It’s not often that my life in Minnesota and my love of France intersect in a single image, but that’s exactly what happened when I logged into Facebook today.
Isn’t that brilliant — and hilarious?
What wasn’t so hilarious was trying to attribute the image: My friend shared it via Tor.com, who got it from graphic artist Yuko Shimzi, who got it from … well, you get the point.
Then I remembered my post about TinEye.
TinEye is a reverse-search algorithm that compares your image to millions of others on the Web. According to one promotional video, “… TinEye does for images what Google does for text.”
In the same way that biometric software might analyze a face, TinEye analyzes the components of your image. This lets it find matches based on the image itself, rather than metadata like keywords or file names.
Long story short: Thanks to TinEye, I’m pleased to credit Sean Gregory Miller for the best laugh I’ve had (so far) today.
And the moral of the story? If you admire something enough to pass it on, pass along the author’s name or URL too. Creative people like Sean deserve to be recognized for their work.
HeideBlog 
Well said. And well done. It’s sad when images get passed on and on without the original artist being thanked or acknowledged.
I missed your post about TinEye, so thanks for bringing it back to the front of the shelf – isn’t that called ‘facing’ when they do it in supermarkets?
Does Prince ever appear in supermarkets in Minnesota? I’m finding it hard to imagine, but he must have gone shopping at some point in his life.
Elaine
Does Prince ever appear in supermarkets in Minnesota? Oh, how you have made me LAUGH with that image, Elaine! I imagine he must have entered a supermarket at some point in his life, but it’s difficult to imagine His Royal Little Purpleness pushing a shopping cart around while listening to a soft-rock version of Stairway to Heaven. Or maybe Little Red Corvette. 🙂
In any case, thank you so much for your kind words — and I’m glad you enjoyed the tip about TinEye. It’s one of the best but least-known tools on the Internet, methinks.
Cheers to you from Minnesota!
Maybe he yearns to do his own shopping.
Maybe he’ll break out of the Royal Purple Palace one day and sit, like the Buddha under the Bodhi Tree, in the fresh produce section of Safeway, dispensing wisdom from beneath the purple sprouting broccoli. You never know. 🙂
“Maybe he yearns to do his own shopping”?! HAHAHAA! I *adore* your wit. Thank you for that.
I like it and agree – 100%. Good job.
Thank you!
I missed your posts lately! I will definitely be using TinEye in the future .
Aw, you’re sweet. Thank you! And I’m glad to have introduced you to TinEye — it’s tremendously useful, and also oddly entertaining. (As if you needed one more time-suck, eh? 🙂
I so agree with you, dear H, with a message like this you do a huge favour to all artists. It’s so easy to paste something in made by creative others and do like it all fell out of the universe or a far away (author and copyright free) planet or tiny little star. 😉
Muchos abrazos y besos.
Thank you for your sweet comment, dear Rosa … you were actually one of the artists I had in mind when I wrote this post, because you share your art so generously and freely! It only seems fair that the public so repay that generosity in kind by acknowledging the author. I send you un enorme abrazo desde mi pequeño planeta congelado. 😉
Agreed, it’s great tp support fellow creatives on this journey. And it scored serious LOLZ from me!
I love scoring serious LOLZ. 😀 Thank you for stopping by!
Thank you for spreading this message.
Yes indeedy, I so agree on the need to give people due acknowledgement for their creativity. Funnily enough this is an issue which has been exercising my little grey cells recently, as I try to find out more about copyright law and attributions, etc. Thanks so much for sharing the info about TinEye – that will be really useful.
And thanks to you and Singbetterenglish, I’m now happily imagining Prince, back from the planet of his little namesake, dispensing wisdom in the veg aisle under the purple sprouting broccoli. 😀
Isn’t copyright law a sticky wicket? I’ve been struggling mightily lately with the desire to publish more photos vs. the fear that they will somehow be misappropriated (aka, stolen). And it’s not because I think I’m some great photographer — it’s more the principle of the thing, and wanting to retain *some* control over how my work is used. But that’s far too weighty a topic for a Sunday evening, so before I get too exercised, I will join you in imagining Prince among the purple produce. (Oh, what a happy image! 🙂