How to Perform Reverse Image Search in an Easy Way
If you’ve stumbled upon an image on the Internet – perhaps on your favorite social networking site – and want to know more about it, you can always ask the person in charge of the posting. Most likely, they just copied the image from somewhere else and no longer know where it came from. But it normal. You can also take on detective work yourself, and there are many resources to help you.
Find your image on Google or Tineye
Most people probably know that you can do a simple reverse image search on sites like Google and Tineye – two of the best places most people recommend if you’re trying to find an image source, a better version, or websites that can provide more context about the image itself. (On Google, it’s as easy as opening a site, clicking the camera icon, and pasting the URL or uploaded image. Tineye works in a similar way.)
To make this process easier, Google has built this capability right into Chrome – just right-click the image and choose Search Image on Google – or you can install a Firefox extension that does the same. Tineye users in Chrome and Firefox also have extensions that do the same: right-click the image and you can search for Tineye without visiting the website first.
Use many reverse image sites at once
There is also a nuclear bomb. Or rather, ImgOps , a great website that brings together a range of reverse image search tools under one roof.
Paste in the URL of an image (or upload an image) and you can quickly reverse image searches across various services by simply clicking on the provided hyperlinks (including Google, Bing, Tineye, Reddit, Yandex, and more). The site is also incredibly useful if you want to upload an image to a GIF host, edit it, find hidden data in it, or completely convert it to another file format.
And if you want this functionality built right into your browser, the Noobox Chrome and Search By Image extensions for Firefox allow you to right-click on a photo and select a range of different reverse image tools to search for.
See what EXIF image data can tell you
If neither Google Reverse Image Search nor Tineye helps you much, you can always try dragging and dropping the image into the EXIF viewer , which might tell you a little more about how it was captured (or where, if you’re trying to look up. how you can visit the place where the amazing photo was seen). This may not work in most cases if the person responsible for the image or the sites it is hosted on have removed the EXIF information from the photo, but this is an option.
Worries others who may know more about the image than you
Likewise, online communities like the Help Me Find subreddit can also shed light on the image you stumble upon. It’s not a guarantee – and I wouldn’t bombard them with daily requests – but it’s another good way to learn more about a particular image. Have a nice hunt!