7

I need large reusable pictures of particular places (to make Wikivoyage banners, example).

Where to find such images? For instance pictures of Berlin with width>2100px
Contiguous images, not mosaics.

An idea could be to use Wikicommons categories, but I could not find a way to filter these by image width (it seems that people with SSH access can get it via an SQL request, so the information is available somehow).

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  • Does it need to be contiguous images, or can it be stitched together? If mosaics are fine, use EOSDIS. (if not ... I'm not sure if there are any search engines that can operate on metadata in GeoTIFFs ... most science search systems aren't going to handle it, as they tend to be more interested in pixel scale & region observed than pixel counts) – Joe Aug 6 '13 at 16:22
  • It seems like banners would have an aspect ratio requirement in addition to a pure width requirement. – Tom Morris Aug 8 '13 at 3:10
  • @TomMorris: Thanks for looking into the details :-) Actually finding an image is the first step, it then needs to be cropped appropriately. – Nicolas Raoul Aug 8 '13 at 3:22
  • @Joe: Edited question, thanks for the feedback! – Nicolas Raoul May 25 '14 at 7:57
8

If you don't need programmatic access (i.e. an API), you can use the Google Advanced Image Search.

You can also get there by following these simple steps:

  1. Go to search.creativecommons.org
  2. Enter your search term (e.g. berlin)
  3. Select your license requirements (use for commercial purposes and/or modify, adapt, or build upon)
  4. Click on Google Images
  5. On Google Images, click on the Size filter, select Larger than… and then 4 MP (2272×1704).

That should do the trick.

Update: If you want to share the URL of the image search results, please have a look at Google image search URL that can be shared?

Screenshot of Google Images, searching for berlin, with filters applied

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2

For the US, the US Government provides a large stock of public domain photos for geographic locations and historic sites. You can find them at:

http://www.usa.gov/Topics/Graphics-State.shtml

Here's the US Government's link to public domain images for Science.

http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/selected-internet/imagesources.html

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2

flickr and wikimedia sound like your best bet. both have apis too (i know you know), although i'm not familiar with wikimedia's at all. both you may want to confirm, for size and content

flickr commons search
https://www.flickr.com/search/?text=berlin&sort=relevance&license=1%2C2%2C3%2C4%2C5%2C6
flickr size api questions
https://www.flickr.com/groups/api/discuss/72157603708437252/
flickr photo source urls shortcuts
https://www.flickr.com/services/api/misc.urls.html
wikimedia berlin search
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Berlin

i also (shittily) keep a list of free/open source imagery sites. i should clean it up:
http://dev.bowdenweb.com/get.html

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