Have you ever wondered how we can know if a Facebook, Twitter or Instagram profile is real ? Many times the best way to find out is by investigating the profile photo, since in the event that it is a bot or a fake, the photo most likely belongs to someone else.
On the other hand, if we are professional photographers, or have an Instagram profile full of high-quality images and photos, it is possible that at some point some media uses our creations without our permission and without giving credit to the artist. can we identify them?
In either of the 2 cases, all we need is to know the original origin of an image. That is, perform a reverse search of the photo in question . So we can know the original source. The rest, by pure and simple discard, will be copies.
How to discover the origin of a photograph or image
By performing a reverse lookup on an image we can also obtain other useful information, such as the date the image was created , when it was first uploaded to the network, and if there are versions of the same image with modifications.
To carry out this task we have 2 main tools:
- Google images
- TinEye
Getting image information from Google Images
This is the most popular web tool for reverse lookups. The first thing we have to do is enter Google Images. We can access it from the browser by entering Google.com and clicking on “ Images ” (in the upper right margin) or through this direct LINK .
Next, click on the camera icon (“ Search by images ”) located next to the magnifying glass in the search engine.
This will open the Google Lens image search engine, which will offer us two different ways to search:
- Paste image link: We can do a search by adding the URL address of an image that is uploaded to an internet web page.
- Upload an image: We can also drag an image or upload an image file that we have stored on our PC or mobile device.
Once the image is loaded, the Google Lens web application will open, where we will see the screen divided into two parts.
- In the right half of the screen,Google will try to identify what the image contains, be it an object, an animal, a city, or even a famous person. Other images that share certain visual matches with the original image will also be displayed.
- The left halfshows the image we just uploaded, with several useful options that allow us to copy or translate any text that appears in the image, as well as search for the original source .
If we click on the “Search image source” button, Google will show us a search result with various data:
- The size of the image.
- It will also tell us if there are other versions of that image in different sizes.
- Most likely text query for that image (here it tells us what people are typing when searching for the image on Google).
- List of similar images.
- The rest are websites where we can find that image or small variants of it.
For this example, I’ve taken a photo of one of my favorite TV characters and uploaded it to Google Images.
The search result tells us that the person who appears in the image is Dwight Schrute, and that it is a fictional character from the series The Office, played by actor Rainn Wilson. The first two entries are links to the character’s biography, both from Wikipedia and the Dunderpedia (a database with endless information about the series). After all this information, we found a lot of websites that have used that same image to make memes.
We can carry out this same process with our own photos, and it is great to know if other pages are using our creations without mentioning the author or without permission.
Finding the source of an image or photo with TinEye
TinEye is another great image search engine that allows us to obtain other types of data that are extremely interesting. As in Google Images, we only have to load an image or indicate the URL for the machine to start working.
The tool shows us in its results the number of times the image or photo appears on the Internet . Thanks to its filters, we can see at a glance all the websites in which it appears. We can also sort the search results by age to discover the original source of that image .
Following the same example of the previous image of Dwight, thanks to the fact that we have ordered the results by date, we know that the first capture of that sequence of The Office first appeared on the “Rotten Tomatoes” website on February 7, 2008. Days later, various variants of that image appeared on other TV and entertainment websites.
In addition to these 2 tools, there are other similar ones to carry out this type of search, but both Google Images and TinEye are the fastest and most effective.
How to do a reverse search of a photo from the mobile
The bad thing about all this is that although they work great from a PC browser, the same does not happen if we try to do a reverse search from the mobile. Both Google Chrome (Android) and Safari (iOS) are not supported, so we must use an alternative.
“Reverse Photo” is the solution for mobiles and tablets.
The alternative in this case is called reverse.photos , and it is a Google Images safe-conduct for mobile searches. Once the photo is loaded, it shows us a link with the Google search results.
Reverse Image Search
If you plan to do a lot of image searches from your mobile, you can also choose to install an app like Reverse Image Search. Basically it is a tool to search for images, and for this it uses the Google, Yandex and Bing engines.
