Whether you’re looking for specific images for web designing or social media posts, looking to identify real-world objects with the internet, or trying to find the original source of a media file, word-based searches are sometimes not as useful or exciting. Reverse image-based searching, on the other hand, opens a whole new set of possibilities for users everywhere.
Qualities of Reverse Image Tools
There are countless tools and resources which allow you to peruse the entirety of the internet based on a visual search entry. The success and popularity of these tools lie in certain important features, including
- Ease of use and friendly interface
- Options to search by offline images or file URLs
- Free usability
- Wide-reaching searches
- Detailed searches based on image characteristic
3 Best Reverse Image Search Tools
Based on the above-mentioned criteria, the following are the best online reverse image search servers based on abilities, features, and overall public demand.
- DNSChecker Reverse Image Search
Best for: General, widespread image searching form across the internet
This website offers a number of free tools and resources for IP, networking, browsing, and developer solutions. One of them is the reverse image search tool, where you can drag images from your PC, paste URLs, add keywords, or even paste a screenshot into the screen.
What makes this tool especially useful is that it presents the user with the option to perform a reverse image search using any of the major search engine platforms, including Google, Bing, Yandex, and Baidu.
This helps increase your chances of finding the right results and allows a broad range of search capabilities, whether you’re after multiple resolutions of an image with Google Images, or trying to recognize faces or specific details within a picture, for which Yandex and Bing are ideal.
Features
- User Friendly
- Completely Free of Charge
- Quick Results
- Searching by URL
- Hosts the best online search-by-image tools offered by search engines
- Tineye.com
Best for: Premium features and image recognition capabilities
This is one of the most frequently-searched image finding tools apart from the most popular search engines. TinEye provides an extremely user-friendly interface and is capable of performing a thorough image search and retrieving the best results for your projects.
The great thing about TinEye is its specialized products and services, including its MatchEngine API which uses a constantly changing set of algorithms for more optimized image recognition and file copyright analysis. While this API is free for simpler searches, larger media projects can make use of premium services at a cost.
This site provides a number of advanced features like image detail identification, uncovering doctored files, image tracking, and color-based searches. That being said, you could argue that most of these products can be more or less availed from Google images without having to make an account.
Features
- User Friendly
- URL or file-upload based search
- Image recognition, fraud detection, and tracking via API
- Account registration-optional for basic searches
- Premium charges for advanced searches
- Pinterest Visual Search Tool
Best for: Image scanning and similar results based on minor details
Pinterest launched its image-finding tool in 2015. Rather than the previous examples, this tool is made for specialized uses rather than general image-based result retrieval.
Pinterest is known for providing a platform for sharing and hosting image results, or “ideas” from a number of external sources, similar to traditional search engines but with a social aspect to it where you can compile images into collections and share them within communities.
With the visual search tool, you can find similar-looking images available on the website based on identical details. This is great for identifying fonts, unlabeled or labeled products, finding images by artist watermarks, and other refined applications.
- Features
- Specialized image search
- Free and quick
- Results are limited to what’s on the website
- Detailed searching capabilities
Author’s verdict
Given their capabilities, few reverse image search tools are as made for the job as the ones that we’ve discussed above, hence their popularity among users that are hoping to try something other than a search portal.
This is especially impressive considering the premium search features offered by TinEye and Pinterest’s fairly exciting visual search tool.
That being said, in terms of the overall most extensive search-by-image possibilities, DNSChecker allows users to access the top search engines and use their immense image-finding capabilities to their advantage, and all for free with no need for registration. This makes it arguably the superior reverse image search tool on the internet.
Conclusion
It’s a shame how many people are unaware of how far modern visual search queries have come. With reverse image search tools, locating results from all over the web-based on visuals and images is of great help to those looking for the perfect images for their projects, investigations, or more general uses.