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Visual Search (Beta)

Last updated: Sep-26-2023

Cloudinary Visual Search is a DAM feature that provides another way to search your Media Library. Find images based on their visual content, as opposed to their name or metadata, to increase image discoverability.

Important
The Visual Search currently in Beta, which means there may be minor changes in functionality or appearance before its general access release. We value your feedback, so please feel free to share any thoughts with us.

For Assets users
The Visual Search feature is a premium feature for our Assets product, and its availability depends on your account setup. If Visual Search is not yet enabled for your account and you'd like to enable it, please contact your Customer Support Manager.

Visual search

On this page:

Overview

You can search visually, either by image or by text:

  • Visual search by image: Allows you to find matches for a certain image in your Media Library. For example, you can select an image of a woman at the top of a purple mountain, and images with similar characteristics will be returned.

  • Visual search by text: Allows you to type in a word or phrase to find images that visually match the concept you described. For example, if you type the phrase cold night, images that visually represent that concept will be displayed.

Important
The visual search returns all images, including those with special access control restrictions.

When you run a visual search, the images in the Media Library are scored based on how similar they are to the image you selected or the concept you typed. Matching images are then returned by score, from most to least similar.

Searching for images based on visual similarity rather than by metadata allows you to:

  • Find images even if they aren't tagged or named descriptively.
  • Find duplicates.
  • Find images by visual characteristics that might not be included in a description.
  • Gather images that are similar in appearance.
  • Increase the discoverability of your images.

Notes
  • If you want to add the Visual Search feature to your Cloudinary account, contact support. They'll enable the feature for your account and index all your existing images.
  • To index new images uploaded to your account after the initial setup, create an upload preset that indexes, and apply it every time you upload an image.

Searching by image

You can select any image in the Media Library and find other images that are similar to it.

To search by matching image:

  • From the Media Library, right-click or click the (3-dots) options menu of an asset and select Find Similar Image.

Select image to match

Searching by text

You can type in a search text to find images that are visual similar to the concept you enter.

To search by text:

  1. Click the Assets tab from the Media Library Tabs. Then from the dropdown menu on the top-left, select Visual Search. Search by text from the Advanced Search

  2. Enter your search word or phrase and see the matching results:

    Visual search by text

Indexing images using an upload preset

There is no way to configure an upload preset that indexes images using the UI. Coordinate with a developer on your team to configure an upload preset programmatically.

Once an upload preset that indexes new assets is configured, your Media Library administrator can set that upload preset as your Media Library upload preset defaults so that it will be applied to all the assets you upload.

Creating an upload preset for indexing

You can use the upload_preset method of the Admin API to create upload presets, either via a REST API call, or by using any of our backend SDKs. If you don't have a server-side application, you can create upload presets programmatically using the Cloudinary CLI.

To index an image via an upload preset, add the similarity_search="clip" parameter when you create your upload preset. For example, the following code creates a new unsigned upload preset called visual_search, that indexes uploaded images:

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