HOW TO FIND THE ORIGINAL SOURCE OF
A PHOTO, STEP BY STEP

To find the original source of a photo, run it through more than one reverse image search, look for the oldest and the largest copy, and then read the pages those copies sit on for clues about who posted it first. If the photo shows a person and the trail goes cold, a face search can find the same face in pictures the file search misses.

No tool can tell you with certainty who published a photo first. What you can find is the earliest public copy a search engine has seen, plus enough context around it to make a sound judgement. That is usually enough to answer the real question behind the search: is this photo stolen, is it mine, or is it what the sender says it is.

PREPARE THE PHOTO

The quality of what you upload decides how far you get.

1. Use the best version you have. If you can download the image itself, do that rather than taking a screenshot. A screenshot adds borders, lowers the resolution and changes the file.
2. Search the whole image first. The uncropped photo, with its background and any text, matches copies of the same picture best.
3. Keep a cropped version ready. If the photo has a caption, an app frame or a collage around it, cut that away and search again. If it shows a person, also save a tight crop of the face for later.
4. Note what you already know. Where you saw it, the name or caption attached to it and the date. You will compare these with what the searches turn up.

SEARCH IN MORE THAN ONE ENGINE

Each reverse image search engine has its own index, so one engine's "no results" says little about the others. Run the same photo through at least two or three: Google Lens, Bing Visual Search, Yandex and TinEye are the usual set.

Look for three kinds of result:

• Exact copies of your photo on other pages.
• Larger or less cropped versions of it. Copies tend to get smaller and tighter each time they are reposted.
• Pages about the photo, such as a news story, a fact check or a stolen-photo warning.

Save the link to every promising result as you go. Pages change and posts get deleted.

TINEYE: OLDEST AND BIGGEST

TinEye is useful here because it lets you reorder results. According to TinEye's help centre, you can sort by best match, biggest image, most changed, newest and oldest.

• Oldest puts the copy TinEye found first at the top.
• Biggest image often points towards the original, because the person who took a photo usually has the largest file.
• Most changed shows the most heavily edited copies, which helps when you suspect a photo has been altered.

There is a catch, and TinEye states it plainly: the date it crawled an image is not the date the image first appeared on the page, and it does not know that date. "Oldest found" means the earliest copy TinEye saw, not proof of who published first. Treat it as a strong lead and confirm it on the page itself.

CLUES THAT POINT TO THE ORIGINAL

Open the candidates and compare them. The original tends to have most of these:

• The largest size and the widest frame. Later copies are often cropped, resized or squeezed into a different shape.
• No added text or stickers. Reposts gain captions, emojis and app watermarks; the original rarely has them.
• A photographer's or agency watermark. A watermark in the corner names who holds the rights, or at least where the photo was sold.
• A caption that fits. The original post usually describes the scene in a way that matches everything in the picture: the place, the season, the people.
• An account with history. A profile that has posted similar photos of the same person or place for a long time is more likely to be the source than one that appeared recently.
• Other photos from the same moment. If one account has several shots taken seconds apart, they were probably there.

When several pages share the same photo, check the date shown on each post. A page that published it earlier than every other copy you can find, with a bigger file and a fitting caption, is your best answer.

WHEN THE FILE TRAIL GOES COLD

Sometimes every search comes back empty, or only with small copies. With photos of people this happens often, for clear reasons:

• The photo was mirrored, filtered or heavily cropped, so it no longer looks like the same file to an image search.
• It was taken from a private account or an app, and the original was never on the public web.
• It is a frame from a video or one shot from a series, and only the other shots were posted publicly.

This is where a face search adds something. Image search looks for the same file; a face search looks for the same face, so it can find the person in a completely different picture. The difference is explained in Reverse Image Search vs Face Search.

With Trace, upload the tight crop of the face. You get back the public pages where that face appears, each with a link you open yourself and a similarity score from 50 to 100: 70 to 80 is a possible match worth a second look, 80 to 90 is strong, 90 and above is near-certain. Every unlocked result opens with a one-sentence verdict read off the pages, for example one consistent identity, the same face under several names, or stock-photo sites. If a page shows the same person in the same outfit and place, open it and check whether it holds the original.

If you only want to know whether two photos you already have show the same person, the free face comparison gives one score and searches nothing.

WHAT THE ANSWER PROVES, AND WHAT IT DOES NOT

• A match is a lead, not an identity. A score compares two images. Relatives, twins and lookalikes can score high, so judge the pages, not the number.
• The earliest copy you find may not be the first. It is only the earliest one a search engine has seen.
• Nothing found is not proof of anything. It means nothing turned up on the part of the public web the search can reach. A face that leaves no trace at all may also be generated: see how to tell if a photo of a person is AI generated.

WHAT TO DO WITH THE ANSWER

• It is your own photo. Collect the links and report each copy to the site it is on. Where Is My Photo Used Online? covers removal, and Fake Account Using My Pictures covers accounts pretending to be you.
• Someone sent it as their own photo. If the original belongs to someone else under another name, the person messaging you is not who they claim to be. Stop sending money or personal details and use the checks in Is This Person a Scammer?.
• It is a stranger's photo. Finding where a picture came from is not a reason to contact the person in it. If their photo is being misused, report the copy to the platform instead.

RESPONSIBLE USE

Trace is for checking photos that reach you and finding where your own face appears. It is not for identifying, locating or contacting a private person, and it returns no names, addresses or phone numbers. Anyone can have their face removed from Trace's index and blocked from being added again at remove my photos.

FAQ