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Thread: Web Sites - Protecting our displayed images?

  1. #1

    Join Date
    Oct 2005
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    Georgia
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    Web Sites - Protecting our displayed images?

    Greetings,

    Has anyone found a method of protecting our images that we post for the world to see, and hopefully purchase, on our individual web sites.

    Of course, we can always put a watermark or paste in a logo/title in the image to "brand" it but I'm seeking a technique that prevents a viewer from being able to capture an image in any way.

    Suggestions and/or solutions?

  2. #2

    Join Date
    Oct 2003
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    St. Simons Island, Georgia
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    Re: Web Sites - Protecting our displayed images?

    I don't think it's possible. The way the internet works is that information, including images, is download to the viewers computer. I think the only real protection is to make the images too small, and at too low a dpi, to be usable for any purpose other than viewing on a computer screen.
    juan

  3. #3

    Join Date
    Jul 2005
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    953

    Re: Web Sites - Protecting our displayed images?

    There is no way of stopping anyone from capturing a screen image.
    In windows all you need to do is to press Shift+PrintScreen and you can paste it into any image editing application.

    I have seen many websites where the developer has tried to stop people taking images using lots of different techniques but they only stop the most basic attempts by people who haven't got a clue anyway.

    Fact is that it is simply not worth worrying about unless you are putting images on the web at a high enough resolution to produce high quality prints which can then be copied.

  4. #4

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    Re: Web Sites - Protecting our displayed images?

    My concerns are about making images that are worth stealing.

    A determined image thief can always do a screenshot so no, there is no absolute protection. But it is a good practice to have a copyright notice on your website and to check your website's stats from time to time to see if somebody is piggybacking off your bandwidth.

    If you catch a domestic business that should know better using your images without permission, you may have a nice settlement awaiting you in court.
    Last edited by Frank Petronio; 4-Aug-2006 at 06:34.

  5. #5

    Re: Web Sites - Protecting our displayed images?

    Quote Originally Posted by robc
    Fact is that it is simply not worth worrying about unless you are putting images on the web at a high enough resolution to produce high quality prints which can then be copied.
    Fact is that many photographers including myself also supply clients with low resolution images for use on their websites, so even small jpeg images are worth worrying about if the unauthorised use is for commercial gain.

  6. #6

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    Re: Web Sites - Protecting our displayed images?

    Quote Originally Posted by Keith Laban
    Fact is that many photographers including myself also supply clients with low resolution images for use on their websites, so even small jpeg images are worth worrying about if the unauthorised use is for commercial gain.
    Sooner or later its going to happen and the probability of you finding out is small. There are more pages on the web than people in the world. I don't have time to check them all everyday and I'm not going to lose sleep over it.

    Fact is I find it very annoying when I right click and some idiot has written a web page which pops up a message saying these images are protected and blocks all the useful functions such as Add to favorites, back, view source etc as though my intention was to steal their images. Wouldn't buy an image from them.

    I know of one developer who applied every known technique of stopping images from being taken from a website into a client website. He told me there was only one way to get at the images. I showed him six and that the way he had done it had actually made it easier to get all the images in one go. Of course he charged his client for all his time in making the images secure as possible so be warned...

    I just don't worry about it. There are countless millions of images on the web and I would be chuffed if someone had tried to steal one of mine. I'd still sue them if I found out.

  7. #7

    Join Date
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    953

    Re: Web Sites - Protecting our displayed images?

    Quote Originally Posted by Frank Petronio
    check your website's stats from time to time to see if somebody is piggybacking off your bandwidth.
    If you have a half decent web host using Apache you can stop hot linking to any of your images providing they allow you to use .htaccess files which most don't.

    http://wsabstract.com/howto/htaccess10.shtml

  8. #8

    Join Date
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    Re: Web Sites - Protecting our displayed images?

    Dear Jack,

    Image theft is always possible, but there are a few tricks available to the web page creator, to make it a bit more difficult...

    Most browsers allow you to right click and, or drag and drop an image to the desktop, but you can place an blank or transparent GIF image on top of the image, within your web page for the user to download. I also have a few lines of code, that will prevent a user from dragging and dropping, and right clicking an image, but this code disables all such events on a specific web page. This code does not prevent drag and drop or right clicking with every browser available on the market today. A few inexperienced users will certainly become annoyed with your page and obviously leave.

    That said, the easiest way to prevent theft by a casual user, even if my pseudo code fails, is for you to create a blank 1X1 pixel GIF, and lay it on top of your image, where your image is set as a background image within the table cell. The casual user might not realize an image can be stolen by other means, such as an image grabbing tool, which can take a snap shot of the screen image. Users, knowledgeable about this utility, will succeed.

    Other means of theft are available, such as access to the root code in the web page, which identifies the source of the image on the server, and with a few lines of code by the perpetrator, the image can be secured and downloaded directly to their desktop. There are means to prevent this on your server, but most ISP's do not go the extra mile to prevent this, unless you control your own server software. I can write code to steal an image in a heartbeat, as long as I can see the image location, on the server...

    Many people place Copyright Notices somewhere on their page and, or on top of their images, in case their images are grabbed by screen capture utilities. It is somewhat difficult to remove these Copyright Notices, but never impossible in Photoshop, by an experienced user. A few people also make their images 72dpi, which is a good idea, and better for loading images on the web page, to prevent their higher quality images from appearing elsewhere, such as their office wall. It is more difficult, and expensive, to chase a Copyright violation, but many laws do exist to assist the creator.

    So, if you are interested on a few simple tricks, and you are capable of creating your own web page, I will send you a few lines of code to help you along...

    If you use a webpage creation tool, such as Adobe's GoLive, I can show you what to do in the table cells to prevent dragging and, or right clicking an image to the desktop, and placing a transparent GIF in the table cell. It is a simple process, but not foolproof.

    jim k

  9. #9
    Founder QT Luong's Avatar
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    Re: Web Sites - Protecting our displayed images?

    Most photographers I know who conduct a succesfull business on the web just watermark them in a relatively unobstrusive way.
    Last edited by QT Luong; 4-Aug-2006 at 09:55.

  10. #10

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    Re: Web Sites - Protecting our displayed images?

    Quote Originally Posted by QT Luong
    Most photographers I know who conduct a succesfull business on the web just watermark them in a relatively unobstrusive way.
    Thats the best you can do if you think its worth the effort.

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