Online image retention, indexing, search technology with integrated image licensing marketplace and a digital rights management platform

A method for facilitating the identification and subsequent commerce of digital images between an image owner and an image user comprising:

• a server computer receiving a selected digital image, referenced as a source image, the source image from the image user as an image or a URL of the image;
• the server computer processing the source image by performing the following steps:
• splitting the source image into overlapping pieces, then
• resizing the overlapping pieces such that each piece is no larger than 32×32 pixels and no smaller than 8×8 pixels;
• the server computer indexing the overlapping pieces with interest points, histograms, and hashes of internal image data to correlate to points for reconstruction of the source image;
• the server computer generating parameters for an image search by aggregating metadata of the source image from a source image file;
• the server computer executing the image search for instances of the source image over the Internet;
• wherein the image search exhibits parameters including the metadata of the source image;
• the server computer returning results of the image search;
• the server computer displaying the results to the image user;
• the server computer providing licensing information for the source image to the image user;
• the image user optionally purchasing a license for use of the source image via a platform;
• the server computer creating a shell of the source image via compression and indexed and classified histograms employing detected interest points of the source image;
• the server computer saving the shell of the source image to a database;
• and
• the server computer updating the database with the aggregated metadata, expediting future searches for the source image.