When comes the time to search for a picture to illustrate a presentation or an article most of us jump on Google.com and click on the tab image and just type in the search.

In the past it was maybe a nice way to search images but today there are far better alternatives.

So stop going on Google to search  images, have a look at the alternatives I have listed here:

Bing images

The advantage of Bing is that the result is presented on one unique page and it’s refreshed while you are scrolling down (no paging like in Google)

It’s faster to search among a lot of pictures and the size of the thumbnails can also be selected.

Note that most of the pictures shown in the results may not be royalty free.

Everystockphoto

Everystockphoto is a search engine for free Photos. They index many sources including Flickr, wikipedia, stock.xchng …

Stock.Xchng

Also a "free" photo search engine despite the fact that it links some of the results to istockphoto ( where you need credits to buy photos).

Flickr

My preferred search engine when it comes to search for images. the tagging search is perfect.

If you build a network in Flickr with photographers, chance are big that they will give you the right to use their photos. Thanks again to Picholine for her “waiting for” picture I used in one of my presentations.

Remember: Who never asks will never know the answer.

Deviant Art

I am not an artist like Antoine Wiertz and thanks to Deviant Art  I was able to see some art works which will help me illustrate my next book.

Have a look at this website in order to find hand made drawings by nice artists.

1x.com

Are you Searching images for inspiration or do you want to explore beautiful photography. This website is one of the best for that.

Picassa

Like Flickr, Picassa Web albums offer a series of public photographs. most of them have certain CC (common creative) rights.

Cooliris

Last but not least, Cooliris is my preferred tool when it comes to image searching. this tool enables to quickly search and browse images from different sources like Flickr, Picassa, Bing, Google, Deviant Art…  A must have add-on in your browser !

Finally, whatever your image search engine can be, do not forget to respect the copyright and the common creative rights of those images (respect the photograph and his right to share or not)

I would be interested in seeing where you are searching images by default ? Please let me know.

Thanks