Protecting Your Images Online

Protecting Your Images Online

Your images are important, and it’s important that you do not place them online with some type of protection.  If you upload a full resolution image to your proof site odds are fairly decent that your client will download a print for a quarter rather than buy a $10 4x6 from you.  As photographers we moan about how this is a copyright violation and they’re taking our money, or stealing from us, or however you choose to phrase it.  And, that’s accurate.  And while ignorance on the part of the client isn’t a legal excuse, it is the reason for most of this.  Most clients simply do not understand that the $1,000 (or $10,000, or a free meal) they paid you to photograph their wedding doesn’t, by default, give them rights to copy the images at will.

So, what do you do about it?  How can you protect your images?  How can you educate your clients that they are not allowed to just copy and print their proofs?

Education
The ideal situation is for you to let your clients know what the copyright status of the images is and what they’re allowed to do with it and they follow it.  Real world, that’ll work for some clients but not others.

But, put it on your contract that you retain copyright.  Most probably won’t read it, but it’s there in black and white so they can’t argue with it later.

Also consider putting it on your proofing site.  Just be sure to do it in a way that isn’t accusatory.

Technology
There are also several methods to protect your images online.  None are perfect, and all can be bypassed by someone with enough desire and time.  Most are also intrusive to the client in some way.  It’s up to you to set the balance between protection and intrusion.

How to get an image
First, let’s look at how a client can get an image from your site.  Forget about trying to block them from saving the image to their computer.  For them to see the image on their computer it’s already been downloaded – that’s the way the web works.  Which brings us to the first, although arguably the least likely for a non-technical visitor, method for printing your images.  They can go to the browser cache and print from there.  Fortunately the images are not saved with the same name that you gave them, so that’ll make it a little more difficult.

Copy & Paste - One of the commands on the context menu (right click menu) is copy which allows the visitor to put an image on their clipboard and paste into a graphics program.

Save As… - Also on the context menu is a command to allow the visitor to save an image.

Print - The visitor can, of course, print the page.

Screen Capture – With the right keystroke it is easy to copy the entire screen to the clipboard and paste into a graphics program.

Protection Methods
Like I said above, all protection methods cause some level of inconvenience to your visitors.  You have to decide what level it is worth to protect your images.

JavaScript right click protection
A small piece of JavaScript code keeps the context menu from coming up when the visitor right-clicks

Protects against

• Right-click Save As…
• Right-click Copy & Paste

Negatives

• Annoying.  I personally will never use this.  I use the context menu often and cannot stand when it is blocked.
• Doesn’t function if JavaScript is turned off.  Between 5 and 10% of my visitors have JavaScript disabled so this protection method wouldn’t work.

Watermarks
A semi-transparent watermark is placed over the image.  Think back to your school photographs that had “PROOF” stamped across the front.  That was a watermark before digital.  Now it’s fairly easy to watermark with any design.

Protects against

• Pretty much everything, although some people may be satisfied with a watermarked image

Negatives

• Very intrusive, especially with large opaque watermarks.
• Requires processing of every image, either on your computer or by the web server.
• Not 100%.  Some people are willing to load up Photoshop and clone out the watermark.  Yes, there is some irony in a visitor loading an image into a $700 program to save 5 bucks on a 4x6 print, but it happens.

Transparent Overlays
It is possible using CSS to have a transparent GIF placed on top of your image.

Protects against

• Right-click Save As…
• Right-click Copy & Paste

Negatives

• Some browsers may just show the transparent image and not your image
• Some browsers have a ‘Save Background Image’ command on the context menu which will save your image.

Print Style Sheets
You can use a separate print style sheet to keep your images from showing up when the visitor prints your page.

Protects against

• Print page

Negatives

• Requires a second CSS declaration which may be above what many novice web builders are able to do.

Flash
You can wrap your images inside a Flash applet

Protects against

• Right click Print
• Right click Save As…

Negatives

• Not everybody has Flash installed, although that percentage is getting smaller

Image Labels
A small text block off the image with a copyright notice

Protects against

• Well, really nothing but it’s hard to ignore

Negatives

• Easy to crop out