Are you trying to find someone on Facebook and only have a picture of him or her as a clue? Thanks to the wide variety of free tools that exist on the Internet, it is possible to search through images to find someone or something easily. Using these tools is very useful for verifying the legitimacy of an account and the content you post . They can even be used to carry out the journalistic work of discovering who owns an image and where it was published for the first time.
Sadly, Facebook doesn’t have a reverse image search feature, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find someone on Facebook with a photo. Next, we will show you several easy-to-apply methods that will allow you to find someone on Facebook just by having a photo related to their account.
Before looking for someone on Facebook with a photo you should know this
When you are trying to find someone on the Internet with a photo, the success of your search will depend almost exclusively on that photo . It does not have to be a high-quality photo, but rather that it remains as faithful as possible to the original from which it came. Specifically, these are the characteristics that the photo that you are going to use for the search should have:
- The file name of the photo is the same or very similar to the original photo.
- Image dimensions remain intact.
- The color profile of the photo has not changed from the original.
- The person you are looking for has a public Facebook profile.
- If the profile is private, it is impossible for you to find it with a photo unless they are friends on the platform.
- The person you are looking for has some kind of Internet presence.
- The photo you are going to use was downloaded from Facebook.
If your photo (and your search in general) meets all the above characteristics, the chances that you will find who you are looking for are very high . If not, try to get another photo that has these characteristics. Anyway, even if you can’t get a photo with these characteristics, you can try your luck and try to do the search with the methods that we will explain to you right away.
How to find someone on Facebook from a photo
To find a Facebook profile linked to a photo that you have, you can apply any of the 3 methods presented below.
Use the image ID on Facebook to find its owner
All photos on Facebook have a unique identification number. If you downloaded the photo from Facebook, the file name should have that ID which will be very useful in your search. In case the photo is on Facebook and you can access it, follow these steps to get its ID and find the Facebook profile that originally posted it:
- Right click on the photo on Facebook.
- Click on Open image in a new tab .
- Go to the new tab open with the photo and look at the address bar where the link of the photo is.
- You will see that the link, before ending in “.png” or “.jpg”, has three lines of numbers separated by an underscore (_). Well, copy the second line of numbers .
- What you have copied is the ID of the Facebook profile that uploaded the photo. To find said profile, open a new tab and enter this address in your browser:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=
- At the end of this link (after the “=” sign), paste the line of numbers that you copied before and which is the ID of the user who uploaded the photo to Facebook.
- Finally, access that address that you have created to go directly to the Facebook profile to which the photo belongs.
That’s it! If the profile is private, unfortunately you will not be able to see it. And if you were directed to the profile of a person that you are not looking for , do not be disappointed and try the following methods.
Search by photo of a person with Google Images
Currently, Google has the best tool to search from images. Its algorithms are very effective at finding web pages and information related to a photo , although they don’t do magic either. There are many ways to use this tool and here we describe them all:
- If the photo is on the Internet, just right-click on it and select Google Image .
- In case your browser does not show you that option, enter Google Images and drag the photo to the search bar .
- But if the photo is saved on your PC, then go to Google Images and tap the camera button> Upload image> Choose file . Thus, you can upload the image and do the search.
We are not done yet! In this way, Google will show you all the Internet sites where the image you are looking for appears. Since you are interested in seeing who used or uploaded the photo to Facebook , you should do the following:
- Next to the Google search bar where the photo you searched for is attached, enter: site: facebook.com .
Thus, Google will only show you results of the photo on Facebook and you will possibly be able to find the person you are looking for.
Other search tools you can use
Google’s tool is not the only one that exists to search from images. Also Microsoft’s Bing can do this, as well as Yandex which is the best to search in certain regions like Russia. In addition, there are web pages specialized in reverse image search such as:
With different tools you will get different results , so we recommend you try them all … Anyway, we hope that these tricks and tools will be useful to you in your search and you finally find that person you were looking for.
