Popular search engines Google and Yandex are famous for such an option as image search. Human minds have made it possible to use photography to search for people, their pages on social networks, to look for an image with the same characteristics or with a predominance of a specific color. But, another interesting opportunity that the developers presented to consumers is to search for the place where the photo was taken using Google and Yandex photos. So, let's figure out how to find the place where the photo was taken using the Google search engine, and whether it is possible.
In 2016, Google introduced the latest development of its think tank - the ability to find out the exact location of a person from a picture. But first things first.
First, you need to upload a photo to Google. For this:
But this method had one big drawback. The image search engine easily identified world-famous places. For example, Niagara Falls, or the Eiffel Tower in Paris, or the pyramids of Egypt. But there were many problems regarding the area, which was not popular. When uploading a photo of your street, you shouldn’t even expect approximate information about the location.
Progress, as we know, does not stand still, and the company’s specialists have improved their search engine by actively developing a special network called PlaNet.
It will become a real assistant in finding the area shown in the photograph. In order to search as accurately as possible, the electronic search system divided the land surface into 26,000 conventional zones, which have some different features and characteristics that make it possible to identify a place, country, or at least a continent.
PlaNet does not stand still and is developing thanks to the fact that people add photos to Google with a ready-made location mark, called a geo-location. To date, there are already more than 120,000,000 such images. The developers conducted a test to find out how effectively the program works and ran 2,000,000 pictures through it. The results were pleasing and created a real sensation. In 3.6% of photographs, the location was determined, right down to the street, in 10% of the images the city was named, in 28.4% it was possible to find the depicted country, and the percentage of the correctly identified continent was 48.
This system is particularly attentive, analyzing and comparing the smallest details and details. Roads and the direction of movement on them, the nature of the dishes on the dinner table, architectural landmarks and flora, animals - all these are little things from which PlaNet draws conclusions and, after making comparisons, produces a result about the intended location in the photo. It’s hard to imagine, but during the next testing of the system with the game “Geoguessr”, she was asked to compete with professional travelers.
Opponents in the game were asked to find out the area using a Google Street photo. The computer system performed twice as well as humans.
Another development of computer geniuses from Canada is the TinEye system, which works on a similar principle.
The company's website is on the path of development, and the image database that is necessary for high-quality search is becoming larger every day.
With the Yandex search engine, things are a little different. The developers of the popular search engine claim that they are preparing a real breakthrough in image search, because the method that Yandex uses is fundamentally different from Google.
Today, the easiest way to determine a place on the map is geo-location. For example, if the author of the image decided not to hide the area shown in the photo and attached it to the map, the user needs to open the photo and click on the “On the map” icon under it.
Next, Yandex will open a map with the area marked in the photo. But, this method is not without its drawbacks, because initially the area may be indicated incorrectly or there may be no geo-location at all.
An alternative way to determine the location of objects in a photo is Yandex search. Needed for definition.
Finding a person via the Internet is quite simple - now almost everyone has their own page on social networks. You just need to somehow reach it.
There are several ways to do this (I talked about them), but they all rely on searching for information. You must indicate your first name, last name, age, city of residence and other information. But even if you know everything about a person, down to his blood type, this is not a guarantee that he will be found.
It’s a completely different matter if you have a photograph, even a general one. Now there are services that can recognize faces and search for the pages of their owners.
Preparing the photo
First you need to crop the photo. Thus, we will reduce its computer size (usually it is large) and remove all unnecessary things. This is especially true if the photo is a group one.
1 . Open Start - All Programs - Accessories - Paint
2. Open the photo in this program (you can simply drag it inside the window).
3. Select the “Select” tool at the top and circle the desired person.
4 . Click the “Crop” button.
Search on VKontakte (findface.ru)
FindFace (findface.ru) is a special service for searching for people on the VKontakte social network. But to use it, you need to have a VK page.
You can get it for free in just a minute - to do this, go to the website vk.com and register.
To search through FindFace, follow the link and click on the “find identical” button.
The service will ask you to allow access to your VK page, to which we agree.
Upload the desired photo (you can simply drag it inside the window).
And we wait for the end of the search procedure.
That's all - all that remains is to find your lost one in the list :)
Search the entire Internet
Search by image. There are two special services for this: one from Google (images.google.com), the other from Yandex (images.yandex.ru). They are very easy to use: you just need to drag the photo into the search bar.
Google Image Search
Search by image Yandex
The result will appear immediately. First, the same picture will be shown, but in other sizes (if available on the Internet), a little lower - similar photographs, and even lower - the Internet pages on which they are posted.
TinEye (tineye.com). Popular foreign image search service.
Everything is exactly the same here: drag a picture from your computer into the search bar, and immediately get the result.
Browser extensions
Extensions or add-ons are small gadgets that are added to an Internet program and perform certain tasks in it. For example, there are extensions for downloading videos from Youtube or music from Contact. There are also such programs for searching by photos.
Almost every browser has its own collection of various add-ons. But most of them are in Google Chrome. In other programs, there are literally one or two extensions for our purposes, and even then they do not work quite as they should. Therefore, I will show how to work with add-ons only using the example of Chrome.
Where to find and how to install the extension
1 . Click on the button at the top right and select Additional tools - Extensions.
2. We go down to the very bottom of the page (scroll with the wheel on the mouse) and click on “More extensions”.
3. Type keywords in the top search bar and press Enter. The found extensions and applications appear. Install what you need (you can delete it later at any time).
If you install an application, it is added to an empty tab, in the Services item. That is, to find it later, you need to open a new browser tab and go to “Services” (top left).
Extensions are installed a little differently - they are added immediately after the address bar.
From time to time, users need to search by photo. Such situations most often occur when you need to find out the original source of a particular photograph.
For example, if a person has a frame from a film, but he does not know the title, then from this frame you can find out what kind of film it is. In this case, it is simply impossible to enter a query in words, since it is not clear what needs to be entered.
Besides, sometimes you want to know who took a photo. For such cases, there are very easy-to-use services. Let's look at the most popular ones and how to use them. Before doing this, it would be useful to understand how image search works in general.
Image search algorithm
Everything in this case is based on the fact that when any image is uploaded to the Internet, the process of adding certain attributes to this photo occurs. Any content manager or SEO optimization specialist will understand what the Alt, Title and Description attribute are.
So, any image that is located on the World Wide Web has all this. If these attributes are not specified by the person who uploaded the picture, they are generated automatically. Actually, they are used to search for images on the Internet.
Everything is taken into account - the title, the description, and in general all the information that is available for a given image. Now let's return to the description of search services.
Service No. 1. Google Images
Yes, the world's largest search engine, of course, also includes a service for searching information from photographs. The search scheme itself is exactly the same as in a regular search engine that searches using standard test queries.
As practice shows, Google works much better than other search engines in this regard. Actually, this is the reason for its enormous popularity.
Google's photo search service also performs very well - all possible links to the entered pictures and information about them are found.
To find some information about a photo in Google Images, you need to do the following:
Go to www.google.com/imghp. This is the address of Google's image search engine.
Enter the desired image into it.
You can do this in one of four ways:
Copy from another resource on the Internet or from an image viewer. This is done by right-clicking on the desired image, if this happens in a browser, and selecting “Copy...” or selecting the image, for example, in Paint and pressing the Ctrl + C key combination. Then all you have to do is press Ctrl+V on the search engine page.
No. 1. Copy Image button in browser
Select a file on your computer. To do this, click on the “Search by picture” button, go to the “Upload file” tab, click on the “Select file” button, in the window that opens, select where the desired picture is located and start the search.
No. 2. Search by uploaded photo in Google Images
Provide a link to the photo. To do this, right-click on the photo you like in your browser and select “Copy address...”. After this, you should go to Google Images, click on the “Search by image” button, click on the “Specify link” tab, enter the previously copied link in the appropriate field and click on the “Search by image” button.
No. 3. Search by image link in Google Images
Just drag the image file from a folder on your computer to any area of the Google Images website. This method is described on the service itself and is the main one for working with it. In addition, it is the simplest among all on this list.
3. Press the Enter button on the keyboard if the search has not yet started automatically.
As a result, the user will see the size of the image, information about whether there are the same pictures on the Internet, only of a different size, and links to sites where the same or similar photographs are available. The user will also see a query that most likely can be used to find this picture. In addition, in the “Similar Images” section, pictures that are similar in meaning will be shown. An example of search results can be seen in Figure 4.
No. 4. Example of search results in Google Images
The Yandex.Images address is yandex.ua/images/. The methods for entering a search image using an image using this service are exactly the same as Google, namely:
dragging a picture from a folder;
selecting a file by clicking the “Select file” button;
entering the image address on the Internet.
As soon as the user gets to the site, he will see a menu in front of him, indicated by number 1 in Figure No. 5. To access the three methods described above, on the main page of the site you need to click on the “Search by image” button (in Figure No. 5 it is highlighted with a green frame).
After this, a menu marked with the number 2 will appear. To use the first method, you just need to drag the desired file into the field highlighted with a red frame in the same figure. There is also the inscription “Select a file”, by clicking on which a standard selection dialog will appear, where you will need to specify the location of the desired image.
To enter an address, you need to copy it on another site (this is done, as before, by right-clicking on the picture and selecting “Save address...”) and enter it in the field shown in the blue frame.
No. 5. Methods for uploading an image to Yandex.Images
Yandex.Images has many advantages over a similar service from Google. So, you can search for a picture from your collection called “My Pictures”.
You can upload anything there. To do this, click on the button highlighted in Figure 6 with a green frame. You can also select search protection here. The fact is that in addition to the necessary materials, the search engine can often return materials of an erotic or violent nature.
It is better not to see all this for children and generally mentally healthy people. For such cases, there is a “Family Search” function, which can be selected by clicking on the protection button (highlighted in blue). There you can also remove protection altogether or choose something in between – “Moderate search”.
No. 6. Yandex.Images page
Here, the screensaver always features a photo of the day, which may also be of interest to the average user. In addition, there are buttons below, by clicking on which you can find other pictures with a similar theme and download desktop wallpaper with this photo.
An example of image search results in this service is shown in Figure 7.
No. 7. Search result via Yandex.Images
Service No. 3. TinYe
This service is the most popular for photo searches among developers and system administrators. The reason for this is that it is best at finding similar pictures and information about the entered image.
After all, Google and Yandex specialize in searching by text phrases, and their algorithm for searching by photo is somewhat less developed. But TinYe was initially positioned as a search engine for photos.
The website of this service looks like this: tineye.com. Its interface is somewhat unusual, but the methods for loading the original image for search remain exactly the same.
So, to select a file to search, you need to click on the button highlighted in Figure 8 with a red frame. After this, all that remains is to again indicate where the image is located.
In the field shown in the same figure with a green frame, you can enter the address of the picture, copying it in advance, or drag the picture directly into it. After this, you just have to click on the search button in the form of a magnifying glass if it does not start automatically.
No. 8. TinYe photo search service page
In the search results, the user will be able to see the number of sites that have an exact match of this image. Below you will see how many pictures were checked and how long this process took.
After this, the sites themselves with the desired image, as well as links to them, will be shown. An example of search results can be seen in Figure 9.
No. 9. Search results on tineye.com
Below you can clearly see how a photo search occurs using a service from Google.
Modern smartphones insert GPS coordinates into all photos by default, as do many modern cameras.
Next, anyone can easily access the geographic information that is contained in the photo, although not visible in it. It may be better to hide such data, especially when publishing photos in the public domain. Information about the shooting location is stored in so-called “metadata”, which is not visible in the photo, but is available in the photo file properties. Likewise, additional (meta) information is written to Microsoft Office or PDF document files.
If the photo was taken with GPS coordinates recorded, then on a Windows PC you need to right-click the corresponding file and select Properties from the context menu. Then select the Details tab and scroll down the options page to Latitude and Longitude.
On Mac computers, right-click (or Control-click) the photo file, then select Get Info. Latitude and longitude information will be shown.
However, geographic information is not present in all photo files. The author of the photo could cancel the recording of the coordinates on his phone, or clear additional information already in the photo files on the computer. Moreover, many online photo publishing services automatically remove additional information when uploading to protect private (personal) information. Therefore, additional information may be missing completely or partially.
But if you have GPS coordinates saved, you can easily match them to a location on maps - many online mapping services provide this ability, for example, you can simply paste the coordinates into the search field on Google Maps. Instructions for entering coordinates on Google Maps (in Russian):
https://support.google.com/maps/answer/18539?hl=en
Of course, metadata can be edited and should not be used as conclusive evidence, but it is easier to remove it entirely than to change it, so the remaining GPS coordinates in the file usually provide an objective indication of the shooting location.
Changing the state of a specific setting is enough to preemptively disable the recording of coordinates in a photo file, but this information is recorded solely as a convenience to users, and many online services (Google+ Photos, Yahoo!'s Flickr, or Apple iCloud) use it to geographically organize a collection of photos because these " unnecessary data can always be deleted using the operating system or special programs (for example, EXIF Viewer). On iPhones, open Settings, tap Privacy, then Location Services. Select Camera from the list and select Never for Allow Location Access. After this, the coordinates will not be saved in photos and you will be able to hide your location when taking photos.
A similar operation in Android systems depends on the firmware of the manufacturer, and applications for operating and setting the camera differ not only for different smartphone models, but also for versions of the operating system itself. In either case, there must be a setting to allow or disable the recording of geographic metadata.
Finding something on the Internet is not always easy. In the abundance of information, important things are lost, but if you incorrectly formulate a request for a search engine, then it will become even more difficult to obtain the necessary information. But what if you need to find a picture? Standard photo search in Yandex and Google searches for pictures by text description written next to it or in the page code. Let's figure out which services you need to use to search for a photo using only a graphic image.
Searching by image will come in handy in different situations to discover:
- the user’s own or someone else’s photo is installed on a social network;
- who is shown in the photo - if you can’t remember the name of a famous actor or athlete;
- a person’s profile on a social network;
- a unique image in front of you or a duplicate;
- the same photograph, but in a different quality (higher resolution, color instead of black and white).
The reasons for searching for an image may be different, but the algorithm of actions is almost the same. We will tell you in detail how to find a similar picture on the Internet quickly and for free.
In Google, photo search is implemented in the “Pictures” service, available at https://www.google.ru/imghp. The interface is similar to the standard one, but it uses images as a request.
You can also go to the “Pictures” tab in the results of any search.
In the line where the query is usually entered, an icon in the form of a camera has appeared. Click on it, an image selection window will appear with 2 tabs - enter a link or upload from your computer. To check a picture from the Internet, right-click on it, copy the address and paste it into the request field. If the desired image is saved to your computer, select “Download file” - a standard selection dialog will open.
If you use the Google Chrome browser, you can simply drag the desired photo into the search bar. Select an image located on your computer and transfer it to the browser while holding down the left mouse button. To use a photo from the Internet, right-click in Chrome and select “Find image (Google)” from the menu.
The results page contains a guess as to who is in the photo. Google determined absolutely correctly - before us is M. Yu. Lermontov. You can open the image in a different size or view similar ones.
Yandex Pictures
A similar photo search service is also available in Yandex at https://yandex.ru/images/. According to the developers, the algorithm searches not only for complete copies of the original image, but also for those slightly different from it. Therefore, what is found may contain different photographs of the same building.
Clicking on the camera icon opens a window for selecting a file (open or drag from your computer) and inserting the link address.
The presentation of the results by face is slightly different - first you can select a picture in other sizes, then there are similar ones and sites where the images were found. Unlike Google, Yandex does not explicitly say who is in the photo. This can make it difficult to find a person based on their photo, especially if you're looking for a less-than-popular celebrity. But the presence of other photograph sizes is more clearly presented - it’s so easy to choose the best resolution.
The VK Fake service http://vkfake.ru/photo-search also searches for people on VKontakte. Let's look at how to find a person's profile from a photo on the Internet. Paste the address of the original photo into the line or upload it from your computer. The site is not fast, the waiting time for results is up to 2 minutes.
You will see a list of accounts in which the specified photo was found. In addition to a specific person, using this method you can find clones and fakes – pages that use other people’s photographs.