Face Search: How to do it? [8 Best Facial Recognition Engines]

Are you trying to know about someone just by having their picture where his face is visible? If yes, learning about “Face Search” will help you to fulfill your purpose. The technology has evolved so much that we can now find out about people just by using their pictures.

This particular phenomenon is achieved by using “Facial Recognition Engines.” In this post, I’m going to guide you on how to do it. So, you can easily find out about anyone you want when the only thing you know about them is their face.

What is Face Search?

We have come a long way in terms of technology. Ever since the introduction of AI, the digital world has been experiencing a revolution, and facial recognition is a part of it. Face Search is the technique of finding someone by using his or her picture where the face is visible or detectable. The face recognition tools are used for this purpose. Such tools read and record the face from the picture and then scan their database to find similar samples.

Face search

After thorough scanning, you will see pictures and even profiles having a similar face to the one available in your picture. Along with the results, you will receive all the available information about the picture, such as gender, age, race, and other similar data.

A wide range of professionals such as lawyers, marketing agencies, models, and other businesses are using this new technology to enhance their services. Since it is a growing solution, you can find a lot of software vendors offering Face recognition online APIs available to integrate with apps and other utilities.

Is it possible to search for someone using his picture?

You must have seen movies or shows where the Government agencies or intelligence bureaus use pictures of a culprit to find out more about him. Earlier, it was only possible for them. But now, it is possible for almost anyone to search for someone using his picture. If you have someone’s picture and want to know about his whereabouts, you can use the online facial recognition tools to do that.

There can be various reasons to do this. For example, you can use it to verify the reality when you suspect someone using a fake profile picture or to spot scams on dating websites, or even Airbnb. You can also use the technique to find out about your old college friend, or even the girl you found on a forum. The possibilities are endless.

How to do Face Search Using a Picture of Someone?

As I have mentioned above, it is now completely possible to search for someone using his picture where his face is clearly visible. I’ll teach you how to do that here. To do a face search using a picture of someone, you will have to use a facial recognition engine. I’ll tell you about all the good ones later. For now, I’ll explain the method by using the most popular and simplest one, Google.

Google is now able to recognize faces in pictures and you can search for someone by uploading his picture in the ‘reverse image search’ feature. To know how to do that, follow these steps:

Step-1: Open a browser and visit images.google.com (Google Reverse Image Search). Now, click on the ‘Camera’ icon present in the search bar.

Face search with Google Images

Step-2: Next, click on ‘Upload an image,’ and upload the picture you want to use. After uploading, click on the ‘Search by image‘ button.

Face search with Google images

Step-3: On the results page, type “&imgtype face” next to the uploaded image, and hit the ‘search’ icon.

Face search with Google images

That’s it.  You will then see Google will present all the web pages wherever a picture with a similar face is used. This is how you can do Face recognition searching with Google. You can also use other advanced facial recognition engines for this purpose. I have listed all the good ones below.

8 Best Facial Recognition (Face Search) Engines

For searching for someone’s face using his picture, you have to rely on good facial recognition engines. There are many options available and trying to use all of them can be very time-consuming. So, I have compiled the best ones here. You can use these search engines to find out about anyone using his picture. The procedure to use them is very similar to the one explained above.

Face search engines

You have to upload an image, hit the search icon, and then go through the results. You will easily learn everything just by visiting them. If you get any doubts, you can contact me at any time through the comment box.

1. Google Reverse Image Search

Face search with Google

We have already looked at how Google’s reverse image search feature can help you to find out about someone using a picture of his face. So, Google Reverse Image Search is the first engine that you can use for facial search. However, you shouldn’t forget that it doesn’t focus on facial recognition specifically, but performs detection by taking the whole image into account. That’s why sometimes it is pretty inaccurate.

2. PimEyes Facial Recognition

PimEyes Snapshot

PimEyes is a dedicated online facial recognition search web service. You have to upload photos and it will find people with similar faces from all around the web. It will also inform where the pictures are coming from. The service goes through millions of websites and uses intelligent AI to provide very accurate facial recognition search results. You can use it instead of Google to get the best facial search results.

3. Berify Reverse Image Search

Berify is specifically a reverse image search engine to find your stolen images or videos. However, you can also utilize its facial recognition API for your searching someone’s profile as well. Its proprietary image matching algorithm is better than any other engine’s and is able to look beyond public domains. You should definitely try it.

4. TinEye Reverse Image Search

TinEye is another reverse image search engine with facial recognition capabilities. So, you can use it to search for anyone using his facial profile. You just need to upload your picture and hit the search icon, and the results will definitely provide what you are trying to find. It also has a browser extension that comes pretty handy at times.

5. Social Catfish People Search

Social Catfish is a dedicated search engine to find people. It is generally used to find lost connection and verify a person’s online identity. It allows you to search for someone using his name, email address, phone number, username, and image. So, if you have an image with a face, you can upload it on Social Catfish, and it will tell you about the people with similar faces.

6. Bing Image Search

Bing is often considered a Google alternative, and it also has a reverse image search feature. You just need to visit the Bing homepage, and then click on ‘Images’ to access it. Then, you will find the ‘camera’ icon that you can use to upload your image and find its similar profiles. However, just like Google, Bing also takes the whole image into account, and not just the face.

7. Yandex Face Search

Yandex is another search engine that allows you to search using images and has facial recognition capabilities. It is often known as ‘Russian Google.’ But, its facial recognition algorithm is even better and more accurate than Google itself. You should definitely try it once. Just visit it, and click on the ‘camera’ icon to upload your picture.

8. Pinterest Image Search

Pinterest is a popular social media platform dedicated to images. You can use it to perform any facial recognition search. To do that, you have to upload the picture as ‘Pin’ on your board on Pinterest, then you have to click on the pinned photo and then click on the ‘magnifying glass’ icon present on the bottom-right side. So, it will go through the whole database and will present all the similar images in the results.

Final Verdict

Face Search is a growing technique of finding someone by using his/her picture where the face is clearly visible. There are many tools available nowadays to do that. You can always use a facial recognition search engine to find anyone using a picture. These are the 8 best ones that you can use. If you aren’t satisfied with the results of a single-engine, you can always try multiple options to get the most accurate results.

That’s all for this post. I hope you find it helpful. Feel free to use the comment box to share your opinions about it.