So…sharing a tip today!
Being an internet savvy person has been very useful in different aspects of my life: from being able to create my own websites, to findings nice deals online… (as well as ‘wasting’ endless hours doing both — and watching cat videos).
Eventually one develops an ‘eye’ for some things. For example, I can quickly tell whether a website is scam or not, simply by looking at the address or the excerpt in the Google Search Results.
I guess this works in the same way for let’s say…designers: most of them can tell if a pictures has been photoshopped or not.
It has also helped me develop the ability to recognize fake pictures.
This may seem really paranoid, but those of you who meet people online would know what I mean. People really go to a great extent when it comes to faking a profile (and a whole life with it).
Like I said, this ability comes naturally. I simply can tell. Whether it’s because the appearance of the person doesn’t match his attitude…or because of the quality of the picture…I simply can tell.
However, there’s a very useful tip that I wanted to share with you guys.
The tip
Google recently implemented a new search featured, which allows us to search ‘by picture’. And it’s surprisingly accurate.
What it does, is take the information of the shape, content, colors, etc…of the picture and look for the same picture somewhere else on the internet.
There are two ways of doing this:
- Go to google.com; click on the top right section ‘Images’, click on the camera icon in the Search field (next the the mic icon), and it will open a small window with two tabs. You can either paste the URL of the image (if it’s posted somewhere) or upload the picture from your computer.
- If you have Chrome, you can simply right-click on a picture in the browser and choose the menu option ‘Search image on Google.’
This two action will end up showing you different places where that picture has been used before.
Now, it doesn’t always work. But it does, 99% of the time (at least for me!)
An example
Let’s look at this hot guy. Nice huh?
First of all, the size of the picture is simply very small. Most of mobiles today give you ridiculous sizes like 1200 px. This picture is 400 × 533…and I doubt someone would go through the trouble of resizing a selfie…
If you have Chrome, right click on the pic and choose to search on Google.
If not, follow the first step.
The result?
As you can see, sometime it shows even similar pictures pretty accurately, like the second one!
If you’re lucky, you may find the original poster/source of the picture. But most of the times, the image has been posted so many times that it’s virtually impossible.
So, there you go. It takes 30 seconds, and it might save you a lot of unwanted drama.
Try not to get upset about it, simply move on and forget it!
Hope it helps!
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