Picture Protection and Copyright

[MeadsMan]

Hello,I hope someone can offer some advice on protecting and putting copyright inscription ect on photos.I am seriously thinking of starting my own website,to showcase my photos.But is it possable to protect them on personal websites ? What prevents anybody from copying / printing them,without permission or worse still claiming them as there own ? I am also often told by friends,that they would like to see my photos,I have often considered putting a portfolio on a dvd,so they can view them on a P.C or T.V ect,but again I am concerned where they could end up,with no protection.The downside of digital,is it is so easy to "borrow" without permission.I am sure I read that if you save photos for the internet or a dvd,at a very low dpi ? It can make them next to useless for printing ? But would this effect the quality when being viewed,on a monitor or T.V ? Any advice,and how to do such things would be most welcome.

[ron1863]

Don't upload images that are large enough to be used in commercial work and keep your images under 600px wide. This way if they are blown up in an image editor the image will pixelate and become unsuitable for any serious reproduction.
The only other obvious way is to use an obtrusive watermark but then it spoils the picture for anyone viewing it.
Disabling right click can be got around as can a transparent gif overlay, and an unobtrusive copyright notice or watermark can be edited out.

Good luck

[Lancashire Lad]

Hi Meadsman,

Not sure if this will help, but I recall Pauline (PMG) posting something to the effect that Zenfolio, the website she uses, (amongst other WAB members), employs some sort of technology that prevents anyone viewing the photo's from copying them.

Maybe Pauline or another of the Zenfolio users might see this and respond. (Or you could perhaps send a PM).

I don't know of any other websites that might offer similar protection.

Hope you get sorted.

Regards
Mike.

[DaiTheDragon]

Don't forget when you view a photograph all you have to do is press "Print Screen" on you keyboard.

Dai

[NickCantle]

Originally Posted by DaiTheDragon

Don't forget when you view a photograph all you have to do is press "Print Screen" on you keyboard.

Dai

Absolutely. There will always be a way around it. My images are on average 640x480 which is enough to view the picture with detail, but not enough to reproduce at a decent quality. I've not got watermarks or anything as they're very easily cloned out and they detract from the image IMO.

[Jason Green]

My images are 320x240, accessible from 120x90 thumbnails... I also use javascripts No Drag and No Right Click. I'm looking into a script to disable Print-screen, too. That will theoretically take away the easy options, but of course they could disable Javascripts. Then though, I believe my images are too small to be used for other purposes.

I also chose not to watermark them, for aesthetic purposes...

[zan]

It's one of those things with the internet unfortunately that means you'll never be able to 100% protect anything you upload. If you are really concerned, don't upload anything. Otherwise, do as these guys are saying - only upload low-res images (many photo-hosting sites require this anyway) and think about putting a copyright banner across it.

I have a site on photium which allows you to disable right-clicking an image (to bring up the copy-paste menu), and I've added a very faint watermark to the images. I don't think it detracts from the images too much, but I'll leave that up to other people to decide for themselves

[Tormentil]

Surely a visitor to a site only has to turn off JavaScript in their browser's options to be able to ignore a "disable right mouse click" script altogether!

[zan]

No idea actually, but I wouldn't be surprised. It's one more deterent though - even if people do take an image, at least they can't argue that they didn't know it was copyrighted It's not something I lose sleep over though to be honest!

[Tormentil]

Originally Posted by MeadsMan

Hello,I hope someone can offer some advice on protecting and putting copyright inscription ect on photos........ is it possable to protect them on personal websites ? What prevents anybody from copying / printing them,without permission .

Meadsman, have a read of this.....

How Do I Stop Downloading