prometheus is a distributed digital image archive that currently makes more than 4.150.000 images of 136 databases from institutes, research facilities and museums researchable on a common user interface.

Situated at the Institute of Art History of the University of Cologne, prometheus is supported by the non-profit association prometheus e.V. which promotes the ongoing developments of the digital media for science and research.



Image series of the week

Start
Elmgreen & Dragset
Artist Duo since 1995 – The Scandinavian artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, who have been working together as a duo in Berlin since the mid-1990s, are in demand worldwide. | more...


News

Export image collections

29 June 2026 | By: Corinna

Many of you are currently searching through 137 very diverse image databases for images related to your various interests for a range of projects. Your search results usually include a variety of images that are relevant to your presentations, term papers, or research questions. Anyone with a personal account on prometheus can save these search results internally in image collections. You can also export the image collections to use them externally for research or teaching purposes, either as a ZIP file (Download Image Collection) or as a PowerPoint file (Download PowerPoint Presentation). After extracting the files, you will either receive a folder containing two files (.jpg and .txt) for each individual image, or a presentation with slides for each image along with the corresponding metadata. You can find this export feature directly in the image collection next to the title. Click on the three dots.

More: +++ Website adjustment to the new design +++ Image database updates +++ New planned features +++ Zoom in on thumbnails +++ Heinrich Pieroth Collection +++ to the blog...