We love hearing from our TinEye fans because that'swhat keeps us going every day and that's how we discover awesome photography. For example: the work of Roberto Kusterle. Here is Sophie's story:

I had adored this following image for ages, and had no idea of the source.
All I knew, was that it was surreal photography and possibly one of my favorite images ever, but I did not know anything else about it...Until I searched for it in TinEye!

I then found a copy of this image with a name in foreign letters.  I search this in google, and found a few stunningly beautiful images that lead me to find the artist's name in a readable form to me: Roberto Kusterle. I found his site and am enamored with every photograph he has ever created.
Endless thanks to TinEye!

Thank you Sophie for sharing your story with us. We are now insane about Roberto Kusterle's work! Have you seen his angel (I want wings, why can't we all have wings?) and Il Bambino e il suo bosco?

It turns out our little robot is a savvy shopper, too! Check out these neat product-related TinEye success stories...

I was trying to find more information about a 'no-name'/generic computer case I was about to buy online.  It's name was clearly made up by the web shop, so I couldn't use it in searching for more detailed info on other web sites.
Three other image search engines returned nothing, rubbish, or loads of similar cases. TinEye only returned only one hit, a true hit: it was the same case-picture on a different webshop, even though this pictured had been somewhat photoshopped (label airbrushed from case). 

Kudos to TinEye, the other webshop had the details on the computer case I was missing. 

I found a piece of furniture (spinning DVD storage tower) I wanted in Skymall magazine. So I grabbed the image from the Skymall website, TinEye'd it, then used the results to comparison shop ~ saved over $100!! Thank you!

Who doesn't love a good deal?

Why not submit your own success story? We would love to feature it here!

Today's success stories are all about finding those elusive, lost stock photographs!

TinEye fan Kyle writes:

Had purchased a low-res version of a stock photo from iStockPhoto.com couple years back and I needed a higher resolution version but couldn't find it for the life of me using keywords on iStock (and I had lost the image number.)

Popped the image into TinEye which I heard about yesterday, and viola! The link to the image page on iStock, purchased the high-res version and we're good to go. Thanks TinEye!

And with a similar happy story, TinEye fan Tristan writes:

I had to locate an image on Getty Images that was inside a Photoshop collage. The original file was lost so I was going to be forced to sift through thousand of photos on Getty...that is until I remembered about TinEye! I uploaded the image and TinEye found it on Getty for me in 6 seconds. Thanks TinEye!

Even less than 6 seconds

Has TinEye helped you out, too? Send us your success story and be featured here!

Sometimes you can see a piece of art throughout your life and feel like you know it and could recognize it anywhere... but often you can't recall the name of it, or never knew it in the first place!

And when you do find yourself in a situation where you need to know the name of an art piece or an artist, keyword search can sometimes be an infuriating exercise in futility.

Luckily TinEye is eager to help with that sort of thing. He's got a memory like a steel trap! (To be fair, though, he's kind of made of steel.)

From TinEye fan Pedro:

A friend of mine took a picture of Henri Rousseau's The Dream at MoMA and posted at Facebook saying absolutely nothing about the painting that I knew and like but didn't remember the name nor the artist.
I went crazy about it and started looking for sites that could reconized the image and fortunetly I found Tineye.com! Thank you so much for creating it!

Notice that even though someone is obstructing the view of the painting by standing in front of it, TinEye is still able to identify the image. And as an added bonus, "rousseau dream" is part of the result image file name!

From TinEye fan Marc:

for the past 8 years a print on the birthing floor of the hospital has always caught my eye because it reminded me of my kids. I didn't see an artist's signature or the name of the print. I had always intended to write the University about this print but never got around to it. a few days ago I snapped a picture with my phone, there was glare from the flash right in the middle of the picture but I didn't have time to carefully line up the shot, I had to get back to work. Today I turned the picture from my phone right side up, cropped out the flame and wall and submitted it. 10 seconds later I was given 11 perfect results and now know the picture is "Under the Mistletoe by Maurice Ingre.

If TinEye has already saved your sanity in some way or another, tell us about it in the comments!

When strolling around the web, sometimes it's fun to do a TinEye search on the various stock photos that crop up here and there. Like the lady with the headset ready to take your call, or the omnipresent data center lady.  It's interesting to see how other people have utilized the same stock image in various ways on different websites.

Of course, sometimes you really need to locate a stock image. Like when you're working on a design project and you have a great low-res comp image... but you can't remember where you found it so you can't license the high-res version. Oh no!

TinEye fan Max found a friend of his in a similar situation:

A friend told me he was searching for an image over 4 hours yesterday and he just could not find it in any available stockfoto list. He had a thumbnail of the picture and needed it in high res. He send me the picture, I went to TinEye and 5 seconds later I had the link to the stock image. Et voila, TinEye is just awesome!!!!

Not only can TinEye tell you who else is using a stock photo, it can tell you who is selling it, too. In the example below, the search image can be found for purchase at gettyimages.com, a TinEye contributor. Problem solved!

Has TinEye saved your butt in the past? Tell us about it in the comments!

We get a lot of feedback from TinEye fans who come across desktop screenshots and would like to source the wallpaper shown in the background.

Luckily TinEye is pretty good at working with occlusion (when something is blocking parts of the image). So it can give you results like this:

Not only did [TinEye] find the wallpaper I was looking for, it recognized two other different wallpapers: the same scene at winter, autumn and summer. Incredible!

Today's TinEye success stories made us smile. How sweet it is to find what you're looking for!

Sometimes a meme photo gets to me.

I kept seeing this one where Donald Sutherland is mouth agape and finger a-pointin'. Every time I saw it, usually attached to a caption such as "I see what you did there!" Every time I saw it, I'd wonder if that was from Don't Look Now or some other 1970s Sutherland flick.

So I copied a link and pasted it into Tin Eye. Not only did I get a match, but I could see from the title references that the movie is Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Huzzah!

Thank you very much, Tin Eye! You've saved my sanity.

-Dante

Thanks Dante, we know what it's like to be hooked on an image!

And from an obviously artistically-inclined TinEyer:

Found my painting!!

I used to learn oil painting as a school kid and I had painted this English lady in a bright red gown with a dog by her side and a scroll of paper on the other. The picture was given to me by my painting teacher but I did not know the original painter or the lady in the painting. I tried researching over the net by typing words like lady in red with dog, etc. but no luck.
I finally came upon this site where I uploaded my own painting which was just a replica and this site helped my find the original painting!! Its the portrait of Mary Edwards by William Hogarth! Hurrayyyy!!

Dude, you must have done a pretty great job with the replica. Remember that TinEye only searches for exact matches and variations of the same image. Nice work, and glad you found your painting!

So I have this habit of putting sample images on brochures I work on for work, keeping in mind that they'll change it to real pictures in the future. Not keeping in mind that the boss might actually like the sample picture and want to use it in the brochure. I then have the fun task of finding the image source, retracing search history and all for them to be able to buy the image. Before tineye I would spend hours on end trying to find one picture, but now... no more..

Today's TinEye success stories. Got an interesting success story or use for TinEye? Submit your own!

Hi I Live in Bulgaria and study in Varna but I often go to my hometown Ruse. There is a Bar called Deep and there are a lot of decorations from old items like accordions and trumpets, country flags and pictures on the wall. One got my attention it was a girl sucking her thumb... Imagine trying to describe that and find the picture when you don't have any info on it. 

So after a lot and I do mean a lot of searching I had the Idea of taking a Picture with my phone and putting it on tineye.com so the picture was a little dark and the print that was on the wall was a little blueish but after I framed it and uploaded it in the web page it found 1 picture that was very very small but that was enough to find the name of the painter and get the original :)