A toast to Google image search!

I'm a bit obsessed with Google image search. It all started about a year ago when I received an email from a graphic designer in NYC. He had a client—a very small Napa Valley winery called Gofessel Vineyards—that was looking for an illustration of a magnolia to use on a wine label. They'd done an online image search, found my magnolia drawing, and wanted to know if I'd be interested in licensing it. I was thrilled, of course! We worked out the details, and I emailed the file off to him. I was beginning to appreciate the benefits of online image searching.

Months later, I realized that I hadn't heard anything further. I checked in with the designer and learned that the wine was actually bottled, labelled and available for sale. It was great fun to order a case of these babies for Christmas gifts.

Well, my love affair with Google image search continued when I read that it's a great way to check and see if anyone has used one of your images without permission. Really?! You just go to the Google search site, click on "images" and there's a little camera icon that appears in the search box. Clicking on it allows you to upload any of your images, and then it'll find matches on the internet. I tried my magnolia drawing as a test case, and lo and behold, it immediately found my blog and the aforementioned winery website!

But the really fun part—if you're as easily amused as I am—is that it will show you  images that it considers "visually similar" to yours. For instance, here's what popped up when I entered my red onion drawing (seen below as the first image):

or how about when I entered my purple beans?:

Isn't that a hoot?

But all silliness aside, Google does seem to provide an amazingly in-depth image search. I did find that a small non-profit used my drawing of a Starbucks cup on a one-time online invitation to a coffee hour meeting. Of course, I'd never care about something like that, but if your images are being used commercially and/or extensively in ways for which you should be compensated, shouldn't you know about it?

So if you have some time, do a little sleuthing via Google images...but I warn you, it's addicting!