Up until recently it’s been nearly impossible to know for certain where your online photos might end up on the Internet. As we’ve heard over the years a growing vocal minority will be the first to jump on photographers complaining about online image theft stating “Get used to it. You put it online. That’s how it is.” This argument is anything but true and frustrates the hell out of photographers who know better.
It’s become clear there is a growing interest in new technologies to address the current “wild west” nature of image theft on the Internet by stock agencies and individual photographers alike. Google recently released a research paper on VisualRank that like text search assigns a weighting and ranking to images while also leveraging image-recognition software methods. Although Google is the 800 pound gorilla of search they’ve been beat to the punch by Idée Inc. who recently released a private beta of TinEye. As you’ll see in TinEye’s demonstration video they’ve created an image search that is as simple as a Google search. All an end user has to do is reference an image online or upload a low resolution image and TinEye returns results of where that image is currently found online. What is most impressive is their image matching technology that will match similar images even if they’ve been cropped, resized or Photoshop’d.
I am a born cynic, but after putting TinEye to the test with some of my photos I’ve quickly become a believer and can’t wait for them to expand their search index and hopefully implement a Google Alert like service. At the moment they’ve indexed a relatively small portion of the Internet (roughly 500,000,000 images), but they’re asking beta testers to recommend sites to index. The service at the moment is rather narrow, but I can see where this has legs to quickly expand.
Just to show an example I decided to search one of my more commonly referenced photos of the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree in New York City. The blog post containing this image has been accessed nearly 50,000 times and it is one of my most popular photos. With out a doubt I knew this would end up somewhere it was not supposed to. In the past by monitoring my web site log I’ve caught a few people using the image with out my knowledge, so I figured this would be a perfect example to test on TinEye.
Sure enough I referenced the image on my blog and found a few more sites (see above) that had slipped by me who have been using my photo without my knowledge or permission.
Granted the jury is still out with TinEye, but my initial experience has been a good one. The simplicity of the interface, the image-recognition capabilities and speed at which it finds images has caught my eye. I’ll definitely be watching TinEye as it develops and provide feedback through its beta stage.
If you’re curious to try TinEye let me know in your comment to this post. I have 50 invites that I can share.
[tags]copyright, photo, image, search, theft, technology, TinEye[/tags]
I’d love to have a go at the service if/when you get more invites.
Just got more invites… leave a comment and I’ll relay one to you if you’re interested.
I would love to have a TinEye invite. BTW it’s such a great name!
Thanks!
Hey, Jim. This is a great thing. Finally, right? I’d love an invite if you still have one.
Wow! Amazing!! I would lovelovelove to try it!!
Jim, I’d like to try this out if you still have any invites. Thanks, Geoff.
Thanks for the info Jim…if there are anymore I would love to test..I understand if you are max out.
Just in case people are arriving to this post late I still have invites.
Got the invite. Thanks, Jim!
Hey, still got any invites? I’d be very glad if one appeared my way 🙂
Looks like im too late, I would like to try it though. Thanks for the info!
-Corey
l would be very very happy to see your pictures taken all over this nice world.
Thank you if you’ll do.
Sorry, l have some more to add;
Congratulates on your work, you know you are best. You are young and have lots of years full of success.
l must give my especial thanks by your link to one of your friends; Mr. Dan Calistrat ,whom l got your name; he is great too.
Good Luck(Salute from Turkey)
I’m a concert photographer who has been fighting with several users on Ebay and online in general who are stealing and selling my photos. Cease and desist letters always seem to work well, but the trick is to find these people in the first place. I’d love to get an invite if that is at all possible. Thank you for posting this; I’ve been waiting for something like this for quite a bit.
Any invites still available? would love to give it a try.
I sent u an email about the invite before, and you told me to drop a line here =] I’d love to try TinEye, so it would be great if you could send me an invite. Thanks again, Jim! =D
– Charmaine
This is by far the most interesting thing I’ve read so far this year. Very promising! Send me an invite if you have any left. Thx
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If you still have any invites left, I’d be very grateful for one. I’m nowhere near professional photography standard, but I have two flickr images that seem to have massive hits, and although I google them, I fear they are being used but not coming up in google searches. Especially when my stats reveal search terms like “free wizard image” and “free mountain image” have come up!
Thanks a lot for your help, and the article was a really insightful read.
Wow, this is very ineteresting… hook me up if you can!
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Who would want to steal images, you know with the lowering cost of digital cameras.. 😉
TinEye looks pretty great, I can’t wait to try it. Now they should just partner with somone to email / invoice people who “borrow” work without asking.
Adam in Phoenix.
It sounds like magic! The internet is great but has so many negative aspects.
I’ve started to upload smaller sizes and including a copyright on images with the hope that it is too much trouble to get it off.
I’d love an invitation to try it
Charlene
This sounds really good. Would love to try it if you could possibly send an invite. Thanks
jon
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Hi,
I would like to try TinyEye.
Would be glad to receive an invitation from you(if you are still left with invitations :D)
Thanks,
NaveenKumar.
Hi, This sounds like a great tool! Thanks for bringing it to our attention. I’d love to try it out if you still have invites.
Thanks!
Petra
Great post. I wonder if a new google search tool would possibly be more effective due to increased scope/cache? Would love to try TinEye if invites are still available.
I’m interesed in trying it. I’ve applied for an invite, but if you have one going spare, I’d be more than willing to try it out and let you know what I think.
I am interested in an invite also.
Thank you,
Nicole
Realizing that I’ve come into this party a month late, if you have any invites left, I’d love one. While I dont think I’m nearly important enough to steal from, this sounds facinating.
Sounds like a very handy tool! I’m late to the party too, but I’d love an invite if there are any left to be found.
Not sure if you have any invites left, but if you do I’d love to try it. I do portrait photography and would love to know who’s “borrowing” my images (http://dmphotogallery.com/).
Aaron
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TinEye does not always work. Each photographer has to remember to put some unseenable codes in the pics before they upload it in the internet. I heard tineye can recognise the pics if the photographers did so (eventhough the pics are re-named by the thieves).
The safest way to protect your pics from being used illegally by someone else is to put watermarks allover it.
Does anyone know a more powerful tool than tineye ?
Hello, I’m fil and I would like to try this product because I’ve got people in the past stealing my photos and I found atleast two that did. And this was on myspace and xanga sites before privacy issues were taken into action. I would also like to expand tinyeye’s search engine as well as help my friends protect and securing their images.
I had an employer steal my private photos and email them to my ex co workers is there anything that I can do??? Deana_girl@yahoo.com
Hi,
I have been trying to find out where a photo came from online (I believe someone is stealing photos and has made a fake facebook page) but I am missing how TinEye and Google Image searches work, because all it seems to do is give you back the link from where you’ve dragged the photo in question from in the first place. This obviously doesn’t do any good. Am I using it the wrong way?
Is there anyway to do a search on a directory full of images I have thousands of pictures and it would take forever to search online for them all.