Research Guides: Image Use & Citation: Reverse Image Search

Reverse Image Search

Reverse Image Search is what you would do to find the creator/ owner of an image online when you do not know the source. You can use Google Images search or Tineye to help you find the creator/ owner of an image. However, sometimes these searches are not exact and you will have sift through the results to find the one you are looking for. If you cannot decide which result is the best one, always remember to do you best & provide:

link back to where you found the image
give credit to the creator
follow copyright & creative commons guidelines listed

TinEye
Using TinEye, you can search by image or perform what we call a reverse image search. You can do that by uploading an image, or searching by URL. You can also simply drag and drop your images to start your search.
TinEye constantly crawls the web and adds images to its index. Today, the TinEye index is over 31.1 billion images.
Google Reverse Image Search
When you search using an image, your search results may include:

Similar images
Sites that include the image
Other sizes of the image you searched for
Search using an image works best when the image is likely to show up in other places on the web. So you'll get more results for famous landmarks than you will for personal images like your latest family photo.