- The TinEye Chrome extension is here!
You asked for it, and we are happy to deliver. The TinEye extension for Chrome is now live, and ready to make your searching a little easier.
Instructions for installing the extension can be found on our plugins page, or you can just jump right over to the Chrome Extensions site and click ‘Install’. It’s that easy! While you’re there, be sure to check out our how-to video on YouTube (or watch it below).
This extension works for Windows and Linux. Once Chrome supports it, a Mac version will be coming soon. Also, Chrome currently does not support right-clicking so the present extension behaves similar to our TinEye bookmarklet (but much nicer!). We’ll be updating the functionality once right-clicking is made available.
Enjoy!
- TinEye commercial accounts… the really-super-easy way
A while back we introduced a commercial version of TinEye: a paid search alternative for professional, commercial or high-volume users. While the free version of TinEye only allows you to do a limited number of searches per day and is for non commercial use only, the commercial version of TinEye allows you to purchase as many searches as you like–for commercial or non-commercial use.
We initially launched the commercial version of TinEye as an API only, but what a lot of people don’t know is that we now also provide a user-friendly interface for commercial accounts, over at our commercial website.
This means that you can create a commercial TinEye account and use it to search for images in the same way that you are used to doing at tineye.com. Upload an image, or cut and paste a URL. There is even a separate browser plugin for commercial accounts so that you can right-click on any web image to search for it.
So let’s get started! Here is a step-by-step tutorial on how to get you or your company set up with a TinEye commercial account and start searching… the easy way.
1.
Go to the TinEye commercial website. This is different than the regular TinEye website, and all of the commercial stuff is done here, including searching and checking your account.
2.
Click the Sign up tab to sign up for a commercial account. Fill in all of your details, and if you are using TinEye commercially, don’t forget to provide the URL for your company website. You will receive an email verification as soon as you’re done.
3.
Check your email for a message from TinEye and click the verification link! You will be asked to log in with the email and password that you just used to sign up.
4.
Once you’re logged in, you’ll find yourself on the Welcome page. Don’t click away yet! There’s some good-to-know stuff here to help get you started. You can get back to this page from wherever you are on the site by going to About > Welcome (but you need to be logged in!).
5.
Before you can start searching, you need to buy a search bundle (you need to be logged in to actually buy a search bundle, but you can see the pricing even if you’re not). Transactions are handled via PayPal; as soon as you’re done you’ll be directed back to your account summary page on our site, which will show what you just purchased.
6.
You’re all set! Click on the Search tab to get started. Then simply search the way you would normally do on tineye.com. Upload an image from your local drive to search for it, or point to a web image or web page by pasting the URL.
Bonus!
To make searching even easier, get the browser plugin for TinEye commercial accounts. It lets you right-click on any web image to search for it (currently available for the Firefox browser only). To install, go to the Search page and click on the image that says ‘Install the API plugin for Firefox’.
Note: The browser plugins for the regular version of TinEye found at tineye.com/plugin will not work with your TinEye API account. You must install the commercial version to perform searches that will work with your prepaid search bundle.
And that’s it folks, happy searching!
- A groovy TinEye tutorial
Groove Dexter over at groovyPost wrote up a great tutorial on how to use TinEye. It covers finding larger versions of an image, using the ‘Compare Images’ feature to compare similar images, and finding out more information about the subject of an image. Check it out, you might learn something new!
- Who created that image? TinEye adds the iStockphoto and Photoshelter collections.
We are happy to announce that TinEye our reverse image search engine has grown its index again adding over 32 million images including the entire iStockphoto and Photoshelter image collections. This is great news for photographers, image buyers and anyone interested in copyright compliance and attribution.
Today the TinEye index sits at just over 1.2 billion images – yes, that’s billion not million – 1,267,565,027 to be exact. As we grow we have been looking at how to answer just one question:
- who created that image?
Why is this important? Simple: Attribution. Creators want to establish authorship of their work and also know where their images are used. TinEye facilitates both.
As TinEye’s index grew, TinEye became the defacto image registry. Every day TinEye answers the “who created that image” question and connects images to their source. TinEye does this without keywords or metadata. Simply use an image to find an image. This is what we like to call the beginning of the attribution movement.
To start we are adding the world’s stock photography images to TinEye to connect all images available for licensing to their creator and distributor. And that’s just the beginning.
Every day TinEye helps image authors by:
- linking images to the original author – this is about attribution
- allowing image buyers to find the proper distributor of an image to purchase it
- showing how and where images are being used on the web
- protecting against image theft
Maybe you are a designer and you’d like to purchase an image for a project and you have a thumbnail or comp image but you’re not sure where it came from. Maybe you’re in love with a certain awesome image and would like to see the author’s other work. Maybe you want to see who else on the web is using an image… maybe you’re the image author. It does not matter: TinEye connects the dots for you.
At TinEye, we want to index every image in the world to help you find what you are looking for. iStockphoto and Photoshelter are a pretty awesome step towards that but it does not stop there. We will be adding a series of stock photography collections in the coming weeks so please stay tuned. If you are interested in having your image collection added to TinEye, get in touch.
Start using TinEye or join the 500,000 people who dowloaded our TinEye Firefox add-on to make image searching a single click.
- TinEye Firefox add-on
Thanks TinEye fans! Our TinEye Firefox add-on broke 500,000 downloads this week. We are excited!
- Photo authenticity in reporting
As TinEye scoops PEI news in the CBC reporting today I can’t help but think about the two blog posts that have been brewing in my head for a little while now:
- Authenticity of photographs in reporting (or editorial news) and
- Photo credits: and by photo credits I mean providing appropriate photo credits at all time.
So there will be soon a longer blog post about both, in the meantime enjoy the little gem that Peter Rukavina unearthed this morning! The photo credit should read iStockphoto and not CBC.
- TinEye API
We are excited to officially launch our TinEye Commercial API.
Since we launched TinEye, your most requested feature has been an API. For the non developer community: an API is an ‘application programming interface‘. It is a tool that allows you to access and interface with an existing web-based service, and enables you to develop programs that interact with this service. Our API allows you to develop programs that utilize the TinEye search engine.
We have seen great interest for the TinEye API from the user-generated and photography communities, developers, our clients and TinEye users. The API can be used in so many ways:
- Websites with user-generated content can check all incoming images against the TinEye index
- Content owners can queue up image batches to be searched automatically or at regular intervals
- Mobile applications can search incoming photos to identify content
- And lots of other solutions from copyright compliance to profile verification to brand monitoring!
Just remember: The TinEye API allows you to interact with TinEye the same way you are currently doing it via the web. You send TinEye a search request via the API and it provides you with a list of results. Our new API website provides complete documentation for everything you need to know about implementing the API. It provides pricing and allows you to make purchases online. There is an FAQ and a brand new TinEye forum for questions.
A few words about what the API is not: It is not installable software. It does not have a user interface. It will not do anything on its own, automatically. It will not make you breakfast (even though it would really like to, trust us). A knowledge of programming is required to implement the API. If you are not technical, maybe bake a batch of bribe-cookies for your programmer friends or co-workers?
Get started with the TinEye API today!
- The truth and nothing but the truth: Shepard Fairey lies.
Via Techcrunch:Striking at the heart of his fair use case against the AP, Shepard Fairey has now been forced to admit that he sued the AP under false pretenses by lying about which AP photograph he used to make the Hope and Progress posters. Mr. Fairey has also now admitted to the AP that he fabricated and attempted to destroy other evidence in an effort to bolster his fair use case and cover up his previous lies and omissions.
The evidence of which photograph Mr. Fairey has used is right here in a combination of human analysis (good old fashioned research) and image recognition analysis. Mr. Shepard Fairey has used Mannie Garcia’s photograph to create his iconic image. I am not sure the fair use movement is going to want Mr. Shepard Fairey as its poster man!
- TinEye Firefox Plugin = Awesomesauce
What you make is important
We thought enabling you to search for an image using an images was the apogée of search. The nec plus ultra, the ultimate … well you get my drift. Using TinEye you still had to upload an image or feed TinEye a URL. For those of you still unfamiliar with TinEye (how is that possible?):
TinEye is a reverse image search engine. 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. For some real TinEye search examples, check out our Cool Searches page.
So to make life even easier for you, we created a series of TinEye plugins. And it looks like you guys just totally love our TinEye Firefox plugin: we surpassed 250,000 downloads, and that’s only since we started counting! My team tells me that we are way way beyond that. But hey, we are sticking to the public numbers! And as of this post they are actually getting closer to 300,000 downloads!
And boy this also makes us a top download!
Thanks for spreading the word about the TinEye Firefox plugin. Help us reach the ONE MILLION download! That’s a milestone we are going to celebrate in the ideeplex! Thanks for helping out get the word out:
and everyone who keeps tweeting about TinEye.
- TinEye on CNN
TinEye, our reverse image search engine, ended up on CNN with Kyra Phillips. Lucky TinEye!
During this segment, CNN’s Kyra Phillips talks to virtual safety expert Christine Durst about protecting your family photos online. Have a listen:
Surprising what TinEye can unearth, like say an older photograph of Kyra Phillips being used on a Latin American online clinic website!
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