Xcavator is a photo search engine for professionals. It’s a place to go to find photos from online stock photography agencies (iStockphoto, Fotolia, Lucky Oliver and 123RF).

At the moment, Xcavator has 6 million images, all searchable all in one place. This is very convenient for the creative community; designers, art directors and ad agencies. To buy photos, you need to have an account with the stock photography agency. Many designers, ad agencies etc. already do. Xcavator allows them to cross shop to compare prices and save money.

That is not the greatest advantage, though. Xcavator is based on excellent innovative image search technology. The initial search is text based: Add your query to the search box (e.g. “wind mill”) and Xcavator brings up images of old fashioned Dutch wind mills, modern wind mills used for power plants and colorful little children’s wind mills.

I want one of several modern wind mills, so I click an image that I like and choose “match” from the pop-up window. Xcavator matches the search results to the image I have chosen and suggests several images for me to choose from. Using this process I can refine my search several times, based on visual criteria and hardly any text.

If you use a lot of digital images or if you are interested in alternative search engine technology, take a look at Xcavator’s short and instructive video intro.