#gif source

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NOTE: I don’t make stimboards on mobile, so this guide is desktop-centered, but you should still be able to do this on mobile!

Step 1: Acquire the unsourced gif you want to use in a stimboard. I like to right-click and copy the image url so I don’t have to save the gif, but you can save it if that’s easier for you!

For this little guide, I’ll try to find the source of this purple dragon eye gif I found in an source-less stimboard I came across in a random stim tag.

Step 2: Once you’ve acquired your gif via saving or copying the image url/link, head over to Google Images. It’s easiest to just google a random thing, then click on the ‘Images’ tab circled here.

You’re going to want to click the little camera icon on the right (circled below) to open the reverse image search tool.

The reverse image search tool will be a little pop-up like this:

Step 3: Reverse search that image! Here, you can paste the link/url of the gif you want to find if you’ve copied it, or you can click ‘upload an image’ to manually upload the image to search. I’ll paste the url of the dragon eye gif here.

And then click ‘search by image’ and see what comes up;

So it looks like this particular gif wasn’t made by a particular tumblr user, but someone else who posted it to tenor/giphy or another gif hosting site. But when I checked giphy, there was a source attached, which unfortunately is a deleted tumblr user named memorylapsearchive. But now we can link the giphy page that at least has credit, which is better than nothing at all!

For another example, I’ll try to find the source of the black skull gif in the same stimboard:

First result is a tag;

Then a stimboard with the gif (and sources!):

And then we have the original gifs with the video source!

Unfortunately, this is not a perfect solution every time; I often have to go digging around for the sources even with the reverse image tool, but I think it’s worth knowing how to at least look for gif sources so we’re not all just crediting gif thieves when we can’t find the original gifs in tags.