How does TinEye actually work to identify a photo (does it useEXIF?)

How does TinEye actually work to identify a photo (does it use EXIF?)
http://www.tineye.com

A friend told me I can search TinEye for free to find my pictures
to see if anyone has posted them to the net.

I tested a few of mine - but none showed up on the net.

But maybe people removed the EXIF information or cropped them or filtered
them in software or did something to obfuscate them.

I doubt you'd have the exact algorithm (nor would I know what to do with it),
but, do you at least know roughly how the TinEye program discerns duplicates?

In article ,
William Don**ly wrote:

How does TinEye actually work to identify a photo (does it use EXIF?)
http://www.tineye.com

A friend told me I can search TinEye for free to find my pictures
to see if anyone has posted them to the net.

I tested a few of mine - but none showed up on the net.

But maybe people removed the EXIF information or cropped them or filtered
them in software or did something to obfuscate them.

I doubt you'd have the exact algorithm (nor would I know what to do with it),
but, do you at least know roughly how the TinEye program discerns duplicates?

TinEye doesn't need EXIF data. I'd imagine that they analyze images for
simple features that can be listed and cataloged. The features for an
image doesn't need to perfectly describe it. It just needs to narrow
down potential matches enough that they can be further analyzed in
real-time. It's not unlike the secret-sauce complex analysis that web
page search engines perform. They're not matching words, but meanings
in a context for a specific culture. Google has claimed that they can
even interpret the images in a web page.
--
I will not see posts from Google because I must filter them as spam

William Don**ly writes:

How does TinEye actually work to identify a photo (does it use EXIF?)
http://www.tineye.com

It doesn't use EXIF or associated text information, it looks at the
image itself (as does the option in Google Image Search to look for
similar images).

A friend told me I can search TinEye for free to find my pictures
to see if anyone has posted them to the net.

It can, I've found lots of copies of things posted to the web through
those services.

Neither one is guaranteed to find *every* copy, and TinEye in particular
doesn't seem to index that much of the web, so it misses a lot.

I tested a few of mine - but none showed up on the net.

But maybe people removed the EXIF information or cropped them or filtered
them in software or did something to obfuscate them.

Cropping will often not confuse TinEye. Sufficient filtering will, but
mild filtering won't necessarily.

I doubt you'd have the exact algorithm (nor would I know what to do with it),
but, do you at least know roughly how the TinEye program discerns duplicates?

I don't know anything about the kind of algorithms that are used for
this, my self, sorry.

--
Googleproofaddress(account:dd-b provider:dd-b domain:net)
Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/
Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/
Dragaera: http://dragaera.info

"William Don**ly" wrote in message
...

I doubt you'd have the exact algorithm (nor would I know what to do with
it), but, do you at least know roughly how the TinEye program discerns
duplicates?

I have no more idea than David. "image search algorithm" brings up some
pointers on the first page. A deeper dig finds one paper comparing three
approaches. I'm sure you'll be able to turn up more with research.

A Comparison of SIFT, PCA-SIFT and SURF by Luo Juan & Oubong Gwun
http://www.cscjournals.org/csc/manus...e4/IJIP-51.pdf


--
Charles E. Hardwidge

William Don**ly wrote:
How does TinEye actually work to identify a photo (does it use EXIF?)
http://www.tineye.com

A friend told me I can search TinEye for free to find my pictures
to see if anyone has posted them to the net.

I tested a few of mine - but none showed up on the net.

But maybe people removed the EXIF information or cropped them or filtered
them in software or did something to obfuscate them.

I doubt you'd have the exact algorithm (nor would I know what to do with it),
but, do you at least know roughly how the TinEye program discerns duplicates?

Pattern recognition software.
Its the same way the government tracks your movements via
facial patterns from 100 meters away.
Tineye could not possibly download each file then compare
the exif data from each one.

"Paul in Houston TX" wrote in message
...
William Don**ly wrote:
How does TinEye actually work to identify a photo (does it use EXIF?)
http://www.tineye.com A friend told me I can
search TinEye for free to find my pictures to see if anyone has
posted them to the net.

I tested a few of mine - but none showed up on the net.

But maybe people removed the EXIF information or cropped them or
filtered
them in software or did something to obfuscate them.

I doubt you'd have the exact algorithm (nor would I know what to do
with it),
but, do you at least know roughly how the TinEye program discerns
duplicates?

Pattern recognition software.
Its the same way the government tracks your movements via
facial patterns from 100 meters away.
Tineye could not possibly download each file then compare
the exif data from each one.

There is also (among others, I think) yandex.ru, which sometimes but not
always returns the same result as tineye.

I've found a few "Who stole my pictures?" culprits through these tools,
but I know of others they don't find.

--
Frank ess

Frank S wrote:

There is also (among others, I think) yandex.ru, which sometimes but not
always returns the same result as tineye.

So that makes at least 3 of those picture finders out the

1. Images.Google.Com (finds similar pictures also)
2. TinEye.Com (finds the same picture)
3. yandex.ru (not sure what it does since it's in Rusky)

On Friday, December 28, 2012 6:25:44 AM UTC+1, William Don**ly wrote:
Frank S wrote:



There is also (among others, I think) yandex.ru, which sometimes but not

always returns the same result as tineye.



So that makes at least 3 of those picture finders out the



1. Images.Google.Com (finds similar pictures also)

2. TinEye.Com (finds the same picture)

3. yandex.ru (not sure what it does since it's in Rusky)

It's a bit doubtful how effective these kinds of attempts to
police your images are likely to be.

Take for instance these beautiful pics of slime molds by a flickr
user:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/myriora...n/set-1271006/

This user seems to object to downloading of his images (downloading
is disabled at flickr). Yet if you search for them, they pop up on
many sites:

http://tinyurl.com/d3m6nlb

Some of them even seem to neglect mentioning the source:

http://metapsychic.tumblr.com/post/4...811/slime-mold


It seems like a rather futile effort to try and prevent pictures
from being reproduced and distributed.

But perhaps there are companies that can be hired to police your
intellectual property.

In article ,
says...

In article ,
William Don**ly wrote:

How does TinEye actually work to identify a photo (does it use EXIF?)
http://www.tineye.com

A friend told me I can search TinEye for free to find my pictures
to see if anyone has posted them to the net.

I tested a few of mine - but none showed up on the net.

But maybe people removed the EXIF information or cropped them or filtered
them in software or did something to obfuscate them.

I doubt you'd have the exact algorithm (nor would I know what to do with it),
but, do you at least know roughly how the TinEye program discerns duplicates?

TinEye doesn't need EXIF data. I'd imagine that they analyze images for
simple features that can be listed and cataloged. The features for an
image doesn't need to perfectly describe it. It just needs to narrow
down potential matches enough that they can be further analyzed in
real-time. It's not unlike the secret-sauce complex analysis that web
page search engines perform. They're not matching words, but meanings
in a context for a specific culture. Google has claimed that they can
even interpret the images in a web page.

I listed a New York license tag on ebay the other day. I fed that
picture into Tineye, it did not find the one I posted, but it did find a
bunch of other New York license tags with different numbers. I also fed
it the original of a photo that I have had up on flicker for more than 6
years--it did not find any matches for that one. It's clearly working
by pattern recognition. It also clearly does not have enough of the
images on the Web indexed to be considered a reliable tool. This is not
surprising--Tineye claims to have about 2.3 billion images indexed.
Flickr alone claims to have more than 6 billion online.