prevent image stealing.

[myeviltwin]

hello!

to prevent my images from getting stolen too easily, i want to try a little "trick".

instead of showing the pure image, i want something like a table, with the real image as it's background. and then, in the table, i want a transparent .gif to take the place.
so if anybody tries to rightclick - save, he only saves the transparent gif and not my real image.

i just don't know how to code it :oops:
could anybody help me with that?

thanks!

[raminia]

sorry IF I want to steal something I'll do it with purpose. If you do so you may overcome simple stealings but if someone is going to steal it, he/she will do it simply by viewing HTML source.

sorry but I don't like these effort for copyright protection. these just annoy web users.

[Joe[y]]

there are many things you can do....

1) create watermarks in photoshop which are placed over your photos.
2) prevent right clicks with javascript

but basically, you shouldn't be publishing photos on the net if you're worried about people using them. simply don't publish the original files, not much can be done with a 600px wide file.

[raminia]

but basically, you shouldn't be publishing photos on the net if you're worried about people using them. simply don't publish the original files, not much can be done with a 600px wide file.
AGREE!

[derevaun]

I agree that measures to prevent image stealing are often more trouble than they're worth, but I do know of a case where 500x500 images were taken from a website and used by a shop to help sell their goods--trendy plastic toy cameras :o

A pro photog would put a visible and invisible watermark in the image and be done with it, but there's also the trick of using the css background properties of an otherwise empty div element. I do that on my daughter's photo site, not to protect the snapshots but to always center the image regardless of its aspect ratio. You'd have to use a transparent image in the div in order to make it a clickable link again. And it's a bit more hassle to link to the image--for others but also for you.

[Connie]

the only thing what you can do is:

to understand the qualitiy of images, resolution

an image with screen resolution will never satisfy the needs for printing
an image with a watermark will never be "neutral" enough to integrate it into somebody other's projects

so: upload only photos with 72dpi, enclose a watermark before you upload, there are many tools there who do it, add comments to the images (Jpg comments, IPTC comments

so it will not be too easy to use the photos

but, anyway, if you present photos online, they will be in the cache, their URL can be retrieved from the sourcecode / html code

so: if you are really concerned, don't publish, if you want to show your copyright, add comments to the page, add a copyright text to your website

do a googlesearch for your photos from time to time

but: you cannot prevent stealing and, be honest: is all your software registered or freeware or public domain

that's human character ..

[raminia]

but: you cannot prevent stealing and, be honest: is all your software registered or freeware or public domain

that's human character ..
:twisted:

[myeviltwin]

well, i know about resolution and watermarks and also about the possibility to view the sourcecode.
a lot of my photomanipulations have been stolen before from different sites, some have also been sold as a cd-rom at ebay without my knowledge.
and this stuff WAS webresolution, you'll probably wonder how many things people can do with those "small" images.
i do not want to disable right-click, as i use it regularly to open windows in new tabs or sth. like that.


the "trick" i mentioned in the first posting is the way to go for me, and i ask you for coding help.

if you don't want to help me, well, that's okay
i'll ask somebody else :)

thanks anyway.

[Anonymous]

Resolution (72dpi or higher) doesn't matter and neither does image size, for you don't know what the thief intends to do with the image. I think watermarking is a feasible solution and might be your best bet for quick and simple implemitation. I've seen Javascript (actually, it was probably a Java applet) out there that not only prevents right clicking, it even prevents doing any sort of a screen capture. It was used on a wedding photographers website and it only let you preview the photo. If you tried to capture it, your image looked like screen static (like when a TV can't pick up a signal.

I need to use this feature for a potential client, but I don't know of any programs at the moment that do this. Obviously I will doing some reasearch and I'll post any findings here. More times than not, it's not worth the time to protect these items. If I really want to capture something, I'll find a way, especially if it's just an image. Firefox makes this even easier than IE.

[er16004]

whooops.... forgot to log in again.... I posted that last message (or I am just stealing the credit for it???? ) :P

[Connie]

well, as a plain person I would say: there is no way to prevent

the only way: not to publish at all

it's the same with a car: how can you hinder a car from rolling on a street (that's what its made for) and NOT rolling over frogs, snails, people, turtles (that's what nobody wants..)

even if you use the image as a background for a table, it will land in the cache and you even can extract it from the screen by using a screenshot and cut it out...

so, as I know these discussions since my first steps in the internet, I would recommend to concentrate on more productive problems...

and if a client needs something like that, I would say the client has not understood the internet...

:cry:

[owen-b]

Sorry, but I WHOLLY disagree with everyone on here who's saying that if you post an image on the net, it's in the public domain and you should live with it.

If I post an image that I took and processed, then it is MINE. Taking it and using it for free is STEALING. The argument about aa car is utter nonsense - you might as well say that if someone hangs a painting on the wall in an art gallery or museum and doesn't NAIL it up there, then it's only natural that someone will steal it. Total rubbish.

Putting a watermark on the image is damaging to the image - it distracts, even if it's quite discretely tucked away in one corner. And anyway, even if I did do that, someone could download and crop in and steal it that way.

I've had many people ask me to license an image to them for use in books that will be published and sold, or for use to promote their nightclub (and hence used on flyers, posters and websites) and when I tell them there will be a fee, even a small one, they suddenly disappear. How am I to know if they just go ahead and rightclick my image anyway? Often they're in foreign countries so I would never know.

Personally, I don't think that the majority of people that would steal an image from my site are the types of people that would have the intelligence to do a screengrab and cut it out of that - and if they are, well, there's no stopping them. I'm NOT going to whack a watermark over my WHOLE image. I really don't see anything wrong in people coming on here and asking politely if anyone can help come up with a way to drop a transparent gif over the top of their images somehow, to at least dissuade casual stealers from taking their images.


On that note - has anyone come up with a way? I see that David Nightingale over at chromasia.com has used such a technique on his photoblog. I'm a semi-regular correspondant with him so I've emailed him asking how he codes it but haven't heard back yet.

Owen

[kidleethal]

Not to get involved with the ethical issue, but if you look at the ame235 pixelpost template, it uses a transparent gif type function for it's image navigation, and this in effect accomplishes what it is you're asking.

Perhaps download the template and have a look at the code.

[garycruz]

Instead of resorting to javascript, try using an inline background in the div or span. On a mac, you can't drag and drop the image to your desktop, and you can't right click and save it.

[Connie]

well, what you plan is not very helpful at all:

because if a webbrowser shows a photo, it is in the cache of the browser

these rightclick-games etc. will not help you to prevent something

[GeoS]

There are tricks to prevent writing image to the browsers cache and to prevent storing image on HDD of user. Read about all this thinks about HTTP headers and try to find own idea for it.
JUST REMEMBER - there is no 100% sure option for it (i.e. always it is possible to make screenshot).