In July 2010, Google has done up their image search facility.

This tutorial will tell you about the new Google Images setup and help you familiarise with it to help you in whichever way you use it for.

1. Let’s go to ‘www.google.co.uk’ or ‘www.google.co.uk/imghp’ (New Google Images link)

2. Click on ‘Images’ at the top of the page. ‘Images’ is between ‘Web’ & ‘Videos’.

3. Type in your search within the text box field. Click on the ‘Search Images’ Button to get results. This is the new interface for Google Images.

This was how the last Google Images results page looked before. You can see there isn’t much difference apart from the images section.

Instead of showing image information below images in the results overview, you’ll now get just the image thumbnail.

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It can explained/divided into 3 main sections.

SEARCH BAR: The Search Bar remains at the top of the page but now is always visible so you can scroll through your image results and rather than scrolling to the top like in the

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previous version of Google Images, you can simply click on the text box and enter your new text.

SEARCH OPTIONS: The Search Options was a new addition last year to the interface and works the same way where you customise your search further with specific requirements. At the bottom of the Search Options, there is a new feature, the ‘Show sizes’ text. Clicking on this will show the image sizes within a tinted grey box at the bottom right corner of each image.

SEARCH RESULTS: This section has been revamped. As mentioned on first page, the results show image thumbnails and no information like previous versions. Rather than going through numerous pages looking for your image like before, all you simply need to do is scroll up and down to browse through your images. This is known as an instant scrolling feature. The thumbnails are also larger than before.

A new feature is the ‘hovering over an image’. Placing your mouse cursor on an image of your interest will pop up from the results page and give you more information about that image like file name, originating site, and contextual keywords (you can also click on ‘Similar’ for some images to find similar imagery)

When scrolling down the results page, new images will automatically load rather than the old method of switching pages manually. Google have added Page Number headings to help you with direction and navigation.

Google have redesigned their Images Search Engine to compete with other rising search engine (especially Bing by Microsoft).

Google have also a new layout when selecting/clicking on an image of your choice. This is much better and quicker way of getting your images from the previous method.

This previous method was clicking on an image and then being referred to a two-frame page. The top frame would show you the same thumbnail clicked on the results page with information about the image. The bottom frame would refer to the webpage in where the image is from. You’d then

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click on the image in the top frame to see the big or full-size version of the image.

Google have kept the two-frame setup but spiced it up. When clicking on an image, it takes you to a two-frame page setup but the original top informative frame has moved to the right of your screen and places a larger thumbnail or full size version of your image on your screen and overlays on top of the webpage origin which has been slightly darkened.

An X button has been placed in the upper right of the larger or full size image which closes both the image, as well as Google’s side pane and goes to the webpage origin of the image.

In case you don’t like the new Google Images version – when you scroll way down to the end of the page, there is a link named “Switch to basic version”, which brings back the old design.

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I hope this tutorial makes you more comfortable and confident in using the new Google Images.

This new format has been getting a lot of criticism but hopefully you see can the plus and positive side of the changes made but if you hate it, remember you can go back to the old (basic) version.

The new layout is far easier on the eye with a tiled layout that makes it easier to view a large number of images.

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