Someone rightly said that a picture is worth a thousand words. But at times, you might have stumbled upon some images which are hard to describe in words. This is where a reverse image search comes for the rescue. It’s a special type of search that takes in an image and tries to match and find similar images from its database. After finding similar images, you will get an idea, and you’ll be able to describe them with suitable words.
Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) is the term used by techies to define reverse image search. Reverse image search is a useful facility for identifying people and objects. For instance, you have seen a relaxing chair but are lost for words which you have to put in a search engine for finding a similar one. Here this tool plays a vital role as you can get hands-on a similar image without wasting time searching with words.
Moreover, this application is useful for checking if someone else is using your copyright images. If your website’s image is being used somewhere else without your permission, then you can take legal action against that person or ask for credits.
Accuracy of Results
The accuracy of the results relies on the Reverse Image Search engine you are using. The reverse image search tool by Duplichecker gives you accurate results. The more images it has stored in its databanks, the more accurate will be the results. Similar or closely matching images to the one that you are searching can exist on the internet. If your entered image on reverse image search does not exist on any website, then you could end up with a message saying ‘no image found’.
On the other hand, if there are thousands of similar pictures like those of a popular product or celebrity, the reverse image search will display several pages of similar results. If you did a reverse image search for a picture of a blue-colored Mercedes Smart car, you would be provided with hundreds of similar images.
What you have to remember is that this technology is not an exact science. If you have taken a picture of an object from the left side with a sky blue background, it’s not necessary that any picture taken from a different angle or different background would not appear. For instance, if you’ve inserted a Russian cat image for reverse image search, then the results might show some other cats’ pictures as well. Hence, you cannot expect a reverse image search tool to pull out an exact match.
Reverse image search engines are not using Artificial Intelligence or 3D as yet. They simply divide an image into groups of pixels and conduct a pixel group match with other images. It would be foolish to expect it to be a hundred percent accurate. We can be sure that this facility will become more accurate pretty soon.
Limitations of Reverse Image Search
It’s necessary to remember that reverse image search engines have some limitations. File size, file format (JPEG, GIF, etc.), resolution of the image can distort the results of the reverse image search engine. Therefore, do read the limitations before you decide to use any one of these facilities. Some of these limitations include:
- Some tools will not allow you to search with an image larger than 20 MB size
- Some tools might take a lot of time to retrieve similar images and display on your screen
- You might find some results that are too small, which cannot be seen without opening the link of a particular website.
- Some tools aren’t available for free, and you’ll have to pay a lot for getting hands-on the desired similar images.
Conclusion
Reverse image search has become extremely popular as versions of it are available on iOS (Apple), Android phones and as well as online tool on website. We know how crazy some people are about taking snapshots from their mobile phones and finding similar images. Also, the proliferation of social media has a number of people wanting to know if a picture of a person posted on a social media profile is the person’s own image or a fake. Reverse image search is bound to grow, and its accuracy will improve as the databases of image search engines will nurture.
Share Your Views: