Sunday, October 04, 2009

TinEye Adds Reverse Image Lookup to Firefox [Downloads]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/_fdUyXCYBRk/tineye-adds-reverse-image-lookup-to-firefox

Last year we introduced you to TinEye, an image-based search engine that helps you find other instances of the image in question across the web. TinEye is now available as a Firefox plugin, making it much easier to use.

For the unfamiliar, TinEye is a search tool that takes an image you give it and searches out other copies of that image online. In our original review of the service we used a picture of our own Gina Trapani for our test search. Check out the original article for a run down on the results.

One of the inconveniences to using TinEye was that you had to grab the URL or a copy of the image you wanted to have TinEye scan for and then go visit the TinEye website. It seems a trivial detail, but in the age of right-click "Search Google for..." convenience, an add-on that places the TinEye search right into the right-click context menu is great for ease of use.

A caveat that remains from our original test of TinEye is that it is surgically precise. The sample photo, seen in the screenshot above, is a picture of Christina Hendricks—from the television show Mad Men—attending the 2008 Emmy Awards. Photos of her from that award ceremony are all over the internet. When searching with TinEye, however, you are given the locations of the exact instances of that image, not images that are almost the same.

The TinEye Firefox extension is free and works wherever Firefox does. If you have your own tips and tricks for image searches, let's hear about them in the comments.