Google Search by Image API?

Question

for my job, I'm looking into an idea in which people would use Google Search by Image and use any celebrity photo they find. Google would return the results and then on our end, a there'd be a database of professionals showing how to get that specific look.

I'm assuming this is extremely unlikely to do, based on that users could use ANY photo.

So, is there a way that I could have about 100 or so celebrity photos that Google Image results could compare to and then choose the one that is closest.

Basically:

1. Drag drop photo of Britney Spears
2. Google searches with that image
3. Google's results compare the top images with our 100, and selects the closest match.
4. User gets to see video of how to get Britney Spears look.

I'm not a programmer, but looking for some API or Search by Image extension that could make this remotely possible for the programmers here at my job. Does something like that (a search by image api) exist? The best I could find was just the support page, which is hardly of any help: http://support.google.com/images/bin/answer.py?hl=en&p=searchbyimagepage&answer=1325808

Answer 1

Sorry to say, but the Google image API is deprecated:

Important: The Google Image Search API has been officially deprecated as of May 26, 2011. It will continue to work as per our deprecation policy, but the number of requests you may make per day may be limited.

Quite sure there are some alternatives (http://www.tineye.com/ and http://mrisa.mage.me.uk)

Update (2013): There is now Google Custom Search which allows image searches.

Answer 2

You can easily search by an existing image by inserting this into your address bar:

https://www.google.com/searchbyimage?site=search&sa=X&image_url=YOUR_IMAGE_URL

Example:

https://www.google.com/searchbyimage?site=search&sa=X&image_url=http://cdn.sstatic.net/Sites/stackoverflow/company/img/logos/so/so-icon.png

Answer 3

These answers are quite obsolete, but the question comes up in searches. So, the Google Vision API has the "web detection" feature that does a reverse image search. First 1000 requests per month are free, $3.50/1000 afterwards.

Answer 4

You can do it via www.images.google.com but only from a browser (lets you upload your own image and compares it to similar). I'm working on doing it from code (not from browser).

Answer 5

I think Google Web Detection could be a solution for you. Google moved it permanently from Image search