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Protecting your images
I’m building a site for a photographer and he was wondering what options he has to limit people from stealing his images. I outline three options for him, but I’m wondering if I forgot anything:
1) Watermark – he doesn’t want to do this since it will detract the visual experience of the picture
2) No right click script – he mentioned this, but said no because it is easily bypassed and ruins a users experience.
3) “Shrink Wrapping” – I’ve heard of this method but haven’t found much information. I want to say that Flickr might do this as well. Basically you put a transparent image over the photo. If someone right clicks to save then they save an empty image. This isn’t foolproof, but will protect against a simple user trying to save the image.
Option 3 seems like the best solution. Has anyone implemented this? Any documentation on this?
Also, any other suggestions?
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#2 2007-04-11 04:26:22
- zem
- Developer Emeritus
- From: Melbourne, Australia
- Registered: 2004-04-08
- Posts: 2,579
Re: Protecting your images
4. use a script to split each image into several tiles
5. use flash
Alex
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Re: Protecting your images
Option SIX to prevent image theft from websites:
Don`t publish images to the internet.
I used this method several times and i`m pretty sure that it works:)
This no right click stuff is easy to cheat (disable script) and it confuse your users.
In addition this one don`t work, because at the moment the images is displayed in the browser, it´s is already cached on hard drive.
For the same reason overlaying a transparent image don`t work.
Using Flash give secure, because the images are not cached and the right click don`t work work in flash. But if you want to have accesibility you should build a none flash version for those how don`t have a flash plugin.
Use a script to split each image into several tiles is pretty good, because it is work for thieves to save all images and put them together again. But it is much more work for you and you can`t prevent that someone do a simple screenshot.
I would use watermarks, but not in the middle of the image. Add copyright text around the image and don`t show this text by cropping the image with CSS.
If someone saves an image the common way by right click and open the image the text is visible.
But there is no way to secure images in the web.
Everything you can see on a screen can be taken by a screenshot at least.
Last edited by Bastian (2007-04-11 11:31:15)
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#4 2007-04-12 01:55:25
- zem
- Developer Emeritus
- From: Melbourne, Australia
- Registered: 2004-04-08
- Posts: 2,579
Re: Protecting your images
Of course – all of the above methods should be considered discouragement, not prevention.
Alex
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Re: Protecting your images
Yup I agree…discouraged is the more appropriate word here. So balacing usability, maintainability, and functionality….the two choices to me seem to be shrink wrapping and breaking up the image into tiles. I’m going to research both solutions to find out which is easier to implement and maintain.
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#6 2007-04-24 19:57:18
- marios
- Archived Plugin Author
- Registered: 2005-03-12
- Posts: 1,253
Re: Protecting your images
If it would be possible to implement a reall hotlink prevention mechanism ( serverside ) with TXP, then one could password protect the pages.
Public Pages then would only have Thumbnails (watermarked ) and you must log in to see the real images, or download the real comps.
It can however not be done with additional mode_rewrite rules in htaccess files alone.
regards, marios
Last edited by marios (2007-04-24 20:03:49)
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