July 23, 2011, 9:57:00 PM

How to: find your 'borrowed' photos with Google Image Search

Play by the rules

Do you see the picture above this paragraph? It took some effort to get that photo there: I had to remove my old nail polish and repaint them with Mimosa by Chanel. After that I have to get my camera, take some photo's, sometimes more than a hundred before the lighting is good enough etc. I then have to transfer the pics onto my computer, import them in Photoshop, do some cropping, resizing and maybe even a little rotating. Which takes ages on my tantalizingly slow laptop. Finally: they're ready to upload! Sounds like a bit of work, doesn't it?

Well, it is! So with that in mind, you can imagine how frustrating it can be, when others just take your photos and repost them without even a hint of credit. Or worse: place their watermark on top of your photo. I normally don't mind, when I see my photos on the net, I love the web, it's open. It's different when the photos are used for commercially goals, like uploading them to a webshop.

This isn't the kind of post I'd normally post, but I've written blogposts for fellow bloggers before, so I thought this article possibly may be of interest to some. With the new and improved Image search by Google, it's now extremely simple to track down your own photos. Let's have a look:

1. Go to https://images.google.com

1. Go to images.google.com

2. Drag a photo from your hard drive directly into the search field

Drag a photo from your hard drive directly into the search field

3. Hit the search button

Hit the search button

4. Et voila: an overview of your photos!

an overview of your photos

Of course it's up to you, what to do next. If you want your content to be removed, have a look at this article.