Detecting fake images by mere looking at them is tending towards impossibility in this age and time. Photoshop has made the creation of fake images easy and more convincing.
Fake images can be created or used for different purposes. For instance, to blackmail. Images can also be merged to create a single impression with the intention of giving a negative opinion of a person.
We are also in the era of social media, where many hide behind a fake identity to defraud the innocent. Are you sure the person in the profile picture is the person you are chatting with?
Are you sure the images on the product or business you want to patronize are truly not lifted from the Internet?
In order not to be too cheap to blackmail on the internet, you must learn how to verify fake images on the internet.
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How to Verify Fake Images Using Reverse Image Search
A greater part of the images used to create fake images come from the internet. So the best way to figure out if an image is fake or not is by tearing the image apart and checking if you can find the individual pieces elsewhere. This you cannot do on your own manually. There are some search tools online that can help you do exactly that, and that is what we will be discussing.
If one image is made up of different images, that automatically shows it was manipulated and is not original.
People also Google a bunch of similar images on the internet and use them to create a social media profile. Doing a reverse image search on an image will show you where the original images were used on the internet.
There are two websites you can use to do a reverse image search. Below are the websites and how to use them.
1. tineye.com
TinEye is a computer vision, image recognition, and reverse image search tool that can help perform an image search to know if some parts of the image have been used elsewhere on the internet.
Below are the steps to use TinEye:
1. Save the image you want to verify on your device or copy the image URL.
For example, if the image is on the Facebook app, you can save it to your phone by selecting the three vertical dots at the right top of the image or by pressing and holding on the image. Then select Save to Phone to save it. On the browser, you can save images by right-clicking on them and selecting Save Image.
When the image you want to verify is saved or the URL copied, you can then move on to the next step.
2. Then load the TinEye official website on your browser. A page like the one in the image below will appear.
3. You can now upload the image you want to verify by clicking on Upload, and the reverse image search will happen immediately. If you get results for some parts of the image, then it is obvious the image was manipulated.
In the case of verifying a social media profile, once you see the image in different places or on different accounts online, you can then use your discretion to decide if it is a scam or not. Depending on whether the information in the image is related to the person you are searching for,
Remember, TinEye searches are private, and they do not save your uploaded image.
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2. Images.google.com
This is another reverse image search tool by Google. This works finer on system Chrome browsers.
It is just the same process as in TinEye. Once you have saved the image you want to verify, you will have to load the Google Image website and click on the camera icon, as shown in the image below.
After that, a new search by image option will appear. Select either the paste image URL option or upload an image.
If you selected Upload an image, you will see the option to Choose File. Select it to choose the file you want to verify on your system. After the image is uploaded, the search will start immediately.
There are so many other fake image detector apps in our mobile app stores, but I believe these two tools will do marvelously for you.
