Exploring data

Filtering, search, and similarity

Filtering is how you go from the whole collection to just the images you care about. Zegami filters in-browser over a columnar copy of the metadata, so it stays fast even on millions of rows.

Last updated 2026-05-29

Text search

Open the Search panel from the toolbar to search across all text columns at once. Matching images stay; the rest fade out. The toolbar badge shows that a search is active.

The Search panel with a full-text query field
The Search panel runs a full-text query across every text column.

Column filters

The Filters panel offers a filter widget tailored to each column’s type. Add as many as you like; they combine (AND) to narrow the set, and the toolbar badge counts how many are active.

The Filters panel listing collection columns available to filter
The Filters panel — pick a column to add a type-appropriate filter.

Filter types:

  • Text / string — substring match.
  • Number — min/max range, with a sparkline of the distribution.
  • Date — a date-range picker.
  • Boolean — true / false checkbox.
  • Colour — pick from a swatch palette.
  • Geo / location — a geographic bounding box.
  • Tags — multi-select tag chips.

Filters apply live across every view — narrowing the Grid also narrows the Scatter, Map, and Table.

Sort

Sorting lives in the Views panel (see Viewing collections): choose a column and direction. Sort and filter compose — filter first, then order what remains.

If the collection was processed with CLIP embeddings (toggle it in the Processing tab — see Processing & analysis), two extra tools light up:

  • Visual similarity — click an image, then open the Inspector’s Similar tab to see its nearest neighbours by CLIP-embedding cosine similarity. A slider sets how many, and Filter main view narrows the whole collection to those matches.
  • Semantic search — search by meaning (“a red sports car”, “handwritten notes”) rather than exact metadata text.
The Inspector Similar tab showing nearest-neighbour images by CLIP similarity, a neighbours slider, and a Filter main view button
The Inspector's Similar tab — nearest neighbours by CLIP similarity, with a slider and a Filter main view button.

Clearing

Each panel has a clear control, and clearing all filters returns the full collection. Tiles animate back into place rather than snapping, so it’s easy to see what changed.

See also