Tips & Tricks

Professional searches made easy, or: how to find the exactly picture you want, every time!

The search function on Zoonar is designed pretty much in the same way as most picture archives. However, there are a few sophisticated extras which make professional picture research a cinch.

If you are looking for special formats, prices, photographers or licence types, use the Advanced Search function. You can access the advanced search function from the start page by clicking on the word "Advanced Search" in the left-hand navigation menu. A new page opens with several options which you can combine.

For example, choose the following options in combination with the search term "horse":

landscape
Royalty free
standard
available

Then you get pictures of horses, in landscape format, on sale with a royalty-free licence and - if people appear in the picture - including a Model Release Agreement. What´s more, with these settings the search results only include pictures that are no more expensive than the standard price. For further information about our pricing model, click here.

Please note that the search function is not case-sensitive. Nor does it matter if in German you type umlauts and "ß" or "oe", "ae", "ss", etc. instead. You will get exactly the same search results.

You can refine your search by combining several search terms with the link words "and", "or", "not" or brackets "(..)". Here are some examples:

"horse and woman" will give you pictures in which a woman and a horse both appear. You can also simply enter an empty space instead of the word "and".



"horse or woman" will give you pictures in which either a woman or a horse or both appears/appear. You can also simply enter a comma instead of the word "or".



"horse not woman" will give you pictures of horses where there are no women in the picture.

You get interesting results if you enter longer combinations:

"horse not rider and woman" will give you pictures of horses and women, but not of women riding.



"horse not woman not man and friend" will give you pictures without women and without men, but where friends appear. In this case the only "friends" possible are children or animals. You will get the same result if you enter "horse not frau not man friend".



"horse and child not woman and laughter" would give you pictures in which horses with children but without mothers in a funny situation appear. You could also type in "horse child not woman laughter" and you would get the same result.

You can make your search more sophisticated by using brackets. Either/or combinations are possible here. Here is an example:

Type "(horse, dog) bathing" into the search field. Now you get pictures of horses swimming, or of dogs swimming. The brackets mean that the search word "bathing" is applied to both terms horses and dogs.



If you left out the commas in the brackets, the search machine would get the following message: "Show me pictures of horses and dogs swimming together."

Entering the following: "woman portrait (laughing, grinning)" would give you all the available pictures of women laughing or grinning.



If you forgot the comma in the brackets in this case, you would not get any search results, because you would be looking for pictures in which a woman on a portrait-format picture is laughing and grinning at the same time. So a tiny detail in the search field can make a huge difference!