Computer Tips From A Computer Guy

Find copies of images on the web using TinEye

Posted: 03 Dec 2009 03:21 AM PST

Ever see an image on the Internet and wonder where it originated from? Or maybe you want to see how many people have copied a particular image of yours, even if it's been modified?

TinEye is a cool service from a company called ideeinc. Just like Google is the best search engine for text, TinEye is one of the best visual/image search engines.

TinEye is a reverse image search engine, which means you give it an image and it will go through billions of photos from the web that are in it's index and show you the pages that contain that image or a modified version.

Here is an example using a starting image of Gandhi:

Here's another image search using the Starbucks logo:

Pretty neat eh!? With over 1.5 billion images on the web that have been indexed, you're bound to find copies of an image unless it's of your friend from a party last night.

If you have a blog or website and you want to see if anyone is hijacking your images (hotlinking), TinEye is a good way to find the culprits.

TinEye works by creating a unique digital signature or "fingerprint" for every single image that it indexed. When you submit an image to TinEye, it generates a unique fingerprint for that image and then compares it to the database.

Note that TinEye usually finds exact matches of the images, including those that have been cropped, edited or resized. It will not find similar images. They have a separate tool for that!

For companies that want to ensure their brands are not being abused or modified in inappropriate ways, TinEye is a great way to quickly see how your logos or artwork are being used by the online world.

Their other product, Piximilar, is designed solely for finding visually similar images. What does that mean? Take a look at the example below:

Anything look similar in the above picture? The original image was of a four leaf clover and the results pretty much all green clovers or something closely related like plants, trees, and gardening tools.

Overall, if you have an image and want to either find all instances of that image on the web or want to find similar/related images, check out TinEye and Piximilar!. Enjoy! [via WindowsBytes]