nine choices) and whether or not you want the results to open in the same window or in a new window.

Advanced search options let you select whether you want only images, animation or both; color, black and white or both and the picture size. When doing a search, the results page suggests other relevant keywords to help you narrow down or broaden your results. The thumbnail page displays the image size, source and info. Source takes you to the page where the image is located and Info provides the file size, image size, colors, URL and shows the page where it lives beneath the information. A nice search tool.

59) Ask.com Picture Search
http://pictures.ask.com/

Ask.com Picture Search is a picture search engine that finds images by the keywords you enter. Its advanced search tool lets you get more detailed about the results you want to get. The advanced search features words to include and exclude, location of the words, language, domain or site, geographical area and date modified. You can save the settings or restore the defaults.

Some results are provided by picsearch (next entry). The copyright disclaimer clearly states the images in the search results are protected by copyright and trademark laws. Whether or not you can use the pictures is based on the site where you find them. The site might have a terms of use or other copyright disclaimer. If not, the best bet is to contact the person or company behind the Web site.

Every image has two links: Info and Save. Info provides the file name, URL and the page where the image lives. Save puts the images in a "saved images" page so you can refer to them later. It's not for saving to your hard drive. Once you've saved images, click My Saved Results, which appears at the top of the thumbnails page. On the saved results page, click Edit to change the title, URL and description. Images can be saved in a new folder and you can add tags.

Each saved image has a check box. Click the box to check it and then you can move it to a folder, delete it, print it or email it. Saved images can be sorted by date or title. Very nice picture search engine, but remember the images in the search results may not be free for your use.

58) Yahoo! Image Search
http://images.search.yahoo.com/

Yahoo! Image Search is like Google's as it focuses on finding images only, which also includes clip art. It also has an Advanced Image Search tool so you can get more specific about what you want to receive in the results. Not only can you limit it to a specific domain, but also to top level domains such as .com only, .edu only and so on.

You can also manage your preferences for SafeSearch, languages, display and layout, subscriptions and multimedia. Subscriptions enables and disables searches on sites that have premium content like LexisNexis. If you're a member of a premium content site, review the list and select the ones to which you belong. Their images are most likely copyrighted.

Remember that the images appearing in the results may or may not be copyrighted. Once you find a picture of interest, review the site or contact someone to find out the terms of use. These image searches are worth noting because they can find hard to find images that are free. The site also lists Popular Image Searches so you can see what many people are looking for.

57) Google Image Search
http://images.google.com/

While Google is best known for its search engine, it also has a separate search engine for searching for only images. The advantage of using its image search is that your results contain only images instead of everything. The important thing to understand in using this search is that the images come from all over the Web and there's no guarantee they're free or otherwise. In fact, the chances are they're not free, but it's another way to find hard-to-find images.

Enter the keyword of the image you're trying to find. The fewer words, the better. After all, most images are named with one word. If you get too many results or not specific results, add another word. You can also filter your results to omit images from adult sites by going into preferences and changing the option under SafeSearch Filtering. Here you can change other options including search language and number of results.

To take your results another step further, try the Advance Image Search. Here you can select exact phrases, not related to words and from a specific Web site. You can also limit images to a specific size, a specific format and colors. Once you find a picture, check the site or contact the site's owner to find out about its license.

56) Design Packs
http://www.designpacks.com/

Design Packs provides high quality image collections for use in personal and commercial Web design projects. Each collection has 15 images sharing a common theme. According to the site, new collections are added on a monthly basis. The terms of use explain how you can use the photos. The FAQ offers more help on how you can use the images.

Many of the themes you find here are nature-related such as bark, stone, flowers, and liquids. Images are 800x600. Click on a catalog to view its thumbnails. If you'd like to grab an image, scroll down to find the download section. You can only download an entire collection rather than individual images. All files are zipped. The collection is small, but full of high quality images.