How visual search helps, and in most cases doesn’t replace, keywords and other text based systems

Visual search and the interactive capabilities provided by the CogniSign technology allow any user to quickly search for photos that are visually similar in some important way, as defined by the user. Natural search that is beyond words becomes possible, and a user can even upload a photo or sketch from her computer to initiate a search.

Once a user has completed a visual search and has found these similar photos, productivity benefits begin to emerge because of synergy with text base systems. Imagine a visual search of a database for a particular butterfly with a distinctive wing span design. Once a user has found these similar images, he can group tag all of them with the name of the butterfly. Or, imagine searching through a collection of photos taken at a graduation party of a girl named Natalie. Photos can be quickly found of her, and they can all be group tagged with ‘Natalie’ and ‘graduation2006’ and other key tags. This group tagging based on visual search can help alleviate the current chronic shortage of relevant and meaningful tags on a site like Yahoo!’s Flickr. Users will be able to group tag dozens (or hundreds in some use cases) of photos at a time.