Have you ever wondered if anyone else is using your photos or images online? If so, TinEye Reverse Image Search is the tool you have been looking for.
Who is reverse image search useful for?
Finding who is using your images on the Internet is important for many people. For photographers, graphic artists and other creative professionals, it’s important to protect your copyrights and find out when and how your work is being used. Or maybe you are just a casual web surfer who came upon an interesting image, and you would like to track down its origin.
How TinEye works
TinEye takes input in two forms: you can copy and paste the URL of and image into their search box, or you can upload an image file from your computer. The system will then take that image, analyze it, and find other images on the web that match.
You may be thinking that this is similar to Google Image Search, but the main difference is that while Google and other image search engines work based on keywords and other meta data surrounding the images, TinEye works on the actual image data. Keyword searches often reveal similar and related images, while TinEye’s pixel-based algorithms look for more exact matches.
The first results you see on TinEye will be the closest matches to your image, but if you browse through the rest of the results pages you will see derivatives as well. TinEye is also able to find photoshopped versions, cropped and resized versions.
Easy Image Matching with TinEye Browser Plug-ins
Aside from visiting the TinEye site to search for matching images, you can also search straight from any other web page by installing the site’s browser plug-ins.
The TinEye Chrome Extension adds a new button to your browser. Click this button and a new window will open, containing all the images from the web page you were looking at. Choose one and TinEye will run a search on it.
The TinEye Firefox Addon adds a new option to your context menu. Right-click on an image in a web page and choose the TinEye option to run a reverse image search on it.
