Friday, July 13, 2012

Lesson 1.2: Filtering by color


Access Lesson 1.2 slides here

NOTE: When you see square brackets ([   ]), they denote a search box. That is, if you see [golfcross rules], then you type only the words golfcross rules into the search box on Google—you do not type the square brackets into Google. It would look like this:


Searching on Google often starts with entering a query.

A query is the set of words you type into the search box to tell Google what you want to find.

Once you enter a query and get results, you can consider whether you want to focus the results in some way.

One really fun way to focus is to search in Google Images and filter results by color.

For example, you can do a search in Google Images for [fossils]. Once you have your results, you can look on the left-hand side of the screen and locate these rows of colored boxes:


Using these boxes, you can filter to find images of a specific color. So, if you want images that are primarily grey in color, you can click on the grey color box:


Not only does this technique select images that are grey in color, in the picture above you can see that the color actually implies context: these fossils are all in grey stone.

By clicking on different color boxes, you can see fossils embedded in different kinds of rock:



Color filtering is so compelling because you can find images based on information that might not be included in the text of the page. The web pages containing these images may not say in what kind of rock the fossils are embedded, but you might have the expertise tell by its color. In this way you can use color to search for information that is only available to the eye.

The colors in an image often imply information you can not easily search for with words.

Another example is an image search for [tesla], where the general results represent a number of different ideas:



Click on the red box to filter for cars:


Clicking on purple selects for images of electricity arcing from a transformer called a Tesla Coil:


And clicking on the black and white option—above the color boxes in the left-hand panel—helps select images of Nikola Tesla, the inventor of the Tesla Coil:


You can focus on even more precise results when you find an image you like. Mousing over a particular image makes a larger version pop up, which allows you to access the Similar link:


… and click on it to find more like images:


You can take color filtering for context one step further.
If you modify your query to [tesla coil]:


… filtering by white primarily finds diagrams:


With diagrams you can also mouse over an image to use the Similar link. You could use this filter, for example, if you specifically wanted to get more schematic diagrams:


Please try the activity on color filtering.

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