Content

• Steps
• Advice

Do you have a picture of someone, but don't know who they are, or what does the picture mean? Use a variety of online image search engines to find duplicates of photos, track their origins and discover more information. Google Images (or Google Images) and TinEye are the most popular options, and you can even conduct a search right on your mobile device.

Steps

Method 1 of 3: Use Google Image search

1. 

   Find the image you want to look up. You can use Google to search with images instead of text. Google will try to find copies of similar images on the internet, as well as provide images that look almost identical. This can help you identify the origin of the photo and potentially discover more images of the same character. You can search by images stored on your computer, or by looking at the URL of the image.
   • To get the address of an image, right-click on the image and select "Copy image address / URL".
   • To save the image to your computer, right-click on the image and select "Save image".
   • If you are using a mobile device, click here.

2. 

   
   
   Visit the Google Images homepage. Go to by browser. You should see a search field similar to that of Google.

3. 

   
   
   Click the button with the camera image to the right of the search box to search by image.

4. 

   Add the image you want to search. There are two ways to search by image:
   • Select "Paste image URL" and paste the copied address into the data area.
   • Select "Upload an image" and browse for the image you have saved on your computer.

5. 

   
   
   Click "Search by image". A list of search results will appear. If images are found with a different size, these results will show up at the top. Pages found with comparable images are shown below, and images that look close to the bottom of the results page. advertisement

Method 2 of 3: Use TinEye

1. 

   Find the image you want to look up. TinEye is a search engine designed to search through images. You can use either URL or upload image file. Because TinEye does not find similar images, you can use this tool to find the source of the image quickly.
   • To get the address of an image, right-click on the image and choose "Copy image address / URL".
   • To save the image to your computer, right-click on the image and choose "Save image".

2. 

   Visit the TinEye homepage. Go to using your browser.

3. 

   Upload an image or paste it in the URL you copied. Click the Upload button to browse for the image file on your computer, or paste the copied URL of the image into the search box.

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   Review the results. TinyEye will only respond to images that are similar to the input image, so you need to check the results to find the background of the image.

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   Visit pages containing images to find out more information. The page containing the images can give you a lot of information about the character's identity. Go through a few results to see if you get anything more out of that person. Search for captions or text around images. advertisement

Method 3 of 3: Using a mobile device

1. 

   Install Chrome browser for the device. You can't use the Google Image Search website for image search on a mobile device, but you can use the Chrome mobile browser instead. Download the free browser on the app store if you haven't already. This method works for both iOS and Android devices.
   • You can also use TinEye (as above) by copying and pasting the URL of the image you want to look up for search. Press and hold on an image, then select "Copy image address" to copy the URL to your device's clipboard and paste it into TinEye's search data area.

2. 

   Find the image you want to look up. While photos cannot be uploaded, you can use any online photos that you can access. Use Chrome to navigate to the image you want to search.
   • If you only have the photo file on your computer, you can first upload the file to a server like Flickr, then navigate to the image on your mobile device.

3. 

   Press and hold on the image to be searched. A menu will appear shortly after.

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   Choose "Search Google for this image". Google Image will conduct a search based on the image you choose.

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   Review the results. Google gives you the best possible guesses about the image's name, and also provides links to the pages where the image is used. Similar images can also be found at the bottom of the first page of results. advertisement

Advice

• TinEye is a good choice for checking whether the image someone is using is really their original photo! Post detailed pictures of anyone you know, maybe even a wikiHow profile picture, search and see how many times 'their pictures' have been used online.