Introducing a Smarter Search for Your Image Collection

We’ve proudly integrated a smarter search feature within our image management system. Given multiple tags to search for DBGallery now prioritizes results based on how many keywords are in the images returned.  Search for ‘Nevada desert cacti’ and results show images with all three keywords show first, those with just two next, followed by all those that have any of those tags.

A specific example: there are 10 photos tagged as ‘architecture’ and 3 of those are also tagged with ‘modern’ and 7 are ‘gothic’.  A search for ‘architecture modern’ will display all 10 results, with the first 3 being those with both ‘architecture’ and ‘modern’.  Following that are those with ‘architecture’ but not ‘modern’, in this case those that have ‘architecture’ and ‘gothic’ tags.

Note that this is true only when sort by Relevance is chosen.  Other sorts such as by “Date Taken” will return results in that order so cannot be sorted by the more intelligent relevance order based on search terms.

As in previous releases, search looks at all of the extensive data available.  Beyond basics such as keywords, title, and description, also searched are path and file names, all IPTC data such as location, city, creator, category, copyright, etc. as well as EXIF data such as camera and date taken.

Try it out

The above examples can seem complex and not so easy to get your head around. If you have your own DBGallery collection already, try multi-word Relevance search examples there. If not, log into cloud.dbgallery.com (username/pw is DAdmin/dbg), check that Relevanceout is select in the sort dropdown, and search for “Architecture Modern”. The older Greek-style bridge will show last, with modern architecture images showing first. Or search for “Architecture China” and the first three will have been taken in China.

Phrase Search by Default

Prior to the release of 10.1 on March 31, 2020, non-Relevance searches with multiple words such as “Highway Drive” would presume a search for “Highway OR Drive” returning any images which had either of those. These multi-word searches returned too many results and not placed in any smart order so results almost always seemed to have little to do with what was been looked for.  Now, for all searches except those by Relevance, we default to a phrase search.  Hence “Highway Drive” will search for that phrase exactly as it is. Note: If you want to do a search the old way, for “Highway OR Drive”, put single quotes around the search terms, keying ‘Highway Drive’.

Advanced:

Slightly more advanced: looking to see only those 3 with both ‘architecture’ and ‘modern’ tags?  Search for ‘+architecture +modern’.  The plus signs indicates “must have”.    Looking for ‘architecture’ images but not ‘modern’?  Search for ‘+architecture -modern’.  The minus sign indicates “must not have”.

Performance TIP:

Choosing the Relevance search/sort is always faster than other sorts.