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Archive 2009 · Blog images being stolen?

Sahid Limon
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p.1 #1 · Blog images being stolen?

I was just curious to know if any of you here are ever get paranoid about people stealing your images and using them as their own. I noticed that many of us here have images that are 800x600 (or larger) on our blogs. I just get a little hesitant to post my best stuff on the blog since it's so easy for others to steal them. I remember seeing a thread earlier this year about someone stealing and using Ed's images... and claiming them to be their own. Another incident I remember reading about was about Lara Jade (a young flickr photographer) who actually went to an photo show, and saw her photos enlarged and being sold by another girl.

What are your thoughts on this? Anyone know if there are ways to prevent people from downloading your images from the blog?

Jan 06, 2009 at 03:28 AM

melvinho
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p.1 #2 · Blog images being stolen?

I'm using the Prophotoblog theme version 1. This link gives instructions on how to disable right-clicking.
I am guessing that if you google hard enough you should be able to find ways of disabling saving of images from your blog.

Jan 06, 2009 at 03:39 AM

Ryan Britton
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p.1 #3 · Blog images being stolen?

We had an ex-client snag a couple off our site before I instituted protective measures. I've since converted every single photo to be displayed via a CSS background-image property and have not had it happen again. It's defeatable, yes, but it takes more than your average computer user to do it.

Jan 06, 2009 at 03:42 AM

Sahid Limon
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p.1 #4 · Blog images being stolen?

Disabling the right click thing is very annoying (if it's the kind that brings up a popup text box if you right click)... so much so, that I don't like visiting sites that have that feature. I know it does the job, but I'm not a fan. Ryan, if it's not too much trouble, could you elaborate a bit on your method or maybe send a PM my way.

Jan 06, 2009 at 03:46 AM

ILOVECANONL
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p.1 #5 · Blog images being stolen?

Any average computer user nowadays knows how to use the print screen button.

The disable right click may be more of a hindrance. Use a nice watermark on your logos and post them at 600-800 pixels longest side and you should be fine. If anybody stole my images then it's easy, there is a copyright law. =)

Jan 06, 2009 at 03:46 AM

Marcus Watts
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p.1 #6 · Blog images being stolen?

I'm more paranoid about budget photographers educating themselves from my work.

That will always happen to some degree and i have no problem with someone serious about trying to make a career from photography but all those who just want to make $200 on the weekend and keep their normal job are getting one awesome education via our blogs.

Jan 06, 2009 at 03:48 AM

David.G
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p.1 #7 · Blog images being stolen?

I currently have my screen resolution set at 1024x768, and if I remember correctly, so do about 70% of computer users. So if I were to do a full screen image at that resolution and you decided to steal it, the best you might get out of it would be a 5x7, maybe an 8x10. But I'm not going to do a full screen image anyway, so you'd be lucky to get a decent 4x6 from your theft. Disabling right clicking helps, but the image file still ends up on the local computer. It takes a little work to find it, but it's not that hard. Make the image small, but not too small, and don't worry about it.

Jan 06, 2009 at 03:49 AM

Ryan Britton
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p.1 #8 · Blog images being stolen?

Sahid Limon wrote:
Disabling the right click thing is very annoying (if it's the kind that brings up a popup text box if you right click)... so much so, that I don't like visiting sites that have that feature. I know it does the job, but I'm not a fan. Ryan, if it's not too much trouble, could you elaborate a bit on your method or maybe send a PM my way.

Here's what we do. It doesn't cover every option, but it covers the majority, which is all you can reasonably hope for.

Print-only stylesheet
.photo
{
display: none; /* prevents it from displaying when printed */
}

In a page

<div class="photo" style="background-image: url(/path/to/image.jpg); width: 800px; height: 533px;"><img src="/images/blank.gif" alt="©2009 blah blah blah - Photo of something" style="width: 800px; height: 533px;" /></div>

This is tedious to do by hand, so having some sort of content management system to generate most of it for you is very, very useful. I am also a software developer so that part was not a problem for us.

All photos have a permanent copyright watermark on the lower right corner or lower center, depending on the context. I have also created a javascript system to display a giant watermark over photos when the browser window loses focus (like when switching to a specialty screen capture app), but that is non-trivial to implement so I won't cover it here.

Edited on Jan 06, 2009 at 03:56 AM · View previous versions

Jan 06, 2009 at 03:54 AM

ILOVECANONL
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p.1 #9 · Blog images being stolen?

David.G wrote:
I currently have my screen resolution set at 1024x768, and if I remember correctly, so do about 70% of computer users. So if I were to do a full screen image at that resolution and you decided to steal it, the best you might get out of it would be a 5x7, maybe an 8x10. But I'm not going to do a full screen image anyway, so you'd be lucky to get a decent 4x6 from your theft. Disabling right clicking helps, but the image file still ends up on the local computer. It takes a little work to find it, but it's not that hard. Make the image small, but not too small, and don't worry about it.

That was a while ago, with advanced manufacturing methods, improved technology, etc, your average monitor is becoming bigger and bigger. I did a search on wikipedia a couple months ago and it stated that 40% of all internet users had a screen resolution of 1280x1024. The 1024x768 was standard a few years back, but things do change (800x600 was standard for a while too I believe).

Edited on Jan 06, 2009 at 04:00 AM · View previous versions

Jan 06, 2009 at 03:55 AM

ILOVECANONL
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p.1 #10 · Blog images being stolen?

This is tedious to do by hand, so having some sort of content management system to generate most of it for you is very, very useful. I am also a software developer so that part was not a problem for us.

It still doesn't help fix the print screen function. Might as well just put a nice and simple watermark. A plain all white signature with anti-alias in one of the corners (I prefer bottom right) will most likely do. Or you can replace the signature with any form of logo, partly transparent to help eff things up in case they try to clone it out. =)

They can crop it, but cropping an already web-sized image won't get you any quality when printed.

Jan 06, 2009 at 03:58 AM

Sahid Limon
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p.1 #11 · Blog images being stolen?

Cool. Thanks for the tip Ryan. Unfortunately, I'm NOT a software engineer... and just getting the blog customized alone took a month... so who knows if I'll be able to implement it. Thanks for sharing regardless.

As per the screen resolution thing, I've also read that 50% or so users have 1280x1024 set as their standard. I've been using that for about 2 years now myself. My watermark is on every image, but it's not that hard to remove and clone out watermark these days. I'm not really worried about people showing off the work and claiming it that it's theirs... I just hate the idea of them actually editing my image and then showing that off. I've had this happen to me once from my flickr site with one of my most popular images.

Jan 06, 2009 at 04:20 AM

sboerup
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p.1 #12 · Blog images being stolen?

If you have not tried out TinEye.com, you should. Scan's the entire internet (all that they have indexed so far) for your image. It's pretty slick.

Jan 06, 2009 at 04:25 AM

manyquestions
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p.1 #13 · Blog images being stolen?

If the images are sent through, they can be just grabbed by HTTP by anyone with a reasonable clue about such things. There are stacks of "mirror a website" type tools which will give them a stack of files to look through - not to mention the old standby of grabbing the image URL from the proxy logs.

The only way to make it more difficult is to embed them in a flash application that doesn't pull stuff through by HTTP but actually has them embedded in the SWF - that way, they're forced to print-screen if anything and only get screen resolution images.

Jan 06, 2009 at 05:38 AM

Prairiemaiden
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p.1 #14 · Blog images being stolen?

There is away to put a transparent gif over your photo and when they right click and save that is what they get the transparent gif.

Prairiemaiden

Jan 06, 2009 at 05:46 AM

Ryan Britton
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p.1 #15 · Blog images being stolen?

Prairiemaiden wrote:
There is away to put a transparent gif over your photo and when they right click and save that is what they get the transparent gif.

Prairiemaiden

What I posted above does this. Flickr implements something like this as well, though I believe you have to explicitly turn it on.

Jan 06, 2009 at 05:49 AM

Sahid Limon
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p.1 #16 · Blog images being stolen?

Spencer, tinyeye is pretty rad. I think once they get most of the internet indexed, it'll be a tremendously useful tool.

Prairiemaiden wrote:
There is away to put a transparent gif over your photo and when they right click and save that is what they get the transparent gif.

Prairiemaiden

Flickr uses this system I believe, and it's quite effective. The whole process seems pretty complex though. I'll try to tinker with Ryan's method and see if I can maybe get it to work. Thanks for the tip.

Jan 06, 2009 at 06:08 AM

manyquestions
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p.1 #17 · Blog images being stolen?

Prairiemaiden wrote:
There is away to put a transparent gif over your photo and when they right click and save that is what they get the transparent gif.

As before though, this won't stop anyone with any dedication or experience. And remember, the people stealing your images spend their time nicking images, not taking photographs - they'll have some experience at it.

Jan 06, 2009 at 06:45 AM

Ryan Britton
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p.1 #18 · Blog images being stolen?

manyquestions wrote:
As before though, this won't stop anyone with any dedication or experience. And remember, the people stealing your images spend their time nicking images, not taking photographs - they'll have some experience at it.

It's like software piracy, stealing movies, music, and so on. As long as it is viewable by _someone_, it can be copied in some form. The reality is that simple precautions prevent most people from saving or otherwise printing the images. Those determined will always be able to steal and save it. You just have to not worry about those people.

The method I described can be done with basic javascript as well. I've uploaded a rough proof of concept, but note that it is not functional in IE without some help (as is nearly everything web-based). You'd need to use a Javascript library with better DOM control such as MooTools or Prototype to fully use this but it can be done.

http://britton-photography.com/tests/embedImage.html

Feel free to use the source code for any purpose. The images are ours and you may not use them. Nothing is guaranteed and no support provided and blah blah blah.

Jan 06, 2009 at 07:30 AM

trumpet_guy
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p.1 #19 · Blog images being stolen?

Marcus Watts wrote:
I'm more paranoid about budget photographers educating themselves from my work.

That will always happen to some degree and i have no problem with someone serious about trying to make a career from photography but all those who just want to make $200 on the weekend and keep their normal job are getting one awesome education via our blogs.

Don't worry about that part of it, though. One reason to blog is probably as
indirect advertising, but another reason to blog is to get your work
out there for people to see, right? So people will always learn from other people's
work. That's how things should be. If you somehow want to profit from that,
then one way is to make a video and sell it like Zack Arias is doing. The whole
culture of blogging is kind of predicated on the notion that you want to get your
thoughts and your work out there on your own terms, rather than hoping for / looking for
a publisher to do it for you. That will usually mean you are not profiting directly
from the blog.

Regards,
Tim

Jan 06, 2009 at 08:27 AM

Neil vN
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p.1 #20 · Blog images being stolen?

If an image appears on a webpage, I can snag it. So can anyone else.
So all the protective measures are a waste of your time, or at worst, an annoyance to your viewer.

Also, it doesn't make sense to not have images up on a website, since how else do you advertise in this modern age?

The best thing to do is have your logo very visible.
This way, even if a client grabs the image and plasters it on Facebook or wherever, your name and brand appears.
Photographers that steal images for use on their own website will usually be more dissuaded by a logo than by images not having a logo.

Neil vN
www.planetneil.com/tangents/

Jan 06, 2009 at 09:23 AM

BKphotography
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p.1 #21 · Blog images being stolen?

Very true Neil.

I love your blog by the way.

Cheers
BK

Jan 06, 2009 at 09:28 AM

mathew333
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p.1 #22 · Blog images being stolen?

Dont worry about people stealing your images. Most of the time it catches up with them and other photographers will let you know when they run across them.

Jan 06, 2009 at 10:53 AM

Tony Hoffer
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p.1 #23 · Blog images being stolen?

Sahid,
I think it's a net gain overall. I intentionally leave the 'right-clickability' on. Here's why:

Pro's: Clients make the photos into their Facebook pics, or share them with other people. My name gets out everywhere, helping my business.

Con's: Someone takes it, crops the logo out and usually has a weirdly cropped photo. Meanwhile, it doesn't affect my business.

More +'s than -'s if you ask me.

Jan 06, 2009 at 12:15 PM

fdigiorgio
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p.1 #24 · Blog images being stolen?

Gotta agree with the Hoff on this one. 100% agree. You can't stop it. All we can do is continue to educate our clients about copyright...

Jan 06, 2009 at 12:31 PM

ai3x
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p.1 #25 · Blog images being stolen?

As other people have said, if a user can view your image then it has to have been downloaded to their computer, urgo they can save it. So it really depends on what your intent is as to the best method to prevent people using it.

Disabling right click and using CSS background hacks will do a great job of stopping Aunt Etthel downloading pictures of a wedding and printing them for free. It won't however stop a determined crook, for that a big watermark is best however that often can impinge upon your photos.

I prefer to leave mine on the whole unguarded. I might change that at some point but at the moment I'll use the law if I have any major problems.

Alex

Edited by Steve Tinetti on Jan 06, 2009 at 06:16 PM · View previous versions

Jan 06, 2009 at 12:35 PM


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