preventing image downloading

<p>I want to create a website that prevents downloading of my images. From what I understand this cannot be done but I have maybe mistakenly been given the impression that incorporating "flash" technology will serve my purpose. Any advice on this subject would be appreciated. Thanks Steve </p>

<p>That is partly true. Flash can prevent people from being able to right click and save an image. It will not be able to prevent a screenshot, though.</p>

<p>Not only will a simple screen-shot get around that attempt to prevent it, but by using flash you're also going to prevent all sorts of people using mobile devices (iPhones, iPads, and many other tools of the young, hip, and have-disposable-income-to-buy-photography) from seeing your work at all. So you can deploy a technology that any even slightly motivated person can quickly circumvent - and at the same time chase off millions of people by hiding your work entirely, or ... you can just present your work in a way (at low-enough resolution or watermarked) to make it non-issue in the first place.<br /><br />Out of curiosity, who is it that you're worried about running off with copies of your web-sized gallery images?</p>

<p>I would be happy if somebody wanted to download my images. Unfortunately nobody does.<br />The only foolproof method to prevent image download is not to publish it. <br />Matt - you hit the nail on the head. I am amazed how flash websites are popular in the era of iPhone and iPad. At the same time the owners complain that the business is down.<br /><br /></p>

<p>Not to mention you can download and disassemble a flash file. It's not easy but doable to those that driven. You can use javascript to disable some mouse and user functions to make downloading easier, but they can simply read the html code for the filename. Some hide the filename in layers of pseudo-filenames to lookup tables and servers, but again, with some time, you can find the files. And a number of media news sites and commercial sites uses a variety of scripts to present them which makes it harder to download. In the end, you can spend less time and put up Web-viewable images and let users download if they want, or not, or spend far more time protecting them, and for what?</p>

<p>Thank you for all your insight and time. I can see now that having a collection of photos is somewhat impossible to prevent from being downloaded. Steve.</p>

<p>It's great to have this kind of knowledge(for us stupids) and the willingness to share....thanks, JC.</p>

<p>iPhone's and iPad's are not the most prevalent device used for viewing serious photography sites by serious collectors. Apple is doing all it can to kill Flash which in the end I think will come back and bite them in the ass.<br>

Don't worry about people downloading your web images, they don't print worth a damn anyway. If you are worried about people using them on their sites with out permission there are programs you can buy that digitally sign each image and you can search on the net for any "strays".</p>

<p>I think that a good watermark is your safest bet. If an image can be displayed on a screen, it can be copied.<br>

With a good watermark, there is little incentive anymore for people to "steal" an image for commercial purposes, and if you allow non-commercial uses (e.g. on blogs) it can even bring you traffic.</p>