The how to prevent image theft thread

[JabezStone]

Death to the "Print Screen" button! Just kidding. Actually, I think Print Screen is a pretty clever little gadget.

The main point to this is that a thief will steal your images no matter what you do to prevent it.

The choices are to either 1. give your images away willingly, 2. Try your dangdest to outsmart the crafty image-thiefs, to which they will always prevail, or 3. give your visitors a beautiful representation of your work with a watermark that visibly "scars" it... in effect making it "not worth" stealing, but worth buying the unmarked image to an honest person.

Again, though, what is really the use trying to out-fox a dishonest person? It's like putting bars on your windows to keep the bad-guys out, but when the home catches on fire, you're the one who's hurting.

[hurricaneone]

Originally posted by 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

Hey there bud.



- the last time I checked (and that was a while ago, so it could be different now), you had to buy 'uses' from Digimarc to apply to your Photoshop images.

[dlowe93]

Originally posted by JabezStone
The main point to this is that a thief will steal your images no matter what you do to prevent it.

That's almost exactly my attitude. The Internet is a huge public place. Somebody is going to rip you stuff, whether it's code, images, design, or whatever.

Personally, i try to not spend too much time worrying about it. It just keeps me moving to the next level, let the grabbers rip my old stuff. Hey, if somebody actually respects my work enough to steal my designs, good for them. I'm guessing 90% of the people on the boardroom have used either mini 7, all caps DIN with a 45 degree arrow, red or orange lines at 30 degree angles, or all of the above at some time or another. I i know none of us can claim to have been the first to use those.

(hoping Josh Davis isn't around today to prove me wrong).

d.

[audas]

Not that One is meant to be giving tech solutions, but, PHP with the GD 2 will let you belnd two images on the fly hence creating the water mark as you go. This can then be sucked into flash (create thumbs on the fly as well). The person dosent know the location of the image, can only print screen and even then it is watermarked, done.
P.s.
I am creating a simple online photo editor that does this at the moment actually, crop, resize, scale, quality, alpha etc.
Cheers
sam

[audas]

Sorry one other thing, isnt there some way of trapping the printscreen key. I read you do it somewhere. If that is the case it can be modified with flash (hide the image).
Then again maybe Im dreaming.

[audas]

It memntions 44 is the keyCode() but dont know if it will work.

[Musicman]

they will use a digital cam to shoot the screen, and probably even get rid of the watermark this way....

[Metal Fusion]

One option i can think of is disabling hotlinking.
That way, if the person finds the the link in your source and tries to save it, it is still blocked by the server.