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Author Topic: Reverse image search engines - your new best friend!  (Read 49941 times)

Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Reverse image search engines - your new best friend!
« Reply #20 on: July 08, 2011, 08:32:44 pm »

 
... How do you translate: 'Dear Scumbag...

Do not know about scumbag, but try something like "Yu Stin Ki Pu..." :)

Josh-H

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Re: Reverse image search engines - your new best friend!
« Reply #21 on: July 08, 2011, 08:49:52 pm »

You know.. its one thing for someone to rip an image off and use it on a 'blog' or some personal website. Usually, its flattering to have ones photographs ripped off in this way and almost always there is nothing the offender is trying to gain financially out of it. They usually just like the photograph and will often at least credit the photographer. Its not 'right' to take a photograph and use it like this (without contacting, seeking permission and crediting the photographer), but its not the crime of the century either.

However, when its a commercial entity seeking to use the photograph to generate revenue its a different story and these are the ones that really get under my skin. The ability to reverse search with google has just shown up two examples to me of overseas travel companies using my photographs to promote destinations in the hopes people will book with them. Now this really pisses me off.

I was enjoying a saturday morning coffee in quite a good mood and now I have to think about contacting my lawyer and taking some kind of action.

I hope google develop this search engine capability further and again, I hope Adobe integrate this type of facility into Lightroom. As it stands its very slow to search image by image.

Edit.. LOL Further searching reveals these guys even have the cheek to remove my copyright logo and put their own on it! LINK You can see on the left hand side where they have badly removed my copyright logo in photoshop *shakes head in disgust*
« Last Edit: July 08, 2011, 09:18:02 pm by Josh-H »
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kaelaria

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Re: Reverse image search engines - your new best friend!
« Reply #22 on: July 08, 2011, 10:36:35 pm »

Great.  Now I'm going to have to spend many hours exorting and searching.  I'm finding my stuff up after just a few minutes of looking.  This one, they didn't even bother to remove my watermark http://www.desktopwallpaperhd.com/wallpapers/cigar-world-content-uploads-1349.html
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tom b

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Re: Reverse image search engines - your new best friend!
« Reply #23 on: July 09, 2011, 12:42:26 am »

Tom, the Google results are split into two types: direct matches and similar matches. For your particular image, there were no direct matches found, so you only saw the similar matches section. Normally you would see a list of exact matches first.

Graham, I was just pointing out how whack the similar images were. There must be at least 100 000 images of the Sydney Harbour Bridge that are very similar to my image and yet I got none.

I thought that the screen grab may give a few of you a laugh. I had a chuckle when I saw this search result of an earlier LuLa post. How the powerlines are similar to a car wheel and sandals bewilders me.



Cheers,
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Tom Brown

Graham Mitchell

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Re: Reverse image search engines - your new best friend!
« Reply #24 on: July 09, 2011, 03:24:57 am »

It's amazing what you can find. I found a music video with nearly half a million views, which uses one of my photos. It won't be up much longer - just reported it to youtube.



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kaelaria

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Re: Reverse image search engines - your new best friend!
« Reply #25 on: July 09, 2011, 04:26:07 am »

Where are you all posting these high res images in the first place?  Mine have been taken off my websites, but I suspect the fact that I only post low res anywhere on the internet may be helping me.  Are some of you posting high res on Flickr or something?
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Graham Mitchell

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Re: Reverse image search engines - your new best friend!
« Reply #26 on: July 09, 2011, 06:49:39 am »

Where are you all posting these high res images in the first place?  Mine have been taken off my websites, but I suspect the fact that I only post low res anywhere on the internet may be helping me.  Are some of you posting high res on Flickr or something?

Most of my stolen images are low res.
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Reverse image search engines - your new best friend!
« Reply #27 on: July 09, 2011, 12:03:52 pm »

My lighthouse image has been rather quickly deleted from Wikimedia site (within 24 hours), including as illustration for the Wikipedia's entry for the Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse.

Steps I needed to take: register on Wikimedia/-pedia site (rather simple), upon which a menu appears on the left, with options to initiate deletion (the menu may take some time to appear though). Admins then review the request and delete the image.

The above, however, does not automatically delete the image on sites outside of Wikimedia. Those sites used Wikimedia as the free source, claiming Creative Commons License rights, yet in both cases failed to follow one of the two simple CCL requirements: to properly credit (attribute) the author/photographer. One site does mention photo credits, but in the following manner:

"Photo credits: The picture of Bass Harbor Head Light is from the Wikimedia Commons. It is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license."

The same site, however, has no problem posting "© Travel New England - All Rights Reserved" for their own site.

haring

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Re: Reverse image search engines - your new best friend!
« Reply #28 on: July 19, 2011, 02:04:58 pm »

Tineye has been out for a while now and Google just released their reverse image search engine a few weeks ago. If you have not tried it already, go to the standard Google image search window, and try dragging a jpeg into the search field. Or try Tineye. Even better, use both.

With this technology, we can find unauthorised use of images, and do something about it. I have found more than 100 instances of my images being used without permission. Most of the transgressors will remove the image once you write to them, and if they don't just write to the ISP hosting the site - they will do it for you.

By clamping down on the freeloaders, we will all send out a message that photos aren't free, and that photographers need to be paid for their work, which is a positive step forward for the whole industry.

I blogged about it here too: http://www.graham-mitchell.com/blog/?p=294

Thanks!
I will try it out right now!

louoates

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Re: Reverse image search engines - your new best friend!
« Reply #29 on: July 19, 2011, 05:35:06 pm »

I've been playing with this Google feature since it's been out and find it entertaining and informative. I have 500-700 stock images sold for use on the web but could never discover how they were used until now. Great fun!

And I'm shocked, shocked, that someone would actually steal images from web sites!
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dizzyg44

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Re: Reverse image search engines - your new best friend!
« Reply #30 on: July 20, 2011, 10:18:31 am »

There went my good spirits for the day....

I've played around with tineye before but never any luck.

Tried Googles new search, and found lots of my crap being used.

Luckily none of my serious work was found as it sucks, but rather all of my DIY/how to/BTS images were the ones used, ironically by supposed photographers on their blogs using my pics to show how they supposedly made/did something....arrgghhh
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louoates

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Re: Reverse image search engines - your new best friend!
« Reply #31 on: July 20, 2011, 11:30:51 am »

That'll be because your cheapskate micro-stock agency can't be arsed to tell you.

Why such shock when the micro-stock agencies and the deluded individuals who supply them with their fodder have managed to devalue images to the point of theft?

I'd hate to face the thousands of individuals who are making a living at micro-stock and call them "deluded". It's a business like any other. That it has morphed so quickly away from the traditional stock model is simply the laws of supply and demand flexing its muscle. Personally, I don't upload much to the micro-sites any more because I don't have to. But I do keep up with that segment news-wise and see lots of individuals coming into micro-stock with lots of talent. They post-date any perceived "golden age of stock" but understand that they can compete and make some decent money with creative economically-produced images. More power to them.

I'd also never expect a micro-stock agency to try to track image uses for my edification. It would certainly put additional work and cost upon them and their customers. The Google feature is a nice touch that, for me, satisfies my curiosity on how my images are being used.

I believe that the image theft issue has nothing to do with stock or micro-stock at all. Any image from any source is subject to theft. If it's on the internet it is vulnerable, water-mark or no water-mark.
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Graham Mitchell

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Re: Reverse image search engines - your new best friend!
« Reply #32 on: July 20, 2011, 04:24:43 pm »

I'd hate to face the thousands of individuals who are making a living at micro-stock and call them "deluded". It's a business like any other.

I disagree. In what other business do they majority run at a loss and pat themselves on the back at the same time?
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louoates

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Re: Reverse image search engines - your new best friend!
« Reply #33 on: July 20, 2011, 06:24:23 pm »

I don't know the total number of micro-stock contributors. Istock photo says they have "tens of thousands". I'll assume that the other, say, big five sites also have tens of thousands of contributors. Add in the other 3 or 4 dozen sites and subtract out the duplicate folks and I think that there could easily be 70-90,000 contributors. It wouldn't be a stretch to believe a few thousand make living at it. 
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Rob C

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Re: Reverse image search engines - your new best friend!
« Reply #34 on: July 21, 2011, 04:57:47 am »

There are 39,740 registered members on Luminous Landscape including those making a living in a variety of genre such as fashion, architecture, wedding, sport, photo journalism, fine art, product, social, editorial...

It would be a stretch to believe that one of these members is "making a living at micro-stock"

Or perhaps you would care to point me to one?




And when he's finished doing that, he can bring in the dog and put out the cat!

I was active during the Golden Era and even I couldn't make a 'decent living' out of stock; at best, it made extra money from stuff already paid for via client work.

I spent a short while with a big Spanish agency too, and got, from them, perhaps the best stock advice ever: spend the minimum amount of money that you can! Too true! In a year, they sold one image of mine for around twelve quid! When I politely withdrew, they were indignant that I didn't want to spend more 'investment' money and time... the same people but yet another aspect of the two-sided coin. I think mine was the thin edge.

In retrospect, it seems to me that (for me) the only way for stock to work for the photographer is from the unused extras taken from originally commissioned work, in a rights-managed model and in a buoyant economy.

As for the Arcus model - I suppose that one in several million can raise a critical mass that self-perpetuates and morphs into profit. Have you guys the money to risk trying to build it?

Rob C

PeterAit

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Re: Reverse image search engines - your new best friend!
« Reply #35 on: July 21, 2011, 09:08:07 am »

It can be sobering to search on a portrait of yourself.
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TOlson

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Re: Reverse image search engines - your new best friend!
« Reply #36 on: July 21, 2011, 11:40:57 am »

There are 39,740 registered members on Luminous Landscape including those making a living in a variety of genre such as fashion, architecture, wedding, sport, photo journalism, fine art, product, social, editorial...

It would be a stretch to believe that a single one of these members is "making a living at micro-stock"

Or perhaps you would care to point me to one?

I think to try and say that no-one can make a living at microstock is like sticking your head in the sand.  There are quite a few people who are doing just that.  In the 2010 microstock survey of 600+ users, 129 people were making over 50% of their income from microstock.  600 is a small % of the total population, but I think it is safe to say there is probably at least close to 1000 people earning a decent income from microstock.

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Graham Mitchell

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Re: Reverse image search engines - your new best friend!
« Reply #37 on: July 21, 2011, 11:49:14 am »

of 600+ users, 129 people were making over 50% of their income from microstock.  

Percentages are meaningless. How much are they actually making, for how many hours per year?
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TOlson

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Re: Reverse image search engines - your new best friend!
« Reply #38 on: July 21, 2011, 11:54:42 am »

Percentages are meaningless. How much are they actually making, for how many hours per year?

I was just giving one stat.  Did you look at the survey results?
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Eric Myrvaagnes

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Re: Reverse image search engines - your new best friend!
« Reply #39 on: July 21, 2011, 02:34:24 pm »

BTW, what happened to the proposed real name policy?

Why the hell am I having this discussion with PorridgeFactory?

LOL!

You object to the Factory family naming their child Porridge?  ;D
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-Eric Myrvaagnes (visit my website: http://myrvaagnes.com)
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