So called reverse image search engines can be used to find copies of your images on the Internet. The most prominent ones are Tineye, Yandex and the recently updated Google Image Search engine.

While you could use those image search engines manually every time you want to find copies of a picture on the Internet, it is often faster and more comfortable to use a browser extension to do so.

The Who stole my pictures add-on for Firefox offers those capabilities. The extension adds a new entry to the browser’s right-click context menu when the mouse cursor hovers over images.

You then have options to select one of the five support reverse image search engines separately (Baidu and Cydral are the remaining two), or perform a search on all five search engines directly.

If you select the latter option five browser tabs will open with the results of the five image search engines.

The options of the extension allow you to remove search engines from showing up in the context menu. This has also an effect on the multi-search option as removed image search engines are not included in that search anymore.

Who Stole My Pictures is a handy Firefox add-on for users who want to search for copies of images on the Internet. Firefox users can install the extension directly from the official Mozilla Firefox add-on repository.

Up until now it was necessary to open the Google Image Search web page to use the new feature. Users on that page could then upload photos or images from their computer or paste an url into a form to do a reverse search on the image it was pointing to.

While that was ok for users who wanted to search for images on their computer, it meant lots of copying and pasting for users who wanted to search for images that were already available on the Internet.

The Google Chrome extension Search by Image changes this for that group of users. It is an extension officially created by Google to promote the new feature.

Once installed, it adds a new entry to the Chrome right-click context menu when the mouse cursor hovers over an image.

Selecting Search Google with this image searches for the image directly on Google Images. The search results page is directly opened.

Google search by image has a single option. Chrome users can open the options with a click on Wrench > Tools > Extensions and the selection of Options under the extension’s listing there.

It is possible to activate a small icon on every image when hovering with the mouse over it which can also launch the image search on Google.

Chrome users can download and install the extension from the official Chrome Web Store.

The preview thumbnails on the new Google Images results page take longer to load, simply because that page displays a multiple of the images displayed on the old Google Images search page.

The userscript Google Image Basic changes the behavior by redirecting users to an old layout page. Redirection does mean that the new image search page is loaded and then redirected to the basic image search page while it is still loading.

Some users may still experience lags and high cpu loads because of this, but those should go away once the old basic search interface starts showing up.

Here are two screenshots that show the new Google Image search results page and the results page after installing the Google Image Basic userscript.

Standard Google Image Search

Google Image Basic

Notice the scrollbar on the standard Google Image search page? That page has lots of space to display thumbnail previews, and all of those thumbnails need to be loaded.

The redirects are automatic, and you do not need to do anything after script installation. I have tested the userscript under Firefox and Google Chrome, and it worked flawlessly under both web browsers. Firefox users need to install Greasemonkey or a comparable add-on like Scriptish first before they can install userscripts. Google Chrome users on the other hand can install the script right away.

The script is active right after installation. If you are on Google Images search currently you need to reload that page before the new interface becomes available.

The core benefit of the userscript is that it reduces the page loading time of Google Image Search and the load it causes while the page and its elements are loaded. Google Image Basic is available at the userscript website.

The free portable software Mediaspider has been designed as a bulk image downloader for those three locations on the Internet.

The program window separates the three sites into three tabs, so that users can configure the search and download parameters separately for each of them.

These parameters differ slightly. Only a channel can be selected for 4Chan. The other two sites offer more parameters. This includes a search string, number of returned results, size options and option to skip the first x images. DeviantArt searches seem to require a registered account while the other two do not.

Media Spider displays all images that it downloads in a preview window on the screen. This preview window has the same size as the images that are downloaded, but stays in the background all the time to avoid conflicts with other open windows the user is working with. Be aware that the downloader will download all images of a 4chan forum to the local system.

The program lacks a few options, like an image size limit, proxy settings or a download limit for 4chan. The program downloads hundreds of images from 4chan without interruption, as there are currently no options to limit downloads from the location.

Still, MediaSpider does a good job at downloading images in bulk from Google, Deviantart and 4chan. Great for users who download lots of images from at least one of the supported websites, and hoarders.

The name of the application is confusing. In the software is is MediaSpider, on the developer homepage it is MediaArachnid. The portable Open Source application is compatible with most 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system. (via TechnixUpdate)

The Google Search sidebar displays a list of suggested filters, related search terms and additional filters behind more links.

There must be certainly some users who have no use for the new sidebar. Maybe they think it is a distraction, maybe they do not use it at all or maybe they just feel passionate about the old Google Search interface.

Old Google is a userscript that restores the old Google Search interface whenever the user performs a search on Google. This essentially means that the sidebar is removed from the page so that only the search results are displayed on the screen.

The userscript is compatible with all Google domains and works both on the normal search engine and image search engine.

The userscript works in Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox with the likelihood that it will also work in other userscript compatible web browsers.

Old Google can be downloaded and installed from the Userscripts website. (via Download Squad)

This new type of comfortably accessing search options has now been brought to Google Images as well. Users who conduct a search in the Google Image search engine will now be able to click on the same Options link to access and change several important search parameters.

The options allow a search engine user to specify a certain size for the images that are displayed in the search results, change the type of image (face, photo, clip art or line drawing) or specify a dominant color. All of these options are also available in the advanced image search parameters. The benefit for the search engine user is that these options are now directly accessible.

One aspect of Google Image Search that is bugging many users is that it does not link directly to the image but to a Google page that displays the website containing the image in a frame. This means that users need to click on the image to be taken to the framed page where they can either scroll until they find the image or click on the image that is displayed on top to display the full sized image.

The Google Image Relinker userscript changes this default behavior by linking directly to the images in the Google Image search results pages. The developer has confirmed that the script works in Firefox, Opera and Seamonkey with the possibility that it will work in other web browsers that support userscripts (Google Chrome, Safari) as well.

The script basically safes time by allowing the user to view the image directly from the search result pages. A link to the framed version (which is the default way) is provided as well. Google Image Relinker is an interesting userscript for those users who work with the Google Image Search engine regularly.

The collection centers around five areas called People (Kennedy, Picasso), Places (Times Square, New York), Events (Vietnam War, Winter Olympics), Sports (baseball, football) or Culture (Railroad, Cowboys). It is possible to enter any search term which is usually good enough to find many images related to the keyword.

A click on an image will display a larger thumbnail and additional information about it including the location or date taken. The very same page contains links to related images and an option to purchase it as a framed photograph. A click on the image will load it in full size in a new window.

Image resolutions range from 800×1280 to 1280×1280. Could be a nice idea for a present or as a background wallpaper for the PC.

Google Image Search can also be used to search the Life Photo Archive exclusively by appending the source:life parameter to the search.

An alternative to the manual process is using a freeware application like googlegrab which automatically saves the full size images to a newly created folder that is named after the search terms. The program is pretty straight forward. Enter a search term and click search. Googlegrab does everything else. It creates a folder, saves all images to that folder.

You can set some options as well. First, you can limit the downloads to x pictures, the default is 1000. Then you can opt ot download only pictures of a certain size, you can turn downloads for five sizes on or off. (XXL, XL, L, M and S). Then you can turn off child save searches which is probably a good idea and see a preview of the current image.

Googlegrab is available for PC and Mac, great tool.