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Search tips

  1. How to search
  2. Icons key
  3. Choosing a licence
  4. Helpful hints

  1. How to search

    • Images on Alamy are annotated by our individual contributors. This results in variations in the way they are described. For example, the term ”woman”, could also be keyworded as ‘female’, 'girl’ or ’lady’. To make sure you see all relevant images, you will need to use brackets to group similar nouns and adjectives, i.e. (woman OR female OR girl OR lady).
    • You can add "OR", "NOT" or "AND" to your keyword(s) to widen or narrow your search. For example - "London NOT bus" will return images keyworded "London" but not those keyworded "London, bus".
    • To find an exact phrase use single speech marks around the words. For example, 'Victoria Falls' will deliver results only where the words Victoria and Falls are next to each other in the keywording.
    • To help you search within a search, your previous keyword(s) are displayed in the search box field on the results page. If you add words to this field, Alamy will respect the previous search and continue using just your additional keyword(s).
    • There is an advanced search tool link beneath the search bar to enable you to drill down and generate search results for certain criteria eg, licence type, orientation, file size and releases available.

    For more information about our keywording policy for contributors and how our search engine works go to:
    Captions, keywords and descriptions
    AlamySearch Top

  2. Icons key

    Add to lightbox Add to lightbox
    Add to shopping cart Add to shopping cart
    Calculate price Calculate price
    View comp View comp

    Clicking on an icon will perform one of the tasks listed above. Please note that you will be prompted to register or login if you want to use all these features.

    The first page of results will display all images that match your keyword(s). To see results divided by agencies or collections, click on the link near the top left of the page

    To add images to a lightbox you must first create one and then ensure it is selected as your "current lightbox" in the top right corner of the page. See our using lightboxes page for more information.

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  3. Choosing a licence

    Choosing which licence you require prior to searching can speed up the process of finding the right image. More information on licensing.

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  4. Helpful hints about using the search engine

    1. The search engine will display results in less than a quarter of a second however the time it takes for you to see all the images will depend upon the speed of your internet connection. The following table shows the time (in seconds) it will take to view a page of 10 images on Alamy:

      Typical connection speeds
      Corporate Home Office
      T-3/DS-3
      0.02      		 T-1
      0.64      		 DSL
      0.50      		 ADSL
      1.98      		 ISDN
      7.92      		 Modem (56Kbps)
      21.13

      For best results, we recommend that you use the following browsers for PC or Mac when viewing the Alamy web site:

      • Internet Explorer 5.0 and above
      • Netscape 7
      • Safari
      • Mozilla
      • Firefox
      • AOL 8 and above
      • Opera 6 and above
    2. If you change the licence you require, remember to press SEARCH again, so that the relevant images appear.
    3. You can change the number of thumbnails that are displayed by using the "Results per page" setting at the top right hand side of the page.
    4. Words entered into the search box are not case-sensitive. This means you can use either upper case or lower case when searching.
    5. Clicking on a thumbnail will take you to further details about an image.
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