I’m going to tell you what I discovered the other day while tinkering around. The whole world uses Google for everything, but the search images bing has a feature that few know about and that got me out of a jam.
The best part is being able to search with images on bing without needing to type a single word. You go to the page, and instead of typing, you drag the photo you have saved on your desktop directly into the search box . That camera you see next to it isn’t for taking selfies, it’s for searching image on microsoft bing by uploading a file or pasting a link .
The downside I see is that sometimes the filters fail. If you want to search image on bing with rights to use it, you have to pay close attention to the Creative Commons license filter, which is hidden and not at all intuitive . One time I started searching bing images for a project and I almost misappropriated them without meaning to.
On mobile it’s a tight fit. When you try to search images with bing from your phone, the option to upload a photo sometimes doesn’t appear or is half hidden among menus. That said, if you manage to search images on bing from a PC, the results are very accurate, especially for physical objects and clothing.
What surprised me most was being able to search images by bing using a screenshot of a celebrity. I hit search images according to bing with a photo of an actor and it even pulled up the jacket he was wearing and where to buy it . Amazing.
But watch out, there’s a catch. When you start searching by photo on bing, the tool scans the whole image and sometimes confuses the background with the main object. If the photo has a lot of background noise, the results can come out completely wrong.
What I didn’t know is that bing image search is also integrated into the Windows 11 Photos app . You click the three dots and the option to search with Bing appears. That way you don’t even have to open the browser.
And something that bugs me: from what I’ve read, depending on the country you’re in, the search by image feature may be limited or may not work at all . As always, some of us have more privileges than others with these things.
I also found out that the photos you upload are kept to improve the system . I don’t know about you, but the idea of them keeping my images to train their algorithms doesn’t sit well with me at all. Although I suppose that’s the price to pay for having such a powerful search engine.
