Reverse your Image Search using TinEye

Normally we tend to search images and the result is the search engine searches in the database and displays the images that are related to that search term entered by the user. but this TinEye (reverse image search engine) on the otherhand starts with a image and can find out where an image came from. It allows you to search for images that are visually similar to an image you submit to TinEye.



TinEye is a reverse image search engine. You can submit an image to TinEye to find out where it came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or to find higher resolution versions. TinEye is the first image search engine on the web to use image identification technology rather than keywords, metadata or watermarks. This is useful if you have an image, but you don't remember what it depicts or if you want to find a higher-quality version of an image.



You can upload images to TinEye in two ways. 1) From your local computer 2) You can give url of an image or to point it to a website. Pointing it to a website will retrieve all images located on that website giving the user the choice to select any of them. After uploading the images the TinEye will display the number of related images that it found in its database which is currently containing 1.04 billion entries.

All you need to do is upload an image and it craws it's index seeking a near match and presents it. It's in beta and has about a billion images. It even detects images that are slightly modified.

Why it is useful ?

1. You can find out the image where it originally came from.
2. If you want to find a higher resolutions of the same image.
3. If you like to check if the images or photos are used on other websites.
4. It can find partial matches, including images that have been resized or edited, it cannot locate similar images based on subject matter.

Just go to TinEye Cool Searches page - Here. You can find the real power of this reverse search engine.



Good Example - Click here

How does it work ?

When you submit an image to be searched, TinEye creates a unique and compact digital signature or 'fingerprint' for it, then compares this fingerprint to every other image in our index to retrieve matches.

There are also browser plugins for Firefox and Internet Explorer which allow a simple right-click to quickly and easily launch a "Search Image on TinEye" option.

For Firefox you have the Addon - TinEye Reverse Image Search 0.6



Download - TinEye Firefox Add-on

Same like TinEye Google has Similar images search at Google Labs. It allows you to search for images using pictures rather than words. Have a look here - Google Similar Images Search

Don't forget to read Best Online and Desktop Image editing Tools. Peep into Private Images from Google.

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