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.

Lets start to look at how Google Search by image works, before we look at how good it actually is.

You start the search on Google Images. A new camera icon is displayed in the search form, similar to the microphone that is displayed on standard search on Chrome.

Search engine users can click on the icon to display a new search by image overlay. They can paste in an image url, or switch to the upload form to upload an image from their computer. It is alternatively possible to drag images from the desktop or a website to the search interface.

The search results page displays the uploaded image on top, and possible hits below that.

Google will display visually similar images on the page, as well as pages that contain the very same image, opening up new possibilities for owners of the image to find out which websites have copied it.

Testing Google Search by Image

Lets run the new image search through a series of tests.

a. People

Google Search by image shines in this regard. Just upload a portrait photo to the search engine to get more information about the person on the photo. I have tested it with stars like Caroline Quentin, Karen Duffy or Sabina Gadecki, as well as people from the past like John Constable, Goethe or Shakespeare. Google was able to identify the people on the photos correctly even if the file name gave away no clues. Impressive.

b. Locations

Popular locations and landmarks were identified correctly by Google Search by Image. Important sites like the Berlin Dome, Statue of Liberty or the Eiffeltower were all identified correctly.

Results were not that good for lesser known locations, like the Calanque De Sugiton France which is one of the top Bing images today. The Blue Spring State Park in Florida was recognized correctly on the other hand.

c. Objects

Results were better when objects where shown in images. Most were identified correctly, like the Knight’s Templar cross, the Samsung NX100 digital camera, company logos or the picture of a housefly. This opens up interesting possibilities, for instance to find out more about a laptop solely on an image that you have at your disposal, or about a new television that looks incredible.

Verdict

I have not been impressed by most new features that Google rolled out in the past two years or so. Google Images by Search on the other hand is almost to good to be true. The recognition of objects, people and landmarks works very well. It opens up new search possibilities that have not been there in this form before. Especially the mix of search results, something that I have criticized in the past, works well for this type of search.

Why do not you try it out yourself and let me know how it works for you?

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.

A new landing page was introduced that is showing the 20 top image searches of the moment. Users need to note that the new landing page is only available if the location is set to the United States. Everyone else will see the standard frontpage when they try to open the web address of the new Bing Images landing page.

A click on an image loads the results page for that image search query.

The new top image searches page is helpful if you want to know what people in the US are currently searching for image wise. It is a bit like Google Trends only for images.

More interesting are the new features on the Bing Images search page. The top has changed quite a bit as it now displays the top five searches related to the query in tabs with options to flip through them without a full page reload. These suggestions usually narrow down the original search term. Suggestions for my search on Budapest were Budapest Hungary, Map of Budapest, Budapest 1956 and Budapest Parliament.

This feature again is only available if the location has been set to the United States.

The major problem with Bing is that the search engine feels like an US-only search engine most of the time which surely is keeping some users from using it as their main search engine. (Bing blog, via)

Whatever it is, reverse image search engines are your best bet if you do not have another option at hand (you may want to consider contacting the poster on the website you found the image if that is a possibility).

Reverse image search engines try to find the image, or modifications of it, in their vast image and photo database. This way it may be possible to find other websites the picture was posted on. It is also a chance to find a higher resolution version of the image, or an unmodified version.

Image Search Options is a Firefox add-on that adds links to five reverse image search engines to the browser’s context menu.

The add-on supports the following five reverse image search engines: IQDB, SauceNAO, TinEye, GazoPa and Ascii2D.

The options allow the user to modify the appearance of the links in Firefox. The image search engines are always displayed in the context menu and can either be displayed as direct links or in a subfolder to save space. It is furthermore possible to enable only the desired reverse image search engines.

The options contain advanced parameters which most users won’t need to worry about. It is for instance possible to pass parameters to the search engines. Firefox users can install the add-on over at the Mozilla Addon repository. The Image Search Options is compatible with all Firefox 2 to Firefox 4 releases.

The userscript Image Search Preview changes that for users of the Firefox web browser. The userscript does not seem to work in Google Chrome after installation. Image Search Preview by default will display the original image on hover on the same page.

Users who only want to view the images can do so more easily just by hovering over them in the image search results. The script is currently working on a number of sites, including the popular image search engines Google Images, Bing Images, Yahoo Images as well as Flickr.

Larger image previews is just one of the features that the userscript brings to the table. It can for instance be configured to display direct links to the original images on the thumbnail pages. This makes it possible to download images directly from a search results page or image listing page without visiting the site or page the image is hosted on.

Firefox users need to change the preferences of the userscript for that and a few other features available. To open the preferences users need to click in the search box on a supported website and press the keyboard combination Ctrl-Y or Ctrl-P.

A configuration menu is opened with options to enable direct links. Other options available are to set a maximum height or width for the image previews, a background color for images with transparency and a delay before the image is shown (to avoid accidental previews if the mouse moves over an image preview area).

Firefox users need to install the Greasemonkey add-on before they can install the userscript.

Google Image Swirl starts of like any other Google Image search. The user enters a search phrase in the search form on the page. The script will then display possible matches for that entered search phrase. So far so identical to the standard Google Image search engine.

Differences begin to appear after the selection of one of the results.

Google Image Swirl will display the image and related images in the same interface instead of loading the website that is containing the image. Related images are placed around the selected image with lines showing their relation. Even better is the fact that second tier relations are shown as well on the page. A click on the central image will load that image in the website that is was published on.

It is however also possible to click on one of the related images to navigate further into that path. This can be a very interesting way of exploring images about a specific subject. Google Image Swirl is an experimental service that is open to all users over at Google Labs.

Update: Google Image Swirl has been discontinued. It is no longer available.

The Flickr Search results now display a small bar above the actual photos that have been found that can be used to change the view of the photos from the default small view to medium, detail or slideshow. Sorting can also be changed from relevant to either recent or interesting.

Small and medium photo search results display a small i icon in the lower right corner when hovering the mouse over them. A click on the icon will open a detailed view of the photo in the foreground. Another click on the photo will close that foreground image.

A right sidebar on the search results page is now showing groups, photographers, tags and locations that are closely related to the search term. Those items can be used to explore related photos, photographers, groups and locations.

Some searches do now include information on top based on the search parameters of the user. It is for example displaying if the search was only performed in the Creative Commons section and dates if a date filter has been set.

[source Flickr Blog]

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.

TinEye is a reverse image search engine that accepts images that are uploaded from the local computer but also images located on websites. The second method requires some explanation. It is possible to point the search engine to an 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 for the reverse image search.

The quality of the results depends a lot on the selected image. TinEye will display the number of related images that it found in its database which is currently containing 1.04 billion entries. A quick test for images on Ghacks brought up mixed results. A search for the Firefox logo used on this site returned more than 2000 results while a search for the Ghacks logo returned a handful that were not related at all.

TinEye provides an interesting service that might be useful for people who like to check if their images or photos are used on other websites. It might also be interesting for research and other purposes. The service is currently in beta stage.

A click on a preview thumbnail will open a preview window containing additional information like size, title or format of the selected image. Size buttons on the bottom will load the image in different sizes. These size buttons are automatically adjusted depending on the original size of the image. The same toolbar contains buttons to save the image to the local computer, view it in the original context (which will open the image in the default web browser), set it as the desktop background, copy or share it.

Ginipic is an excellent image search engine that can be used to search for images on multiple image search engines including some of the best places to download wallpapers like Deviant Art or Flickr. The application is a bit heavy on the resource usage but since it does not have to be running all the time in the background it does not matter that much.

The 150 images will be displayed in a zoomable and movable area. The mouse wheel can be used to zoom in and out of the area to inspect images closely. Pressing the left mouse button in the area makes it possible to move around which is handy if some images are not displayed because of the zoom level.

It is also possible to use the zoom slider on the right sidebar to zoom in and out of the main area. The second step is the refining phase. The user drags and drops images that fit best to the right sidebar. A double-click is the alternative method of selecting those images. To give an example. A user searching for the game Diablo might enter Diablo in the search form. The resulting pictures will show images of Diablo 1, Diablo 2 and Diablo 3. It is then possible to only select Diablo 3 images from the first batch to tell the search that these are the images to find and display from then on.

Pixolu will then search for and display images that are closely related to the selected images of step 2. The url, resolution and source of selected images will be shown. The only way to view images in full resolution is to load them by clicking on the source url in the sidebar.

This is a great tool for image researching and especially blogging, because often I find an image I like and want to use, if only the hand wasn’t in the way like that, or the background was different. Of course many of these can be Photoshoped, but not in all cases, and quickly searching for a different image is infinitely faster.

If you install the Firefox plugin your searches will become much faster, you can just right click on a picture to search for it via TinEye. It doesn’t get much more productive than that!

The service is currently in closed beta, but go ahead and sign up for a beta and share your experiences. According to the video there are only a few (as in about half a billion) pics indexed, but there are a lot more coming up. As a blogger I can say in advance that this is a tool I will be using more than heavily in the future. I can think of a load of features they could add, like license indication, advanced filtering to only show identical or varied images and so on.