Search by color

A couple of users have suggested that search by color would be useful.

PhotoStructure already computes and indexes the top seven dominant colors per asset file, so the only sticky bit here is the UI.

  1. I was going to add color swatches to the asset info panel that linked to a search for assets with that color.

  2. I can support rgb:AABBCC search terms that use hex RGB values (where FFFFFF is white, FF0000 is bright red, and 8F00FF is a violet).

  3. I have a dictionary of some 300 color names (in English): so color:lime is doable as well.

  4. Something else cool you think up (click reply and share your great idea!).

See also:

As a real world example, I do searches of color for things like:

  • Blue house - looking for photos of houses with blue in them
  • Green grass - looking for photos of big grassy green fields, as opposed to brown ones from later summer

I think with 300 color names, you would want to group them, as many users may have different ideas as to what the different names of green or blue are to achieve the same result.

I’ve never searched for rgb/hex in a photo - but I may just not be the right audience for that feature. Listing the dominant color swatches in the info panel would be interesting though and a nicety, as long as it didn’t contribute to clutter with other features. I could envision selecting a photo, then clicking on one of the swatches to find other photos with that as the dominant color, as opposed to manually trying to figure out the color code/hex/rgb. Random idea for