Search help

Fulltext and Field Search

Advanced Search

Picture Browser

Caption

Shopping Cart

Download

To get a larger view of the picture: Just click on a thumbnail, and you will get a preview-picture. Under each thumbnail or preview you can click either the shopping cart or the download option to copy the picture into your shopping cart or to download it.

Fulltext Search

You can search for pictures by entering one or several words. To get good results we recommend using shorter words and avoid using plurals. All the fields of the IPTC-header (picture information) will be searched for these words.

You can use the following characters as helpers:

space or plus sign	and linkage
minus sign	not linkage
asterisk	expanding to every character (unsharp)
semicolon	word limiter (sharp)

Several words used without these tool-characters will be searched for inclusively (an AND-search).
There is no difference between major- and minor-case letters.

Examples

space or plus sign	The words sun and sea will be searched for and all pictures will be shown which contain both words.
minus sign	All pictures will be found which contain the word "sun" without the word "sea".
asterix	All pictures will be found with words which include the word "moon", eg. "honeymoon".
semicolon	A sharp search for the word "water", ie. "waterfall" will not be found.

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Advanced Search

The advanced search enables you to find the desired pictures quickly by defining and combining specific search-fields.

Before entering your search words, use the pop-up menues to define the area of search for each field. The possibilities are Caption, keyword, surname, photographer and country.

After each field, define the nature of the combination with the other fields, using the commands AND or NOT.

Please enter just one word per field. The search is not case-sensitive.

A search word without asterisk (*) causes a sharp search, i.e. this word alone will be searched for. For example, with the word "sun" sunflowers will not be found. With "sun*" they will be found.

You can not search for words with less than three letters. The exception to this rule is the surname field where shorter names will also be found.

Furthermore it is possible to define a specific date or period of time from which the desired pictures should come. Alternatively, using the pop-up menue searchperiod, you can define a maximum age of the pictures to be found.

The time-period search can also be used independently of the text fields and will show all available pictures from the respective period.

If you should already know the file-name of a specific picture which you found in a previous search, you can use the field search for picture name, to go immediately to it.

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Picture Browser

We have categorised all pictures so you can view groups of related pictures by choosing main categories and subcategories from a pop-up menu. If you would like to be thus inspired, click to the "browse" page, and you can browse comfortably through our library.

All results can be refined, by starting a second search within the result. (searchfield at the end of the resultpage)

If you have any problems or questions, contact "Das Fotoarchiv" phone: +49-201-782448, Fax: +49-201-78 11 28, Email: info@africa-photo.com.
If you have any technical questions, contact fotofinder.net phone +49 30 25 79 28 90 fax +49 30 25 79 28 999 email info@fotofinder.net

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Caption

Each picture in this database contains text information in the following ways:

1. Fulltext Caption

Since we are a Germany-based agency, the fulltext inside of the pictures is mainly written in German. All keywords have been translated. So you can choose the "caption" option and type in either English or German words

2. Keywords

All keywords can be seen in the keyword list.

3. Person

Every name of a person shown on a picture, prominent or not, can be searched for. To find out our way of writing names, look up the person list.

4. Photographer

To find one of our photographers, look up the photographers list.

5. Location/Place (location list)

To find out our way of writing places and cities, look up the location list.

6. Country (country list)

To find the countries that are shown in our picture library, look up the country list.

7. Date

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Shopping Cart

The shopping cart is your personal folder where you can store and keep all thumbnails of any search result. Each picture you put into your shopping cart will be there as long as you want. Here you can edit the results from several searches and make your decisions before you download material. Once you have finished your project, you can empty your shopping cart with one mouseclick.

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Download

To download a picture you first have to licence it. After that you can directly transmit the photos to your system.

Please Note:
Are you having problems downloading material? Does nothing happen after you have clicked on the download link? The pictures can't be found on your computer? In this case please use the following method:
With the cursor on the download-link, a long mouse-click for a "Mac" - or a click on the righthand mouse-button of a "PC" - will open a dialogue window. Here you should choose "save as" and then decide where you want to store the picture on your computer.

Some operation systems and/or browsers will change the names of the pictures, deleting the ending ".jpg", or transforming it into ".html". If this happens, you will have to rename the picture after the download, for example: change "980203LR01.html" into "980203LR01.jpg".

If you have opened a customer account at fotofinder.net, you can start the download after you have agreed to the licensing fee directly. If you have already made a general license agreement with us, you just choose the size of your picture(s) and start the download .

If you have not yet opened a customer account with us, you will not be able to download the pictures right away. Your attempt to start the download process will trigger a page,where you can directly enter the customer-account-form or registration page directly.