Find out if someone has been using your images without your authorization

[jgomez65]

TinEye is a free image search engine that has indexed almost 2 billion photos and images. Each time it indexes a picture it creates a digital fingerprint that it is later used to identify the same image even if it is altered.

TinEye also gives you a list of all the websites that are displaying the images and if there are other resolutions available of the same picture. You can index your own pictures or if you have it hosted someplace, simple provide the link to the image and TinEye will do the rest.

By the way, there is an excellent article on MSBC on how big media companies are using photos taken by amateur photographers and not paying for it.

Red Tape - That famous space shuttle photo: When is sharing stealing?

[OsmosisStudios]

TinEye doesnt work for detecting images based on content, only metadata and filename,

[Jim Poor]

Originally Posted by OsmosisStudios

TinEye doesnt work for detecting images based on content, only metadata and filename,

I believe that is incorrect.

[i speak in math]

Originally Posted by Jim Poor

I believe that is incorrect.

I don't believe that is correct either

check out the TinEye results for this shot of mine



It brings up two other shots that are framed almost identically to mine, but aren't derivatives of my original image.





It seems clear that it is detecting the image based off of features in the image and not by filename/metadata

[dakwegmo]

I've actually had it find one of my images that had been used for a band's promotional flyer. They'd renamed the file, stripped all of the metadata, and added a bunch of text over the image, but TinEye was still able to correctly match the image. And fortunately, Photobucket was quick to take it down when I notified them of the violation.

[Jim Poor]

Originally Posted by dakwegmo

I've actually had it find one of my images that had been used for a band's promotional flyer. They'd renamed the file, stripped all of the metadata, and added a bunch of text over the image, but TinEye was still able to correctly match the image. And fortunately, Photobucket was quick to take it down when I notified them of the violation.

Exactly. A quick read of the TinEye site shows that it ID's photos based on content NOT metadata.

Thank the interwebs for the proliferation of more bad info . . .

[Ambrosia76]

It doesn't always work either cause I searched several of my images that I know for fact someone stole and have posted on their pages and it finds nothing.

[dakwegmo]

Originally Posted by Jim Poor

Exactly. A quick read of the TinEye site shows that it ID's photos based on content NOT metadata.

Thank the interwebs for the proliferation of more bad info . . .

Ironically, he seemed to know better at one time: Stolen image locator.....

[Biomech]

I imagine it looks for, amongst other things, matching histograms.

[jgomez65]

They DO NOT use metadata or keywords.

They index the picture, create a unique ID for the picture (my guess is that they use some kind of proprietary algorithm to capture specific characteristics of the image that are impossible/difficult to erase or alter) then they look into their data base for pictures that matches the ID on their data base.

Even thought they have almost 2 billion pictures indexed, that doesn't mean that all images on the internet are on their data base.

It might not be perfect, but it is a great step forward.