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Probably the best way of displaying an image with least chance of it being 'lifted' is to publish it using the 'Slices' option in photoshop.
This chops the image up into smaller sections and whoever piches it has to put it back together again - unless they do a screen grab of course.
The bottom line is - You publish on the net - someone will 'lift' it if they really want to.
Yes, you can add some javascript to stop right clicking, but there are a couple of problems with this. First, IE6 has a "Save As" option on the popup menu that appears when you hover over an image. Second, if the web page is in HTML, you can always view the source, find the bit that displays the image and type this URL straight into the address line of IE.
I have seen software that splices the images into hundreds of smaller ones then generates HTML to display them in a table, but if the image fits on the screen, you can just do a screen capture then chop the image from it.
Your best bet is to make the image small enough to be useless for anything other than web use, and to lay some copyright text over the image in a place where it can't easily be cloned out.
You can easily stop the Popup menu that Bri mentions by inserting this line of code into your HTML (with the rest of the Meta tags)
[META HTTP-EQUIV="imagetoolbar" CONTENT="no"] (substituting the '[' and ']' for the left and right arrows as usual.
As has been said, an image can easily be lifted in any case because of the fact (as has been mentioned) that it will be in your cache. A visible watermark (do a forum search from Breezebrowser) will help but can be intrusive if it is placed across the image.
I had more than one wedding photograph lifted from my website and placed by another photographer on his website and it only came to light when a client of mine was wondering why her photograph was on someone else's site!
In any case, you can in fact very easily download someone's entire website if you want!
Barrie
www.harwoodphotography.co.uk
There is another trick that allows someone to obtain a pic from your website even if the pic has been sliced etc. They simply press 'print scrn' when looking at the pic. THen they simply open up their graphics prigram and select 'copy'. This method takes an exact copy of what ever is being displaid on your monitor at the time.
The truth is, there are no real ways to prevent this. Sure you'll perhaps trick some people, but the people who want to use your image will know how to get it.
Generally when I use someones image, I fiddle with it so much that it's completely unrecognisable from the original.
I've had images taken, and I've taken images, you just have to live with it as a common practice.
That said, I did hear about a program that insetrs an invisible bit of code to a pic that allows you to do a serach over the internet. It makes it easier to trace your pics. But do you have the time, money or energy to take legal action?
There is no way of stopping image theft. Disabling right-click will only stop someone who doesn't know about 'Print Screen' or how to find the cached pic.
Watermark is only any good if it is across the main subject area of the pic (otherwise it can easily be cropped out) - and then it tends to ruin the pic.
Lol @ Stan! My mother and her siblings, as kids, were constantly pinching prints out of each others' albums. So it's nothing new!! ![]()
A perfect way to prevent image theft is to take photos that are not good enough for people to actually want to steal. This is a technique I have mastered.
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Ian
very funny, though, ian.
i don't agree that a useful watermark has to spoil the picture. i wondered, the size of shot that you get from a print screen can't possibly be large enough to be useful to someone trying to make money off it, is it?
i copy pictures all the time, but i label them with the artist's name and keep them in a special folder for my own personal inspiration, is that wrong? - lu
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