Image Origins

Posted on August 18, 2008

Kind of like Copyscape for the written word, a new visual search engine has been released in Beta that could help photographers keep up with their works online by tracking when and where they may appear on the web.

The TinEye search engine allows users to search by uploading a picture rather than typing in a keyword. It then conducts a pixel by pixel search across the internet. What’s great about this tool is its ‘ability’ to hunt down all instances of that image even if it has been altered, merged or even cropped.

Basically, TinEye does for images what Google does for text. Where Google’s current limitation is basically words, an image search the way TineEye does it reveals detailed info on image pixels, determining where they are and in many cases, where they have been.

Another interesting and very useful feature is the program works even if the image used as the standard is a preview or lo-res image. So, it’s possible to take a picture with a phone, upload it, and watch TinEye do its thing.

So, now it’s possible to track images without using digital watermarks plus the service will provide alerts when an image comes online. As cool as those possibilities are, TinEye also can help with attributing the source of an image.

TinEye is currently in beta, with a focus on expanding an image index which currently stands at “several hundred million”, a number growing by a “few hundred million per month.”