Sunday, December 13, 2009

ChromeEye, a TinEye extension for Google Chrome

chromeeyeI made a simple reverse image search extension for Google Chrome. Reverse what? Reverse image search. Think Google, but instead of text you enter an image. Ah okay. Please continue.

The ChromeEye extension uses the image search engine TinEye, whose technology allows you to find exact copies of images (including scalings and slight distortions).

Version 0.1 of ChromeEye (updated: now latest version) basically mimics the TinEye bookmarklet behavior, i.e. it lists all images of the current page with links to TinEye results. Let's hope Google Chrome allows for editing the browser context menu soon, so you can right click and select a "Search Image on TinEye".

Meanwhile, you can download the latest version of ChromeEye directly from this link, while the complete source code is available on GitHub. So until the oficial TinEye plugin gets released, have fun with this easy solution.

Update 14 December 2009: ChromeEye now has a page on the google chrome extensions site. Version 0.2 was also released, with a nicer logo.

Update 17 June 2011: ChromeEye is now called Reveye and it includes different search engines, such as Google, Tineye and Cydral.

12 comments:

Sangorrin said...

Sounds like it can be useful for many things.

For instance, as an illustrator to look for reference pictures.

Or for a professional photographer to check if somebody is using your photos without your permission :D

Right?

Steven Van Vaerenbergh said...

Right indeed. Especially the second use is popular these days, as a lot of people are using TinEye's technology to find copies of their copyrighted works.

You should try it on some corporative web sites or blogs. It's fun (and sometimes embarrassing) to see where they get their images from.

Ben said...

Thanks for creating this useful extension for Google Chrome. TinEye is an excellent service and it's great to be able to use it just that little bit more fluently through ChromeEye. Do you know if there is any way to integrate ChromeEye's functionality into the right click menu, or is having the extension docked in the navigation bar currently a limitation of Chrome? Thanks

Steven Van Vaerenbergh said...

@Ben: As far as I know, extensions in Chrome cannot affect he context menu at this moment. There's more info here under "browser interaction": http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/overview.html
Anyway, I plan to implement this right-click functionality as soon as Google allows it. The Firefox extension of TinEye has this, and it is certainly a nice feature.

Stephen Alexander said...

I don't know if you can modify the existing right-click menu, but evidently it's possible to create your own - this extension from google does: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/nnbmlagghjjcbdhgmkedmbmedengocbn
I haven't examined the code, but this is evidence that it's possible.

Steven Van Vaerenbergh said...

@Stephen: Thanks for the hint. With some delay I implemented a neat context menu for the new plugin version. You can read about it here: http://squobble.blogspot.com/2011/03/more-reverse-image-search-chromeeye-v10.html

Anonymous said...

sir can you add more reverse image engines on your extension on chrome

like

http://www.picsearch.com
http://www.revimg.net

Steven Van Vaerenbergh said...

@Anonymous: I will add them, in the next version. I just haven't had the time to work on it yet. Expect it in a few weeks.

brian said...

Does not work anymore in Chrome Version 21.0.1180.57 OS X. Doesn't show up when right clicking on image. Please fix!

Steven Van Vaerenbergh said...

Hi Brian, it should be fixed now (in version 1.3.2)

Reem said...

Thanks for your extension!
I would love to see an option to upload a local image from the computer to one or all of the image search engines, like in this Firefox extension:
Who stole my pictures?

Steven Van Vaerenbergh said...

@Reem: That's a very good idea. Unfortunately I have other priorities these days so I cannot do it myself.

I have added your idea to the Github to do list in case anyone wants to perform a pull request: https://github.com/steven2358/reveye/issues/2