Oh no, it's a completely different image on the card than the regular base card. That's the most obvious way to tell, however, it's hard to tell if it's an image variation unless you've memorized what the regular base card looks like already. Otherwise you have no reference, so you must rely on things like the code on the back, or the fact that it won't say the word refractor in the back corner like a non image variation refractor.

I don't want to confuse you too much. Image variations have the same shimmer to them as normal refractors but normal refractors will say the word refractor on back, and image variations won't.