Visual Search Services FAQ

Browse FAQs to learn everything about the Ximilar visual search technology, its functionalities and collection synchronization.
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Ready-to-use Image Recognition
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Visual & similarity search technology is able to analyze the overall visual aesthetic of an image or detected object in an image, independent of the origin of images or any kind of metadata (such as keywords). It understands the concept of similarity according to your subjective perception. That is why it can provide the most relevant results to image queries, whether you look for the exact match or similar items.

Typical Applications

The term visual search usually refers to searching images or products based on an image query, including photos from social media and user-generated content, such as real-life photos from smartphones. We combined this technology with object detection to create a service called Search by Photo, which is used by e-shops for product searching based on end users’ image queries.

The technology is also often used for similarity search, typically for product recommendations in e-commerce. It analyzes features of an image or detected object, such as colour, edges, or patterns, to recommend the most similar alternatives.

Another typical use is image & product matching. Since the visual & similarity search technology can identify duplicates, nearly-identical items or the same items in images with different quality, it can help with creating product galleries, curating them and eliminating unnecessary duplicates.

Read more about commercial applications on our page Visual Product Search.

Other Applications

Even though applications in e-commerce are the most common, visual search provides endless possibilities even in the industrial sector, scientific research or security systems. Read our articles or contact us for details.

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Visual search tools and software enable us to search for similar and identical photos, images, or objects, using various visual cues. Visual search algorithms analyze visual content and extract information from each image, enabling us to locate similar items or products, based on a provided image.

This technology finds application in diverse visual search use cases, including e-commerce, where users can search for products by taking a picture. Visual similarity search applications and platforms are used everywhere where visual data are essential.

Last but not least, visual search benefits include its wide use in content management systems to search for images within a database using visual references.

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Visual search technology is powered by AI techniques such as computer vision and deep learning. The main benefits of visual search are:

  1. Independence of keywords and metadata – Visual search engine does not rely on additional data such as keywords or metadata to process, find or recommend an image. The technology actually observes features such as colours and their transitions, edges, patterns, or details, and extracts a specifically structured piece of information from each image.
  2. Time efficiency – A typical visual search engine can search in large collections in a matter of seconds or less.
  3. Enhanced user experience – Visual search improves the search results at e-commerce sites significantly, making it easier to find exactly what the buyers and users are looking for.
  4. Traffic & revenue – Similarity search engages and inspires customers with alternative items and content to the things they are currently viewing or to items out of stock.
  5. Data privacy – Once the image is processed by the visual search, it is immediately discarded. The technology then works with the extracted data. Your images are not stored anywhere.
  6. Fraud and content theft prevention – Visual search understands the concept of similarity the way you need it to. Thus, it helps identify your graphical content even with different resolution or with filters.
  7. The most efficient way of visual content management – Visual search provides a consistent and reliable way to automate your whole image collection processing, including the identification and elimination of duplicates or merging of the images of the same products into shared galleries.
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The ready-to-use solutions based on visual search technology are available for testing in both public demo and Ximilar App.

It is also a standard procedure to prepare custom demos. Read our page How we work and contact us. We will prepare a custom demo tailored to your collection.

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Ximilar provides a full range of solutions powered by visual search algorithms, such as reverse image search (including searching internal databases), search by photo (combined with object detection), similar product and graphical content recommendations, and collection management with image matching.

Some of our most widely used solutions powered by visual search are available for testing in the public free demo. We tailored dedicated visual search solutions for areas such as fashion, stock photos or collectible items.

If you would like to integrate the visual search into your website, app or systems, let us know anytime via contact form, live chat, direct call or an e-mail. We are here to make computer vision easily accessible to everyone.

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The purpose of visual search is to improve the searchability and discoverability of visual content, which is especially helpful in large collections with up to billions of images. It is appliable to real-life photos as well as illustrations, product photos, designs, and patterns or logos.

The process is as follows:

  1. The first step is to contact us, and we will discuss your use case. To bring precise results, the visual search is always tuned for a specific type of images. That is why we can provide visual search for domains such as fashion, real estate, or stock photos right away. More specific types of images, on the other hand, require training a custom similarity model.
  2. We can prepare a custom demo before deploying the system.
  3. Your collection will be synchronized to Ximilar cloud. This does not mean that your images will be stored. Each image needs to be processed by the visual search only once to extract information, and then it is immediately discarded. The synchronization enables you to add new images and change your collection 24/7.
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Visual search is always custom designed to search your images based on their visual similarity. To use the visual search, your image database needs to be synchronized to your collection in the Ximilar cloud.

During synchronization, each image is analyzed, a representation of this image is created, and then the image file is discarded. That is why your collection does not contain any actual images. It may, however, contain links (URLs) to the original images, if you provided them.

If your image database is dynamic (images are inserted and deleted over time), your collection at Ximilar cloud must be synchronized. This synchronization can be done via API, or Ximilar can set up a regular synchronization.

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The visual search by Ximilar was already successfully applied to video footage, and we are looking forward to developing the technology for other types of data, such as 3D models or VR scenes! Contact us to discuss your use case.

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Product Similarity (visual product search) was built for e-commerce. It is useful for finding similar pictures of products with image queries, similar product recommendations, and product matching.

Search by Photo (product search by image) combines product similarity with object detection to provide similar pictures specifically to the detected object, such as a piece of fashion apparel. It can be used in reverse search engine for fashion, home decor, and other e-commerce product search engines.

Photo Similarity (similar photo search) works with the same technology, but it was trained for generic images, such as stock photos or real-life images.

Fashion Search is a specialized service for fashion e-commerce, which combines visual & similarity search with object detection (Search by Photo) and Fashion Tagging.

Custom Visual Search refers to solutions using visual & similarity search we build from scratch for our customers.

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We use our platform to build complex visual & similarity search solutions for the fields of e-commerce, fashion or stock photos. Check out our services Visual Product Search, Fashion Search, Image & Product Matching.

When approached by a new customer, we discuss their use case and data and decide whether we will customize one of the existing solutions or build a completely new system. Either way, we will plan a project and deliver a visual search solution tailored to your data.

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The more training images you have, the better. We recommend having at least 1000 groups or pairs of images in the beginning. We can iteratively help you build a dataset for training a visual similarity model that can be used in visual search technology.

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Yes, visual search of products based on user-generated content is a typical application of our technology. Read about our service Visual Product Search to learn more. Contact us to discuss your use case.

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Ximilar built complex solutions for a number of big e-shops and price comparators. For example, we develop visual & similarity search apps, such as Skintory. Read about visual search solutions to learn more.

We also provide a specialized service for fashion websites called Fashion Search. It combines several visual AI solutions, such as object detection, automatic tagging or object detection, to automate all image processing and level up the customer experience in fashion e-commerce.

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If the image is already in the collection, then the search is very fast (under 100 ms). If you are searching with an external image, then this can take up to 0.5 seconds. We are able to scale the system to be even faster if needed. Contact us for details.

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Yes, the system can be easily deployed on your servers if needed. The server should have a standard Intel or AMD CPU with at least 96 GB of RAM. It would be great if the server also contained an NVIDIA GPU card. We are using Docker technologies that help us with the deployment.

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Our largest collection contains more than 100 million images, and the speed for searching visually similar items is under a few hundred milliseconds.

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Yes, we are able to do automatic synchronization from your export, and you can choose both the way and frequency (daily, weekly, or monthly) of synchronization. We usually charge a small fee for implementation of the synchronization script (depending on complexity and format of the export).

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Your export should be accessible via URLs in standard format as JSON, XML or CSV.

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You can keep your collection updated via API. We provide standard endpoints for inserting, updating or deleting the items from the collection.

You can also provide your collection as an export file, and we will keep it updated for you. We usually charge a small fee for implementation of the synchronization script (depending on complexity and format of the export). You can choose the way and frequency of collection synchronization.

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Text-to-Image Search

The search itself happens in a matter of milliseconds. This system can handle hundreds of requests per second if needed.

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The text-to-image search eliminates the need for metadata like tags (keywords). It is powered by AI able to understand both language and complex visual characteristics of images.

Once you synchronize your image collection to our cloud, our AI retrieves distinct structured information (embeddings) from your images. We do not store your images, only the extracted data. When a user enters a text query, our AI thoroughly analyzes it and presents the user with the most relevant content from your collection.

 

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