# Good way to know if your photos are being stolen



## JerryPH (Feb 19, 2009)

I kinda fell on this today.  Looks REALLY nice in the way it works:

TinEye Reverse Image Search

Basically, this is a search engine that is slowly indexing pictures on the net (about 3 million a day) and is incredibly fast in returning answers to if your pic was stolen by someone.

Al fellow wedding photographer found someone that stole his pic and he resolved it within 25 minutes.  Issue resolved amicably to boot!

Anyways, check it out and let me know what you think.  This is still in beta, but man, I am genuinely impressed.


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## jlykins (Feb 19, 2009)

I was confused for a minute. You changed your avitar... Great site though


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## Jaszek (Feb 19, 2009)

wow u changed ur avatar lol. the bad thing is that it identifies the info of the photo, including size i think. So someone could've just cropped it a bit and its different. They shoykd do it so it reads the binary data of the image and looks for a match. Is that possible?


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## LarissaPhotography (Feb 19, 2009)

We've seen customers of other studios copying their pictures at Walmart.  So I guess that's another way to catch people.  Not sure if Walmart ended up catching them.


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## MikeBcos (Feb 19, 2009)

Well, I just did a search and found one of my photos being used here: [ame=http://www.amazon.de/Clementoni-30141-Puzzle-Bridge-London/dp/B0002LIDP6]Clementoni 30141 - Puzzle 500 Teile HQ - Tower Bridge - London, 500 Teile: Amazon.de: Spielzeug[/ame]

That is my image, unfortunately I have no idea what any of the page says or even how to contact amazon.de, does anyone read enough German to tell me what this page is about?

Thanks


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## Dweller (Feb 19, 2009)

MikeBcos said:


> does anyone read enough German to tell me what this page is about?



I believe LaFoto is fluent in both English and German. She would be more than happy to help I imagine.

If that is truly your image, then 1. nice shot, and 2. looks like it was used as for a 500 piece puzzle. LaFoto should be able to help determine which company is publishing it. Amazon is just the middle man.


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## MikeBcos (Feb 19, 2009)

OK, after I calmed down a little I started looking very closely, that is not my image, but you should be able to see why I thought it was, here's mine:







This version has been warmed up in PS, the original has the same colour balance as the one on amazon.de.

It would seem the image search site uses a fancy algorithm to identify identical photos, look how close it got with mine.


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## Dubious Drewski (Feb 19, 2009)

This is great! But before I use it, I need to know: do I upload a certain size of image or can I just upload an 800x600 version of an image.


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## MikeBcos (Feb 19, 2009)

Dubious Drewski said:


> This is great! But before I use it, I need to know: do I upload a certain size of image or can I just upload an 800x600 version of an image.



Judging by what it found that is similar to mine you can upload any size you like, it seems to examine image content.


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## JerryPH (Feb 19, 2009)

lol... I know, it screws me up a few seconds when someone I pay attention to does the same. 

The engine apparently makes a digital fingerprint of the picture and brings up others with a matching or close fingerprint.

This means that if someone takes your picture, crops it or removes a watermark, or even changes the shape and colour of the hair on your subjects, it can still be found (or so they say).

The best part is that this service is free.  I can see it becoming a pay service in the future once it becomes popular... that is the way of all things in business.


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## Dubious Drewski (Feb 20, 2009)

So, it's a good thing that none of my most popular images have turned up through this service. But I'm also a bit disappointed that none of them turned up.

I mean, it's terrible being thieved and all, but it would also be flattering that someone would want your imagery enough to try to steal it.

*Sigh* Someday, I'll be a good enough photographer that people will try to steal my images.  ....someday.  I can dream until then.


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## astrostu (Feb 20, 2009)

Yeah, it's not 100% accurate.  I plugged in one of my moon photos and, well, it said it's been stolen 799 times.  Based solely on this and what Mike found, I would say that photographs of common objects, or even tourist-like places where there's really only one vantage place to take a photo, will show up as duplicates on this website.


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## Overread (Feb 21, 2009)

interesting service.
They could keep it free as it is - but I expect some service like it auto reading a flickr account would be under a paid account. Now if it were to autosearch a whole account of photos at once that would be fantastic (it would take time though) but it would greatly speed things up.
Certainly I hope it keeps going - this could be a fantastic service for photographers - both pro and amateur!


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