stealing images

I would like to put a portfolio on my blog, but do not want any possibility for people to steal the images. I

know this is impossible to do because of screen captures and such but as far as copy n pasting images, I'd like

to prevent that. I've seen in the past where if one were to try a message would pop up stating that the images

are copy written and wouldn't allow the menu to appear to copy the image. If anyone can help that would be

great, both static images and slide shows are ok in my eyes. Thank you! and please forgive me for my run-on

sentences.

You may (using Photoshop) add a canvas texture to your image. Then re-save the image at a low resolution (40 dpi or less,) making the theft of your image less a worry. If you go 300 dpi and leave everything 'from the camera,' and some low-life borrows your image....your image is gone.

There really are few to no options here. Photoshop can be used to create a watermark but either the watermark is in the way and the image can't be really evaluated, or it can be cropped off easily enough and you're back to square one. The other option, I think what you're saying, is that something exists so people can't do a "save as" in popular browsers.

 

The problem with limiting the right-click menu's is that javascript is used to limit that and javascript can be disabled. If I set my browser preferences to disable javascript I can then right-click and save as.

<i>Then re-save the image at a low resolution (40 dpi or less,) making the theft of your image less a worry. If you go 300 dpi and leave everything 'from the camera,' and some low-life borrows your image....your image is gone.</i><p>This is all wrong. Changing the dpi for a screen image changes nothing. dpi in an image is a header instruction to a printer. Don't bother with this.<p>The bigger question is why do you think people will steal your images? What do you think they are going to do with them? And then think about this - why do great photographers, whose images have significant financial value, put them on the web without the same worry? You can't make much of a print from a standard size (up to 1k x800 pixels for example) image. What photos do you have that are more valuable than William Klein's, just to use one great photographer? He has images on the web.

I watermark everything right through the center of the photo. I do it at a 12% opacity, so you can see the photo just fine and the watermark as well. Hopefully this will help me protect the photos that I've taken of children and families.

<i>I would like to put a portfolio on my blog, but do not want any possibility for people to steal the images.</i>

<p>

I'd like to be 6' 4", but that ain't happening either.

<p>

What is the purpose of the portfolio on your blog? If you feel it will create more business for you having it --

then post the portfolio with your best images (without watermarks), and stop worrying about the possibility of a

few "stealing" your images. People like that won't be your customers anyway.

Put them online and view it as an income generator.

 

Not only are your images online and can be seen, but the unscrupulous thief will be doing the advertizing of your images for you, for free.

 

No loss to you because they would not be paying you anyway. And every now and again you can trawl the web, find your illegally used work, and try to sue them all. You'll fail to sue ALL of them of course, but if you can sue only a few, then it might be financially worthwhile.

 

Lilke this fellow did - two nights work netted UKpounds 27,000, or around USD$50,000 in reprduction fees:

 

http://www.epuk.org/The-Curve/491/enforcing-your-copyright

The short answer to your question is that there is no way to protect images from theft. As a web designer and programmer, I've tried numerous methods that have all failed somehow. The most bulletproof method I devised could be circumvented simply by being quick enough on the draw to hit Shift - Prnt Scrn button before my script had enough time to execute.

 

Make it small and/or watermark it.

 

You can also make a screensaver, but be advised that can eventually be hacked too.

 

Either that, or don't worry about it.

There is one-- and only one-- way to absolutely prevent the theft or unauthorized use of your images. Lock them all up in a bank vault and never let anyone see them or even get near them. Then they'll be absolutely safe and secure.

 

That may be a satisfactory solution if your an artist so driven to create (and so driven to prevent unauthorized use of your work) that you're perfectly happy to have your work safely sequestered from all the risks of being out in the world. But that's not satisfactory for most people. The fact is that if you're going to publish your work on the Internet, people are going to steal it. That's the price of making it available rather than safely locked up in a vault.

 

Realistically, the best you can do is to limit the risk. A watermark is a common way to do that, but if it's large or intrusive enough to be effective it will definitely interfere with the intended enjoyment of the image by visitors to your blog. What might be more effective is to keep the image size just large enough for viewing on your blog but too small to be useful for anything else. That also benefits people who still have slow Internet connections. If people like those images enough to steal them to put on their own blogs, there's little you can do to stop that. But low resolution should prevent (or at least severely curtail) any significant commercial usage of your image.

 

The problem is a perennial one, for which there is no simple solution.

lol, thanks guys I like the replies you've posted. I guess I'm over thinking and over worrying about it, I'm just going to suck it up and if someone actually does like my stuff enough to steal it, so be it I'll catch em' later if I can. Thanks again!

Short of not posting your images to the internet, there is no practical way of absolutely guaranteeing that someone wont be able to steal your stuff. There are however lots of steps you can take to strongly discourage theft. I wrote my web site, http://jillsphotos.home.mindspring.com in such a way as to make it difficult. But if someone really knew what they were doing, they could still steal an image.

 

Jill

You've done a good job discouraging even seeing your images for some people. Using Firefox 3 on Vista, I don't get the links to the galleries. On IE7 on Vista, it's fine.

.

 

... and there are all the images a'waitin' in my browser cache regardless of all the no-right-click / replace-the-right-click-menu dancing baloney. If people can see it, it's already been copied to their hard drives.<div></div>

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PS - There's no copyright information in the IPTC data in those image files, which would be findable by image and file search engines, thought there is a copyright watermark from Photoshop 7 merged down on the front of the image, which cannot be read by search engines, by the way.

 

We're all registering our copyrights at http://www.copyright.gov/ periodically so we have a prima facie case against any infringement we do find, right?

Over the years I have also used all the no right click tricks and watermarks. For the most part, I do not bother with these anymore. The web images tend to be smaller and of little use off the web if anyone did care to take them. But here is my two cents on another way of making them more of a problem to take anyway. If your doing your own website gallery coding, just cut the images up into smaller cubes in Photoshop. Now a right click gets one piece at a time and has to be pasted back together before its good for even displaying.