Something which I mentioned in my Pinterest post is that on places like Tumblr, it can sometimes be difficult to find the original source of a posted picture. Its something that drives me crazy, I think that things should be correctly credited to the maker.
Here’s a great example. This post popped up into the Explore section of my Google Reader. I opened the page, and this is what I ended up with:
Looks delicious. But where can I get this yummy treat? The only source on this was the place where the account had reblogged it from. Which had the source as another Tumblr, which had it as another Tumblr – you get the idea. Unfortunately the original Tumblr account that posted it didn’t have any links to where the photo was from, or any other sort of information. How is this fat girl going to find the sweet treats?
Enter reverse image searching. Tineye.com allows you to give it a photo or address and it will trace where else a photo can be found.
You can submit an image to TinEye to find out where it came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or to find higher resolution versions.
TinEye is the first image search engine on the web to use image identification technology rather than keywords, metadata or watermarks. It is free to use for non-commercial searching.
First result there is the picture I posted earlier. Second result is a site that isn’t a Weheartit, Tumblr or any other sort of aggregation site – I clicked through and found that it links back to Baskin Robbins. Success! I know now where this is from, and now I’m sad that I’m unlikely to have one because its only available at branches in South Korea, the Middle East and just 2 shops in the US. Sigh.
If you want to check where an image came from, TinEye is seriously useful for finding out more information about a photo – and if you suspect that your images are being used elsewhere, this will tell you every site that it can be found. Awesome!
Thank you so so much for posting this. I hate not crediting properly, but I also hate seeing a great picture I want to use, and not being able to because I have no idea where it came from originally. I am definitely going to start using this from now on.
This is brilliant, I hate that about Tumblr too and hesitate to reblog a lot of things if there’s no original source credited! Will definitely be using this, thank youuuu :)
I’m going to be pedantic. Desert = Sahara. Dessert = Chocolate. A good desert is far away though!
But also, yum, and also this is so useful! I’ve done the ‘Images from weheartit’ thing out of sheer laziness before but will be using this from now on.
Ha! Have amended it now :) There are certain words I have a mental block on, and thats one of them!