The how to prevent image theft thread

[jstarkey]

I know this HAS to be a FAQ, but I've searched the forum and only found a little bit of info, which was dated 2001.

Anyone interested in sharing tips for preventing image theft? I was talking to someone who does a lot of outdoor photography as a side to his main line of biz, which is setting up wilderness adventures for company execs -- a leadership training thing. He was asking me about image theft, and well, with my skills, it's just something I don't have to worry about. lol. Anyway, he's thinking of selling prints online.

Anyone have suggestions, tips, tricks?

TIA

[Nightfall]

nothing defeats the old print screen trick, but you can go as far as disabling right click...

[sk8Krog]

make the screenshots of the images not so big and not crazy quality. That way, if they want the images, they will buy the prints. Or maybe have tiney watermarks at 3% opacity on it so if need be you can check if they are legal images.

[jstarkey]

Originally posted by Nightfall
nothing defeats the old print screen trick, but you can go as far as disabling right click...

Yeah, view source would be an issue as well, although he may be interested in going XML/XSLT since his client base will probably be armed with post 5.x browsers.

Thanks for the info, Nightfall.

[jstarkey]

Originally posted by sk8Krog
make the screenshots of the images not so big and not crazy quality. That way, if they want the images, they will buy the prints. Or maybe have tiney watermarks at 3% opacity on it so if need be you can check if they are legal images.

I mentioned to him the watermarks. 3% opacity though, cool, thanks.

[TianaKaeSha]

Someone I know also removes like, a corner to an image and puts their logo in it... as well as removing a whole border (essentially cropping the image, putting a logo in the corner too).

She then also watermarks each of the images.


I really -really- hate people who disable right clicks. I use my mouse for more than just copying their image!

Hope it helps Mr Starkey

[hurricaneone]

Who are these people kidding? Like disabling the right-click'll stop anyone from ripping their pix?

Talk about living with a false sense of security.

As far as I know, there is no 100% way of stopping people from ripping your pix. You can slow them down, but you cannot directly stop people from snagging page content. I think that the best idea is to show low-quality snaps and then, even if they do a screen capture, the image is too poor to use. Of course, then you have the danger of people not reading about your 'security measures' and thinking that the quality they see on the screen is the quality of the prints and no one buys.

Damned if you do and damned if don't.

[mykrob]

something i saw on a downloaded manual from Briggs and Stratton...
digital watermark that covers the entire image... Downside, it looks good if used onscreen, but if you print it, that HUGE watermark shows up.. So they could copy the image and see it onscreen.. but for photos, they'd probably want to print it, and theres the watermark over the whole picture...

-myk

[hurricaneone]

Last time I looked into digital watermarking, there was a 'pay-per-use' setup. Is that still correct, because I think it's nuts, especially if you've 1,000s of snaps.

[JabezStone]

John,
I think the best way to go would be low-res thumbnails for the prints then, for the print previews, use a very noticeable watermark that covers the "useful" areas of the image. Basically, people that want to buy prints will not be offended by the watermark. They are there to admire and purchase great photography. People who are there to rip an image could care less about watermarks and logos that sit in the corner of the image.... they'll crop it or rubber-stamp it out. However, they would be discouraged from stealing it if the image was unusable to them.

[mykrob]

Hurricaneone-

if you use Photoshop 7.0, under filters, there is a Digimarc option that lets you place a digital watermark. You have options of monitor, web, or print for it to show up..

-myk

[Musicman]

Hi,

while you cannot stop it (and in particular you cannot stop right clicks), probably a large portion of potential thieves will be discouraged if you manage to place a transparent gif just over the real image (and arrange to name it so they do not notice right away)

Musicman

[jstarkey]

Originally posted by Musicman

while you cannot stop it (and in particular you cannot stop right clicks), probably a large portion of potential thieves will be discouraged if you manage to place a transparent gif just over the real image (and arrange to name it so they do not notice right away)

Thanks for the great feedback everyone. I think Watermark is leading the consensus.

Musicman, are you talking about using layers to put the transparent over the usable image? Never tried anything like that; they'd still get to the images via source though.

[JabezStone]

Print Screen, Print Screen, Print Screen. Don't forget it!
The ONLY way to protect your images is to purposely deface them so no one will want to rip them.

John, with CSS, you can use a transparent gif as the actual image, and class it with the name of the real image. Then, give the .gif image a background-image attribute with the url being your desired image. The effect? An image that will download as a transparent gif when right-clicked and saved. Again, though, this is futile because of the Print Screen button.

[tublu]

my answer may not be a solution , but just another way of thinkking about it . In one of the boards i met a guy named Vito .... some of you may know him for his site www.demodemo.com , where he sells Flash based Tutorials for hosting control panels . When he was just starting to create the demos for a particular brand , i noticed that he used to give the total set of demos online for demonstration on his site . Now they being in Flash could just be cached and saved for own purposes , thus defeating the prupose of selling them at a premium price . When i mentioned that too him , that he should try providing lesser no. of free demos on his site , he told me that he had tried doing that ... but on a avareage , he found that by givinmg more demos online , his sale was actually more , in precentage than giving less.
So ,thinking in the same line of thought, I am not fully sure wether providing a poor quality snapshot will actually help the photographer , if he wants to sell his prints . After all unless he showcases his best , how will the viewer properly gauge his capability ? True , the person maybe well known enough ... and doesn't need to prove his talent ... but that again is contradictory to havibng his site.
I dont have much experience in doing digital watermark etc , but a small LOGO in the middle of the picture somewhere might just as well scare off the Image Thief .

[younghistorians]

I may be totally wrong about this concept, but I believe there was someone on the boards here that had a watermark that only showed up when the image was highlighted. This was done with tiny colored dots and the opposite colors in the image. Ive never looked into this, however, and I don't know how effective it would be, but it would certainly solve the legal issue.


-YH

[qetret]

There is a very simple way of getting around 'disable right click' basically all yu have to do is press and hold a couple of keys whilst you right click, the keys that need to be pressed are... not what I wish to mutter here..

[qetret]

and another thing, who gives a toss about small 70dpi images? It's not like theyre good for anything..

[younghistorians]

Might I point out that Edit>View Source also does the trick...just find the image name, view it, then right click.

[jstarkey]

Originally posted by JabezStone
Print Screen, Print Screen, Print Screen. Don't forget it!
The ONLY way to protect your images is to purposely deface them so no one will want to rip them.

So your saying print screen is a problem?



AHA! I see what you're talking about with the CSS. Thanks.