Search by Image
Visitors can search your site with a photo. On the hosted search page they click the picture button inside the search box ("Search with a photo") and pick a photo; on a phone they can also take one on the spot. The search runs on what the picture holds, and everything you set up keeps working: ranking, filters, facets and Search Tuning.
What Opensolr reads from the photo
- What it shows. A dog, a lily, a garden chair: the words for what is in the picture become the search. See picture meaning.
- The text on it. When the photo is a shelf tag, a box label, a receipt or another picture of text, Opensolr reads it and searches for the largest print and the article or model numbers, matched on the words only. Under the search box the page shows Read from your image with the text it read, and a link to Search by picture meaning instead.
- Barcodes and QR codes. They are listed under the search box (Code on your image). A web address opens in a new tab; any other code runs a search for that code alone.
Good to know
- The search box shows a small thumbnail of the photo instead of words. The search itself is in the page address, so it can be shared and bookmarked. Typing in the box starts a normal search again.
- Accepted: JPEG, PNG, WEBP, GIF, BMP, TIFF, JPEG 2000, HEIC, HEIF and AVIF, up to 20 MB. When a file cannot be used, the page says why.
- The photo is never stored. Only a small preview is kept for an hour, so the page can show which picture the results belong to.
Where it works
- The hosted search page and the search you embed on your site.
- The Drupal module and the WordPress plugin.
- Your own code: turn a photo into search words by API: Pictures and documents by API.
In the Drupal module, the WordPress plugin and by API, each photo uses the AI of your plan: What site search uses from your plan.
What it looks like
Nine real searches on live indexes. Click any of them to open it full size.
More: the search by image video on Demo.