Tips for Pixiv~!

Some tips about using Pixiv:
1. While the site itself is in Japanese, the URLs are in English. Hovering over them and reading the URL can be helpful in getting around if you’re really lost.

2. Searching is pretty easy. Just type in what you’re looking for in the box. You should use Japanese characters though, unless you’re absolutely sure there’s an English tag. Instances would be popular things mainly; i.e. ‘Meltdown’ & ‘APH’ would yield pretty accurate results even though they’re in English letters, while typing ‘Watashi ni xx Shinasai!’ would not yield anything, you’d have to do it as ‘わたしに××しなさい!’.

3. You can search 3 different catagories. See those buttons beside the search box? They can categorize your search for you. The first one is the default (タグ), which is searching by tags. I.e. series or characters (or in Vocaloids’ case, songs). If you’re searching for multiple tags, separate them by spaces, or add the Japanese character for “and” which is と. The second one (タイトル・キャプション) is searching by title or caption. This is if you’re searching for a very specific piece of work and you know the title/caption for it. The last one (ウェブ) isn’t for searching images, it’s for searching the web. No idea why that’s there, but I guess if you’re lazy to go to Google…? xD

4. Related tags. When you search, you can see some related tags below the search bar. It’ll look something like this: ‘検索結果：##件　関連タグ’. (Results: ## Related Tags) While it may not show all of the related tags, it will show the most popular. This helps if you’re looking for images of similar series or characters. Or if you’re lazy like me, this feature saves you sometime. :D I type in ‘Meltdown’ in the search box, then look at the related tags and click ‘炉心融解’. Face it, searching the Japanese tag will yield way more results then searching the English tag. :P

5. Say you find an image you like. There are tons of things you can click on when you view the medium version. But most likely you just want your image. To get it, just click the medium version of the image and it’ll open in a new tab, then you can save it. ^^

6. To view the artist’s profile (some artists have totally awesome & unique art & colouring styles, so it’s good to see), just click the artists’ avatar (the image on the left menu) or click the button that says ‘プロフィールを見る’ (View Profile). To view all of the artists work, click the link under the 3 most recent illustrations. It says ‘もっと見る’ (More).