Disable Download/Right Clicking

ricanlinx

several of my images have been downloaded and put up on publications without my consent.

Images taken from this gallery:

http://tufinophotos.smugmug.com/gallery/5777742_H7fgu#357523108_Ns9CS

How can i disable Right clicking and downloading of my images to the general public? I have a purchase "standard" account (not sure if that means anything)

I also did a search (maybe my working was wrong) but i didn't find anything.

Thanks!

jfriend

ricanlinx wrote:

several of my images have been downloaded and put up on publications without my consent.

Images taken from this gallery:

http://tufinophotos.smugmug.com/gallery/5777742_H7fgu#357523108_Ns9CS

How can i disable Right clicking and downloading of my images to the general public? I have a purchase "standard" account (not sure if that means anything)

I also did a search (maybe my working was wrong) but i didn't find anything.

Thanks!

Smugmug offers a number of types of protection. You can read the Smugmug help page on this topic as a start.

The very first thing you should do is to disable the saving of originals and large sizes. Right now, anyone can download even your maximum resolution originals. Go to customize gallery for your gallery and change that setting. You can at least turn off access to originals, but you can also restrict the max viewing size too.

Right-click protection is available for the power and professional account levels, though it is only a deterrent as any internet savvy person can get around the right-click protection. If a browser can download and display the image so can a knowledgable thief and someone can always capture a screen shot of anything on screen too.

The most foolproof protection is to either password protect your galleries (and only give the password to people you trust) or to put a watermark on the images and put the watermark in a place on the image that cannot be cropped out. Nice looking semi-transparent watermarks that don't interfere too much with the visuals of the image can be added either by you before upload (at any account level) or automatically by Smugmug (for pro accounts). The disadvantage of adding it yourself before you upload is that the watermark will also be on any prints. If Smugmug adds it for you, then it will not be present on prints. You will have to decide which way you want it to work. I see that you do have watermarks on your originals (you must have added them before upload), but they are only in the corner of the image so I can see that it would be easy to crop them out and still have the main subject of the image. A semi-transparent watermark that covers the main part of the image can be made to look pretty good, but will clearly tell everyone who's photo it is. It won't stop someone from still copying it and using it, but it will clearly show that it's yours.

If these other sites that are using your images are just linking to them on your site, then you can also disable "External Linking" which will make their links stop working. This setting is also in the Customize Gallery settings. If they have made a copy of your image and are hosting it elsewhere, this setting won't make any difference.

In the end, you have to come to understand that anything that can be displayed by a browser can be "borrowed" or "stolen" by a thief. That's just the way the internet works. You will have to either decide to optimize for your legitimate viewers and offer nice large sizes without watermarks so they can maximize their viewing pleasure or restrict what can be seen in the browser to minimize theft.

For professionals making money off their images, they have to strike a real balance between things they do to protect their images and the quality of the viewing experience. If they restrict the viewing experience to nothing but little tiny images, they may never have any meaningful theft, but they will likely also diminish their sales because of the lower quality viewing experience. Of course, if they allow really large, unprotected images on their site, they will offer a great viewing experience, but may be making theft too easy and tempting. They have to draw their own balance.

For me, an account holder with a professional account but I'm not trying to make money off my images, I try to draw a different balance. For images I want parents and kids to have and enjoy, I leave them wide open and encourage folks to use them however they want. For images, I want to keep as mine, I still enable a great viewing experience, but I at least shut off access to originals and may restrict the maximum viewing size on the web so that large prints can't be made from things taken from the web. Because I'm not trying to make money off these images, I just live with the fact that some of my images are borrowed against my will because to attempt to control it further would detract from the viewing experience of my legitimate viewers more than I want to. You will have to decide how to determine that balance point for you.