Preserve what you started with
Keep the image, the page where you saw it and the date you accessed that page. A direct image file does not preserve its caption or the claim it was used to support. Write the question down: are you checking where it first appeared, whether a news caption is accurate, or who can license it?
Those goals need different evidence. An early repost can help establish chronology while telling you nothing about who created the photograph. A licensed agency copy may identify the photographer even if it is not the earliest indexed page.
Follow the source chain
- Search the full image with a copy-oriented method.
- Open likely matches and look for credits, captions and links to another publication.
- Follow those links to the cited source where possible.
- Compare the image itself, including crops and details around the edges.
- Record the earliest credible publication you can verify, with the limits of that finding.
If the image includes text or a watermark, search that text separately. Treat it as a lead: a watermark can be added by a republisher and may not name the creator. TinEye’s API description explains its focus on locating uses of the same image.
Read dates carefully
A search result date, an article’s updated date and the photograph’s capture date are not interchangeable. A page can be republished, migrated or refreshed long after the image was taken. Metadata can be edited or stripped. Look for an explicit caption or original publication record rather than combining unrelated dates.
Use wording such as “the earliest accessible copy I found” when that is what your evidence supports. It is more useful than a confident claim about the original source that cannot be checked.
Decide what to do next
For a misleading caption, compare the surrounding event details with another independent source. For permission to reuse a picture, locate the rights holder or licensing page. For a higher-resolution copy, find the authorised download rather than taking the largest file from an unrelated site.
Facehunch’s current test mode cannot establish original publication. You can use its fictional report to learn how source cards work, then choose a suitable engine for a real source investigation. Our copyright guide explains why finding a picture and gaining permission are separate tasks.