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Resolved Question

Shortcut to Search Google Using Exact Dimensions?

Jan 2, 2014 3:20AM PST

I'm convinced that this must be possible here in 2014--somehow, someway--without needing a degree in programming:

I've been curating and tracking down cover art images with the specific dimensions of 300x300 to add to my MP3s has been arduous.

Surely there must be a shortcut to do this without having to either append gobbledey-**** to my search result URL ("&tbs=islt:2mp,isz:ex,iszw:300,iszh:300") or going through all the steps of filtering results (Google> Images> Search Tools> Size> Exactly> 300> 300....) via a Permalink using google keyword operators, or Chrome Custom Search terms, or... SOMETHING!

I've spent the better half of the day looking into this and found very little of any use. Someone out there in CNET land must know the secret; I beg you, I'm a desperate, defeated man.

Discussion is locked

M. Sanges has chosen the best answer to their question. View answer

Best Answer

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Try this search
Jan 2, 2014 3:36AM PST

I typed in the following and got a lot of info: <span id="INSERTION_MARKER">picture frames 300 x 300 with Google. You might also try it with Amazon - they seem to have some of everything these days.

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A little off-base
Jan 2, 2014 7:12AM PST

I'm not sure if you're simply trolling my conundrum or just not understanding any of what I'm looking for. Other replies you've given seem to be fairly cemented in the technical realm so I'm not sure why you think searching for a picture frame on Amazon.com is an appropriate response when I'm trying to discover a way to pre-filter search engine results by their pixel size.

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I guess I still don't understand what you're trying to do.
Jan 2, 2014 8:48AM PST

I hope someone who does can help you.

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Nutshell
Jan 2, 2014 9:48AM PST

When you search Google you can choose to view just images that match your keywords, under Images you can select to view only images that match certain picture sizes--all of this adds certain coding to the URL that Google uses to breakdown exactly what it's searching for.

I'm looking for a way to do all this without having to click a ton of user interface buttons to enable these filters since I'm searching for images that match the same criteria over and over using different keywords. There are custom codes out there (programs, too) for all kinds of other filters for other search engines and databases (like Wikipedia, for example).

Hopefully someone else is out there that had the same dilemma and found a solution. I thought posting on CNET was going to help since it's a broad-yet-techie site.

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Re: codes
Jan 2, 2014 7:29PM PST

I would copy/paste.

- First copy/paste the skeleton into the address bar:
https://www.google.com/search?q=???&biw=1280&bih=835&tbm=isch&source=lnt&tbs=isz:ex,iszw:300,iszh:300
- Then replace ??? by your search term (or search terms separated by +) and press enter.

But it can be done even easier, if your browser lets you define search engines for use in the browser search box. That's exactly what I did above. You define the template, with a certain symbol where I used those question marks and you give it a name, for example google300pics.
When that's done, you type your search terms in the seach box and select that search engine.

The detailed procedure to add search engines yourself varies from browser to browser. Use the one (from IE, Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari) that you find it possible to do it in.

Kees

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Ahh, my people!
Jan 2, 2014 10:19PM PST

I was really starting to think this was all a huge waste of my time... and then you posted.

The closest I came to a permanent solution before posting here yesterday was, basically what you came up with as well, Google Chrome Custom Search. My problem is that I don't believe it will allow me to use a closed formula, ie. I don't think it's smart enough to replace the "???" In your example. I admit that I know very little about the custom search ecosystem however.

I guess maybe I'm stuck having to copy-paste a bunch of junk and then frankenstein-ing together my solution to get results.

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It certainly works.
Jan 2, 2014 10:49PM PST
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Sounds Good!
Jan 3, 2014 1:10AM PST

As soon as I have time to hop on my actual PC, instead of just my ios devices, I'll give it a shot.

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Thanks again!
Jan 14, 2014 3:02AM PST

Thanks for getting me on the right track. Working off your original copy-pasta, and with a little tinkering, I ended up with perfectly serviceable Custom Search parameters for Chrome:

https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&biw=1280&bih=835&tbm=isch&source=lnt&tbs=isz:ex,iszw:300,iszh:300

with "%s" being the search parameter to meet Chrome's needs to make it an actual search reference, and simply called it "art" to point back to it.

Thanks so much for helping me with this, as I said, some of these answers were so far off-base I was shouting at my monitor. I guess next time, I'll post on Tom's Hardware or, really... anywhere that's not here (or Yahoo Answers, of course LOL).

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Glad I could help.
Jan 14, 2014 3:04AM PST

And nice to see you got it working.

Kees

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Answer
Re: 300 x 300
Jan 2, 2014 3:36AM PST

I'd use a picture processing program (like Irfanview, which is free) to cut exact sqares from a not-really square picture and resize it to 300 x 300 pixels.

But since you can copy/paste whatever you need to add to a search string it's only a few keys to do that to limit your search to exactly square pics of exactly the right size, if you prefer that.

Kees

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Good effort
Jan 2, 2014 7:07AM PST

That's a worthy alternative but in the end that's even more work than simply browsing the internet and filtering the results. I appreciate the response but what I'm looking requires a ton of quantity, and for that I need a streamlined solution to what I'm already doing.

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Answer
Don't kill the messenger
Jan 2, 2014 7:37AM PST

I've never tried doing what you're doing but, have you seen this ? -> http://www.vanbarel.com/?tools

Click on tools and than DiscoverArt , magnify the page so you can read the print.

Hope this helps. If not I'm sorry

Digger

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No shootings...
Jan 2, 2014 10:06AM PST

Interesting tool, it looks like it just grabs anything and everything that meets the criteria though, I really want to have minute control over what I'm grabbing. There's already a bunch of built-in features in any of the major media players that'll grab and insert whatever it thinks is appropriate that basically do the job--just blindly, without a lot of user control. Thanks though, best answer yet!