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Help - How to search for art to buy
How to search for art to buy
In both the "Gallery" and the "Buy art" sections you will see a search form near the top of the page that looks like the one below.
In this guide we'll go over a few simple tips that will make it easy for you to find that perfect piece of art, and for the right price. Please note: all the search types below can be combined into a single search, so you can search for all boat art in landscape format, with blue as the predominant color, for $20 or more, for example.
1. The basic search
If you've ever searched the web with Google, MSN, Ask, etc. then you will understand how this works. All you have to do is type your search terms in the box, then click the "Search" button. The site will pull up all art for sale that matches the terms you entered.
If you want to see all art for sale, either type "showall" as your search term or leave the box blank. You might find sometimes that you want a piece of art in a certain color, orientation or price, but don't necessarily care as much about the subject matter. In that case, you can combine the search types below with this type of search to find something that fits your house, apartment, tree house or cave just right.
To exclude items from being found, just add a minus sign (-) directly to the front of the term you don't want found. For example, if you want to find all flower images for sale, but don't like roses, you could type flowers -roses.
2. Search art by price
Use the slider to adjust the range of prices you want to see. The slider goes from $1 to $1,000, and setting it will pull up all art that is that price or higher, and that also matches any other search terms you've entered (keywords, orientation, or color).
By default, the search page will return images based on what it believes is the closest match to your search terms. If you want to sort by price, you can choose either highest to lowest or lowest to highest.
3. Make it colorful
Often times you want to match your art with your decor, and searching by color is a powerful way to do this. Clicking "Pick a color scheme" will bring up a palette of colors. If you've ever used Photoshop, this one behaves in much the same way. Don't be overwhelmed! Just pick a color close to what you want and let the search engine do the rest. It will find all art near the color you choose that also matches the other search terms you've entered.
If you can't pull any art up for the color you want, even when searching all art (e.g. Price = $1 and above, no search term and no orientation limits) then try another color close to the one you want. Want purple clouds? Pink oceans? Blue roses? No problem!
4. Fit that space perfectly
The three yellow boxes you see at the right of the search form allow you to limit the results to the artworks' orientation. Clicking once turns that orientation "off". In other words, clicking the first two boxes - the portrait and landscape - will search only square compositions.
If you want to search all orientations of art, just make sure each box is back to yellow.
5. Sort your results how you want them
This feature isn't on the diagram above, but below the search box and above the search results, you will see a list of different options allowing you to sort the art you've found how you need it sorted.
So what are you waiting for? Go play around and search for some art to buy!