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This article is from November 23, 2009, and is no longer current.

Explore Online Images with Google Image Swirl

You’ve no doubt explored Google’s Image Search. And you may have tried its “find similar images” option. But now there’s a new twist on that — or rather, a new swirl.
The Google blog says that Image Swirl, still in the experimental phase, “builds on new computer vision research to cluster similar images into representative groups in a fun, exploratory interface.”
Here are results from an Image Swirl search I did on “Tower of London.” The first screen of results shows images tagged with my search parameters.

I clicked on the photo in the top row, second from the left. That brought up the following screen, with my pick in the center of the circle on the left. The smaller circle on the right contains the original search results.

When I clicked on one of the smaller images in the left-hand circle, Google displayed another results set, yet still maintained links with my previous two results sets.

Are the results better than “find similar images”? I’m not certain. But it sure is fun!
Try Image Swirl for yourself at https://image-swirl.googlelabs.com.
For a related article that explains how to find online images you can use without violating copyright, see “Safely Find and Use Images Via Google.”

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