If you're concerned about your photos being used without your consent, you've probably searched the Web for them using keywords or EXIF data. But there's a new image-search option that looks for
visual matches. You upload your original to this search engine, called
TinEye, and it hunts for other images with corresponding pixel patterns.
Does it sound too good to be true? That's because it is -- at least for now. There's a lot of Internet out there, and so far TinEye has indexed only a tiny fraction of it. Chances are it won't make a correct match for many images. For example, I uploaded this photo from a 2004 CreativePro.com article written by Bruce Fraser:
TinEye found this similar image (shot by Stephen Bay), but not the original: 
I'm willing to cut TinEye some slack because it's so new -- still only in private beta. (Request an invitation and you'll probably receive one in your email inbox within minutes.) Plus, it's free.
As TinEye's index grows, it could be an excellent tool for tracking down image thieves. In the long term, I could also see designers using it to research marks. For instance, if Quark could have used TinEye to search for similar logos before they unveiled the 2005 version of their mark, they might have avoided a corporate embarrassment.
Keep your eye on TinEye.
