Can images that are right click protected still be stolen from the internet? I am using Smugmug and I have all my galleries protected...I think. I put a watermark on them as well. I know at smugmug you upload a full image so if they are stealing them they would be stealing a large enough file but the watermark would still make it unusable...right? Please someone shed some light on the situation. I know there are a lot of very knowledgable photographers out there who can help me.
You can always use the print screen button to steal the previews, but as you've said, you've got them watermarked. I doubt it would be easy to steal the actual high res images stored on smugmugs servers.
Believe it or not ... last year I got a copy of the "local" weekly ... and starting glaing through the sports section when I saw an image with a watermark on it. I thought it was kind of weird to be using an image with a watermark on it. I looked up the name on the watermark and noticed it was a fellow SS member (thinks she's also a member here) and sent her an e-mail with a scan of the page.
Watermarks are useless ... if someone is going to use it and don't give a s*#t ... they'll use it.
For the record ... the paper is owned by one of the biggest publishing companies in Canada ... not some Mom & Pop operation.
Smugmug does not server the full size image to the web - that would be a waste of bandwidth. However the smaller versions of the images that they do serve up are readily available in your browser cache directory.
browser cache is where your browser stores files that it has downloaded for a page. google the phrase for your browser and operating system to find where it is. I can tell you where it is in Linux but I doubt that will do you any good.
As to size, well the image is however many pixels it is and size of print depends on the quality desired. A 900x600 at 300dpi will be 3"x2" but that is just an example of how the math works. There is a lot of info and opinion on the web about number of pixels for given print size and quality. Sorry for the terse answer but this is a deep topic that requires research on your part.
If someone wants to steal the image, the only way to stop them is to not put it on the web in the first place. All the methods we user are speed bumps meant to keep the more casual theft in check and keep honest people honest. So, watermarks, right click protection and restricting size are what you have available with SM (they will present the originals if you specify for them to, but default is to only present up to the large size).
