How to Identify Photos and Images of Unknown Origin

Who Is This Mystery Basketball Team?

You've found a cool picture online, and you wonder: Where did it come from? Who is in it? Where was it taken? Is there a better copy available? Here's how to track down images and photographs with an online reverse image search tool.

Instructions

1. **Save the Photo Information**

   Save the image to a file on your local computer...

   --OR--

   Copy the url of online image (this can often be done by right-clicking the picture on a Windows computer, and looking under 'Properties').

2. **Head to TinEye**

   TinEye.com is a "reverse image search engine". That is, you 'show' tineye an image, and it will search for other copies of the same images online.

   TinEye does not look for similar images or photos. It's looking for an exact match! Except, it can also recognize pictures that have been cropped, resized, or otherwise modified.

   This is not the first search engine to attempt such a feat, but as far as I can tell, it is far and away the best. TinEye actually does a pretty good job of finding copies of images. They have a modest database of about a billion images, but it appears to be expanding rapidly.

   It's not 100% successful, but it's useful enough to be worth a try.

3. **Give it a Test Run**

   There's a mystery photograph posted above, by the introduction to this article. Save it to your computer, and then see if you can find it with TinEye.com.