Ok! Setting up a web site. What to do about image security?

[riooso]

Pin your prints to the inside of a rain coat, drive around the country in the '46 Plymouth sedan and show them to anyone who wants to look.
At least your images will be secure (unless you forget your rain coat somewhere!)

Now, that is funny! The only thing wrong with that scheme is that you might possibly be taken for a pervert of some sort! You know, the coat? Guess it is ok if you are wearing all your clothes! LOL!

R

[Jac@stafford.net]

I guess you all are right. I was hoping something like Digimarc would be helpful.

R

It is a good thought, but Digimarc is quite easily broken - the embedded text/image can be removed. I did it many years ago as part of a project looking for protection. It is really intended as a service that scans Internet images for their code.

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[paulr]

Truly, the one active thing you can do is register the copyrights of your images (this just allows you to collect greater damages if you sue someone).

As much as I agree this is a good idea, I'll confess to not having done it. I just don't imagine my images are likely to be stolen in a way that causes material damages. I've had a photo website for 17 years now; so far I've only once seen an unauthorized use that annoyed me. I managed to get it taken down.

Another thing you can do is keep the pixel dimensions of the image small enough that people won't be able to make great looking prints. Mine are around 1200 pixels wide ... big enough to look nice on a good sized monitor, but impossible to get a nice print bigger than 5x7 or so. If someone really wants to pin a 5x7 of one of my images to their fridge, bless them.

A copyright notice, written in non-ranting-crazy-person language certainly can't hurt. Something like "all images on this site are copyrighted. Do not reproduce without permission." Or whatever.

Please do everyone a favor and skip the watermark. They're just ugly and distracting. Look at the sites of people who sell work for tens (or hundreds) of thousands of dollars. I doubt you'll see watermarks. They just cheapen everything

[fishbulb]

If you put an image, or text, or anything on the internet, or even on a computer connected to the internet, someone can steal it.

The question to really ask yourself is: are my images good enough that anyone is GOING to steal them? Even if you are the best photographer in the world, you can upload them at 400x600 pixels at 72ppi and it's unlikely that anyone will want them. But the downside is that no one will be able to see very good representations of your work.

Installing a basic right-click protection script/plugin can help prevent casual downloading but it won't stop an image-harvesting robot (which there are tons of). Small file size will stop the robots though, which usually harvest large size images and then resell them, or use them as content for wallpaper sites with advertisements.

Sure, you could try and sue them if you find your images there, but you'll likely find out that the site is hosted in Russia or China or whatever. So don't count on lawsuits to save you, or make you any money. Occasionally you read about a good settlement from copyright infringement, but only of the infringer is a large developed-economy company with a reputation to protect.

The most reasonable way to do it, in my opinion, is just put your images on your website at a reasonable size that allows you to show them off or sell them, but isn't so huge that they'll be attractive to steal. For me this is 900px on the long edge, 72dpi. For your website design it might be something different though. The website '500px' started out with a 500px default size, but I think its bigger now due to the ever-increasing size and pixel density of modern screens.

[Jac@stafford.net]

This might be a good opportunity to mention to Mac users the program called ScreenShot PSD available in the App Store. Free.

It captures your screen, and all windows-within-windows as individual Photoshop layers.
I used it for development. Very clever and handy.

[paulr]

The question to really ask yourself is: are my images good enough that anyone is GOING to steal them?

Or ask what you mean by "steal." Do you care about someone using your image as their pc wallpaper? Or hot-linking to it with a mention of your site? I don't.

I think the only kind of stealing that results in damages is unauthorized commercial use. Like if you saw Nike using your image on its site. The likelihood of this is less dependent on how "good" your work is than on how "commercial" it is. Perhaps ironically, the more your images look like stock catalog cheese, the more danger you likely face of theft.

The good news is that big companies usually only do this as a result of outrageous oversights, and they can easily be forced to pay up.

[Bill Burk]

I guess the bigger problem is how to control what happens when someone types your name into Google, does a search and chooses the "Images" tab.

Do only the photographs you authorize appear?

[riooso]

Thanks everybody. Your input so far is helping me close in on what I need to do.

Thanks,
R

[Light Guru]

I guess the bigger problem is how to control what happens when someone types your name into Google, does a search and chooses the "Images" tab.

Do only the photographs you authorize appear?

Nope just about any photo that is on a webpage that has your name will probably appear.

[Jac@stafford.net]

I guess the bigger problem is how to control what happens when someone types your name into Google, does a search and chooses the "Images" tab.

Do only the photographs you authorize appear?

You got a good answer, and here's another tip: Google has Search by Image where you upload an image of your own and they try to find it in their image database. I have done it with just a few of my photos and they found several sites with them. My name was nowhere on the pages. It is still a relatively new project and computationally difficult thing to do, so not finding any is not proof that your pictures are not out there.

Another similar search is TinEye but it did not find what Google did.
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