How many times have we drawn in Paint? I won't say “drawn as kids” because I know that in moments of extreme boredom, the old Paint comes to the rescue like a champion, and some users even set themselves the challenge of creating something interesting despite the program's many limitations. Now imagine a search engine in which your reference is not a word or a phrase, but an image created freehand, just as if it had been exported from Paint. Well, that is Splash, a new engine developed by the people at 500px.
Image Search and Its Limitations
The concept of “search by image” has been around for several years on the Web. We load a partial or total sample (regardless of resolution), and the algorithms in the background will do everything possible to find the original image, or at least a very close equivalent. The utility of image search is unquestionable, but what happens when we “don’t” have that sample? The image is merely a blurry vision in our mind, which we must transform into keywords and hope that the magic of search engines manages to hit the mark.
How Splash Works
The alternative is to try to reproduce that image through a drawing… though at that point I am lost. If you think you are good at drawing, and you don't mind using the equivalent of a super-reduced version of Paint, then you need to take a closer look at Splash, a search engine developed by 500px that helps us find images by making very simple drawings of what we want. The drawing interface only gives us access to a color palette, and a slider that adjusts the brush size, that’s all. The rest depends on how dedicated, precise, or lucky we are. Splash results appear below the editor, and in total there are five categories (Landscapes, People, Animals, Travel, and City) to filter the images.
The Potential of Splash
Needless to say, the idea is that once you have located the image in your head, you decide to buy it on 500px. After all, it's still an online photography marketplace… but the truth is that the experiment (the search engine’s address starts with 'labs') has some potential. With more advanced tools and a bit of flexibility, Splash could add an extra twist to image search.
