- Social media tools to track brand reputation
Rohit Bhargava from Ogilvy’s Digital Influence blog shares his picks for the top six new social media tools for tracking brand reputation. Look who’s in the number three spot.Hat tip to Ogilvy’s John Stauffer who mentioned the post to me and introduced me to the 360 blog. We’ll be talking to John about tracking client brand images online in a later post.
- Portfolio building with TinEye
One of the challenges faced by microstock photographers is building a portfolio of images in use. Odds are that once an image is purchased it’s unlikely that the photographer will hear back about how and where that image was used.
How do you demonstrate that your work is in demand? What if you just want to show your published work to friends and family? As we’ve heard before “the biggest challenge is simply finding out where your images are in use” .
We know that text-based search to locate image use online leads to few results and that’s where TinEye comes in. Use an image to find image results. It just makes sense.
We’re hearing great stories about TinEye fans finding their images in use, here are just a few samples from the microstock forums…
Christopher found a nice selection of his images on a variety of sites including askmen.com and gforcestaffing:
Bateleur located one of his images as a cover of Amazing Swiss magazine. His reaction? “Not sure which agency they bought it from. I’m going to contact the publishers to see if they’ll send me a copy. P.S. I also found this using TinEye. Brilliant search engine for images.”
Adelaide said “I must say that I am very impressed with TinEye technology. It was able to find an image of mine that is seen cropped in a website.” She found her check-in image in use on lastminute.com‘s Italian sister-site.
These are just a few of the nice little stories we’ve heard about folks using TinEye to create tear sheets or portfolios of their work. If you found your image in use online using TinEye let us know!
- Bigger index, more cool searches!
A bigger index means more amazing image searches with even more matches in TinEye!
I don’t know what strikes folks to edit a particular image more than others, but there are some fantastically popular ones out there that you all love to photoshop.
We’ve shown you everything from Mona Lisa to Angela Jolie in other posts, so let’s take a look at the guys that you’ve cropped, re-coloured, written over and otherwise edited into almost unrecognizable copies of their original image.
You can click on any image below to view the results more closely.
First in the queue, Gerard Butler from the movie 300. Search count? 526 results searched over 701 million images. If you have a TinEye login, search it.
Keeping with the “men from historical tales” theme, let’s take the Creation of Adam for a spin. A very respectable 635 results! Search it.
And before everything there was just earth (nod to Yogendra on this one). Our planet, in it’s myriad of forms, tops today’s search results with over 1000 matches returned. Search it.
Since we’ve a bit of a history theme here today, let’s wrap it up with “Las Meninas” by Diego Velázquez. This is a very nifty search (I wish I could show you more results). TinEye finds not only edits, crops and colour changes but also skews and even photos where this particular piece of art is on a wall or obscured in the background. With 277 results, “Las Meninas” is obviously a much loved (and edited) image on the web. Search it.
Need an account? Pop over and register and you’ll be able to TinEye images in no time!
- TinEye to the Rescue
We have the most creative fans! Eric sent us an email and this snazzy screencast to tell us his story about how he used TinEye.
Check it out!
- Watch our CTO Paul Bloore demo TinEye for Robert Scoble
Our CTO demos TinEye at the Microsoft Pro Photo Summit. Check out the Scobleizer Qik video from this morning in Redmond!
In Scoble‘s words “Wow…that’s crazy technology”!
- 702,000,000 images indexed…and counting
What’s next for TinEye? Simple. More images. Bigger index. And today there are 702 million images in our index. Yes, that’s not a typo.
Millions more images for you to search in real-time.
Happy searching TinEye fans. The best is yet to come!
* image Alistair Morton
- The Magic of TinEye
We love to hear from our community about their surprising TinEye experiences. When we read about Jeff Clow’s story in the Flickr forums the team here was just thrilled and I knew we had to share his TinEye story.Jeff lives in Texas, is a training consultant and picked up photography over just the last three years. He is truly a die-hard digital photography fan with a passion for creating beautiful images.
Jeff’s Flickr profile notes “The best compliment I ever received about my photography came from Flickr. A visitor simply said ‘Boy, you can shoot.‘ Isn’t that what it is all about when you peel back all the layers? We ‘shoot’ and we are glad when someone likes how we do it…”
We feel the same way, Jeff. The great team here at the Idéeplex are putting their hearts (and long hours) into TinEye and are so excited to hear that our fans love TinEye too!
What are your thoughts on some of the challenges that photographers are facing today?
Jeff thinks that while image theft is a constant issue it is also something where most often “the juice is not worth the squeeze” as far as trying to pursue action against infringements, particularly outside of North America. The biggest challenge, he states, is simply finding out where your images are in use, legally or not. “For every photographer that has images online it has simply been impossible to know what happens to them once they are sold – until TinEye.”
He estimates that of the over 4000 images he has sold, he knows where only about a dozen have been used.
How do you typically find out where your images are being used?
“Either legal or illegal it’s almost impossible to know where your images are unless you stumbled upon one online by accident or someone you know and who knows your photography sees it and reports it back to you” he concludes. An infinitesimally small number can be found with a regular google text search – Jeff has over 300 images currently for sale and says it would take “forever” to try to find them, with little return.
How did you find out about TinEye?
TinEye was mentioned on one of the message boards on Flickr and Jeff’s initial reaction was skepticism but also curiosity. He said “I am so pleased and have already become a huge TinEye fan because the concept and the reality are the same – most often these things don’t actually work.” He sees Idée becoming the world leader in image search.
Tell me about the album cover story – what happened?
In Jeff’s first few TinEye searches he discovered that one of his licensed images was being used as an album cover!He had been paid for the stunning photo of a horse in a field but didn’t know how or where the image was being used online or otherwise.
Jeff says that finding the image in use on the cover was “one of the highlights in my career”. Fantastic! He even bought a copy so he can use it as part of his portfolio.
What does it mean to find your images in use?
“Any photographer who’s worth his weight in film or photography would want to know where their images are used” says Jeff. “Most photographers take photos because they want to have someone validate that it’s a good photo – that’s the magic of Flickr and that’s the magic of TinEye.”
He goes on to say that TinEye is a way of validating that all his hard work is worth it, that others appreciate what he does. “Getting paid is great, but it doesn’t give you the same thrill of discovery as seeing your image in print, on a website, a book or album cover. You are creating a validation machine with TinEye – and validation is a huge part of life.”
As we wrapped up our talk Jeff mentioned that he can see in the near future a time when people say ‘what did we do before TinEye?’ We like the sound of that too, Jeff!
To learn more about the photography of Jeff Clow visit his online gallery and flickr profile.
To request a TinEye invitation register online.
** All Images Copyright Jeff Clow
- An Interview With Cris DeRaud: TinEye Fan
As most of you know we launched TinEye, our image search engine, in closed beta and since its launch it has garnered quite a following and fan base. This has been tremendously helpful to us…what better way to improve an image search engine than have a very involved community sending you feedback on a daily basis?
We thought that you would like to meet some of our fans and community leaders. We are introducing a series of interviews and today we are starting by interviewing Cris DeRaud! Cris agreed to chat with us as a member of SXC but he is not employed by SXC nor does he represent the viewpoints and opinions of the SXC administration.
Cris DeRaud is a photographer and a community leader within SXC, a photography exchange website. Cris was one of the first photographers to use TinEye and his feedback to our team has been smashing. We love it when we see eye to eye with our users and when speaking to them makes us feel like they were a fly on the wall in our boardroom!Cris, welcome to the TinEye community. We are happy to have you. So…
Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to photography?
I’ve had an interest in photography since I was 7 years old. My father was a semi-professional photographer. He built a darkroom in the house and I would develop his film and make prints in his darkroom. There was room for only one person so I had to learn how to do the procedures well enough to be on my own. I actually got pretty good at it by the time I was ten. We moved to Germany then, in 1964, and we had to leave the darkroom behind.
In 2004 I bought a Minolta Z2 and Microsoft Digital Image Suite and started experimenting with the process of making digital images. I produced a few good shots with that setup but the more advanced setup of a DSLR, various lens and premium imaging software opened the door for more creativity.
How did you hear about SXC and what attracted you to SXC?
One day I saw an article on LiveScience and the article had a photo of something really odd and I wanted to know what it was. The bottom corner of the photo had an sxc.hu credit. I searched for SXC and discovered a stock site with hundreds of thousands of photos and a very large community of photographers. I decided to join so I could download photos to practice editing them with my software. Soon I began to appreciate the quality of the photos on the site and I looked for hints on how I could improve my photography skills and participate in the community.I began uploading images to SXC in December of 2006. After the first couple images were approved for posting and somebody actually downloaded an image I was hooked on the feeling of creating something people actually wanted! I found myself getting and making comments, downloading photos and getting to recognize the other photographers.
The people I have met and come to know, the knowledge I have received and the reward of contributing to the site is what keeps me at SXC. Many people use the site as a springboard for entering the microstock market. stockxpert, the sister site to SXC, is a step up where you have an opportunity to license your photos. I have not chosen to make photography a business, but prefer to keep it a hobby and a pastime that I am comfortable with.
How do you typically find out where your images are being used?
I was able to find my images on the Web most often by three sources:
- The person or company who downloaded the image left me a link to the image in the comment box or they contact me by email to ask permission to use the photo in a project and inform me where the image was being used.
- My name was accredited to the photo and a Google search of my name allowed me to find my images.
- Occasionally another member of SXC would recognize my photo on the web and inform me of where it was found.
How did you find out about TinEye?
I look for new services and technologies and my main source for reliable reports is BetaNews.com. I saw an article that suggested there was a new image search technology entering into beta testing and I immediately jumped at the chance to join.I also posted a notice in the general forum on SXC that TinEye was accepting requests for beta testers and suggested that others sign up for it too. That was on May 6th, 2008.
How do you see TinEye being able to help the SXC community? Do you have any examples you could share with us?
The photographers on SXC ask this question more than any other: “Can you tell me how you used my photo or send me a link to it?”
Each contributing photographer has a profile info box and quite often they ask that they be contacted on the use of their photos. People want to know where all those downloaded images are going. Sometimes you get a link sent to you but most often we just don’t know.
TinEye is doing an exceptional job answering the question of where a photograph is appearing. TinEye answers two basic questions for us photographers: the “where” and “how”. Where has my photograph appeared and how has it been used. To date, no other search service has returned as many image usage on the internet.
No other service has returned as many incidences of use on the internet as TinEye. TinEye finds the use of your images, the misuse of your images and teaches you what kinds of images are in demand. TinEye shows you how your images were integrated onto the web and that is valuable information when you are designing your next shot to submit to SXC.TinEye is an invaluable tool for finding images that have been used without our permission. Some people have used our images freely as their own with little to no regard for copyright or intellectual property. If people know we have TinEye to find where our images are being used the incidence of redistribution should decrease dramatically.
In short, TinEye provides three valuable services to the SXC photographer:
- TinEye finds where and how the photographer’s images are being used on the internet.
- TinEye improves security by locating unauthorized use of the photographer’s photos and helps deter people from misusing our images.
- TinEye is a powerful training tool that teaches the photographer what kinds of images are popular for use on the internet.
Thank you for sharing your story with us Cris.
We’re excited to have such great fans of TinEye and can’t wait to share more of the surprising, fun and unique stories that we’re hearing from Cris, SXC and the rest of our community.
** Images Cris DeRaud
- Tux: Boy does he get around!
Our snazzy image search engine is getting a lot of notice these days, thanks to our great community. Did you see us on Digg? Awesomeness! We love our TinEye fans, thank you everyone!Do you need a TinEye account? Get it here. Go, Go! There are 500 ‘instant accounts’ available…499…498…
TinEye finds your images online, matching the “fingerprint” of your image (let’s use our pal Tux over there) to the millions of other images in our index to find where and how your image is being used on the web.
Tux is awfully cute just the way he is, but how has his little image been used around the internet? Just have a look at the Tux widget!
To see all the different ways folks have edited Tux just press play. We used just 155 of the images identified to create the Tux widget, but TinEye actually found over 800 results in mere seconds!
We like to share here at idée, so go ahead and play with it, embed it and share it with your friends. We even made a tiny Tux that you can easily pop onto your site!
And we have a Mona Lisa widget too. You can learn more about these toys on their TinEye page.
Have you found a cool search with lots of variations that you think would make a good widget? Let us know!
- Everything is Visual: Introducing the TinEye Mona Lisa Widget
Because we love to have fun at the idéeplex we came up with a snazzy, embeddable widget that demonstrates the image identification technology behind TinEye: the image search engine!
What is TinEye you ask? Given an image to search for, TinEye tells you where and how that image appears all over the web – even if it has been modified.
When you want to find out where an image is being used on the web, you submit it to TinEye by uploading it, pointing to it on the web or right clicking using the TinEye plugin.
The image itself is analyzed instantly, and its “fingerprint” is compared to the fingerprint of every single image in the TinEye search index of almost half a billion images.
The result? A detailed list showing all the images and the websites using that image, worldwide.
[If you can't see the widget click here]
All of the Mona Lisa images in our widget were found on the web by searching on TinEye for the first, unedited Mona Lisa image in the series. We took the results of our search and put them into this image flow interface, which allows you to scan through all the images and see the differences between them.
Give it a try, press play! This little widget is embeddable: this means that you can simply grab the code and embed it on your blog or website. Go ahead, we’re cool with you sharing and distributing it. Do you like it? You can Digg it too!
Did you know that the Mona Lisa is one of the most used images in product marketing in the world? While we only used 150 unique Mona Lisa images in this nifty little demo, TinEye actually found almost two thousand results searched over 487 million images!
Try pulling one of the Monas out of line, she’s snap right back in. Go forward, go back, stop to look more closely at an image. Interested in one? Click the corresponding url and off you’ll go to one of the thousands of websites featuring Mona Lisa in all her variations.
What is this? You don’t have an account yet? Today is your lucky day! We have 500 ‘instant’ accounts to our beta available. Sign up!
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