This is a tip for those who use the stock photo service iStockPhoto.

Let's say you want an image with clouds to fill up the whole page of your design and you want to run copy in the very middle of the page horizontally.

Normally you would have to go through hundreds of search results to find the images that fit your idea. But with iStockPhoto you have to option of filtering your search results with CopySpace.

The CopySpace tool looks like a matrix of small 3x3 squares and it located below the search. With this matrix you can specify which areas on your layout need to be free of complicated background elements for copy and which areas need to have objects.

Gray is the default for all squares and it means you don't mind the content. You can turn the squares with one click to green, which means it is an area for copy and should be free of background distraction. Red can be achieved with two clicks and means you want to have an object in that area. Once set up your squares you can click set and your search results will be filtered accordingly.

Let's try it in practice. As a first step, do the search on "clouds" as you would normally do. You can see all results show clouds in different random layouts.

Click on some of the squares to turn them into green. Green means you want your copy to go in this area. Click Set to apply the filter. You will see that now the images appearing will allow space for copy without any disturbing background elements.

If you click the squares twice they turn red. This means you want to have some objects in this area. In the example here I wanted stuff to happen on the left and free space in the middle. You can see that the search results give me just that.

For more fine tuning you can click the Advanced search menu point and select how strictly you want the filter to work.

Happy searching!