Protecting photos from being stolen

bobrandklev

Is there a post/link/tutorial that bottom line explains how to project your photos best?

I have galleries of photos that are right click protected and watermarked but should I shut off external links or are there other settings I should consider?

On the other hand I have a lot of "public" galleries where I post photos of friends/family and I don't watermark but I do block the right click download so people don't take the photos and distribute freely but if I don't shut off external links these photos can show up in other peoples blogs etc..

Thanks in advance for any help or suggestions!

Cason

I'm not sure about post/link/tutorial. However, if you are worried about your photos being lifted off the web, then you should not post them on the web. Right click protection prevents people from right clikcing on your photos and that is all it does. There are many ways of getting the photo with screen grabs.

You can not prevent your photos from being lifted. With that being said, advertise with your watermark.

bobrandklev

RTP wrote:

I'm not sure about post/link/tutorial. However, if you are worried about your photos being lifted off the web, then you should not post them on the web. Right click protection prevents people from right clikcing on your photos and that is all it does. There are many ways of getting the photo with screen grabs.

You can not prevent your photos from being lifted. With that being said, advertise with your watermark.

I hesitated on posting my question as I figured someone would say the obvious "don't post your photos on the Internet if you don't want them taken."

Now that we have that out of the way I'm looking for SmugMuggers who have had experiences good or bad and what they have done with their SmugMug sites. SmugMug has awesome tutorials and guides I just can't find them sometimes or I'm too impatient to dig around. SmugMug has also done a great job to thwart would be people from taking photos. There is watermarking, right click protection, external links, found in the search engines etc..

Nothing in life is 100% (other than death) so what's the best practice as we have to use the Internet to market ourselves, what is the best way to do it?

jfriend

bobrandklev wrote:

I hesitated on posting my question as I figured someone would say the obvious "don't post your photos on the Internet if you don't want them taken."

Now that we have that out of the way I'm looking for SmugMuggers who have had experiences good or bad and what they have done with their SmugMug sites. SmugMug has awesome tutorials and guides I just can't find them sometimes or I'm too impatient to dig around. SmugMug has also done a great job to thwart would be people from taking photos. There is watermarking, right click protection, external links, found in the search engines etc..

Nothing in life is 100% (other than death) so what's the best practice as we have to use the Internet to market ourselves, what is the best way to do it?

The best way is to create a custom watermark that covers enough of the photo that it can't be easily cropped out or edited out, but it's semi-transparent enough that it doesn't ruin the viewing experience. Then, make sure you disable originals so nobody but you can download your originals. Now, all anybody can ever see from the web is your images with a watermark. That will generally be enough deterrent for most things that people would want to do with your images and if they do use it somewhere else, they will at least be advertising your brand/business.

There's nothing wrong with turning on right-click protection, but it's such a weak defense that it doesn't even slow someone down who knows how either a browser works or how Smugmug URL naming works. So, you can turn it on if you like it, but don't rely on it as your core defense.

External linking just controls whether people can borrow a link to your image and post it in their own web-page by just directly referring to it on your Smugmug web-site. It doesn't stop any copying. Someone who really wants your image on their web-site, can just make their own copy, post it to their own place on the internet and put it on their web-site from there. Watermarks are your friend again here because as long as your image is watermarked, everyone on the internet will know it belongs to you. They don't keep it from getting stolen, but they limit what useful things can be done with it.

If you are selling your images, then search indexing is probably really important to you. You want to be found by Google searchers. You can't sell to the general public and not want to be found on the internet. Yes, would-be thieves will find you too, but the only other alternative is to hide from your customers which doesn't make any sense. Just make sure that all the thieves can get is a watermarked image.

Art Scott

This looks promising
Here is a site I ran across when looking for tracking software EGAMI WEB BOT

This a tracking software incase your photos are taken and used else where.....it looks promising.

Andy

jfriend wrote:

The best way is to

John's right.

bobrandklev

Art Scott wrote:

Here is a site I ran across when looking for tracking software EGAMI WEB BOT

This a tracking software incase your photos are taken and used else where.....it looks promising.

Thanks Art this does look very promising but has limitations, have you used it? How were your results?

bobrandklev

jfriend wrote:

The best way is to create a custom watermark that covers enough of the photo that it can't be easily cropped out or edited out, but it's semi-transparent enough that it doesn't ruin the viewing experience. Then, make sure you disable originals so nobody but you can download your originals. Now, all anybody can ever see from the web is your images with a watermark. That will generally be enough deterrent for most things that people would want to do with your images and if they do use it somewhere else, they will at least be advertising your brand/business.

There's nothing wrong with turning on right-click protection, but it's such a weak defense that it doesn't even slow someone down who knows how either a browser works or how Smugmug URL naming works. So, you can turn it on if you like it, but don't rely on it as your core defense.

External linking just controls whether people can borrow a link to your image and post it in their own web-page by just directly referring to it on your Smugmug web-site. It doesn't stop any copying. Someone who really wants your image on their web-site, can just make their own copy, post it to their own place on the internet and put it on their web-site from there. Watermarks are your friend again here because as long as your image is watermarked, everyone on the internet will know it belongs to you. They don't keep it from getting stolen, but they limit what useful things can be done with it.

If you are selling your images, then search indexing is probably really important to you. You want to be found by Google searchers. You can't sell to the general public and not want to be found on the internet. Yes, would-be thieves will find you too, but the only other alternative is to hide from your customers which doesn't make any sense. Just make sure that all the thieves can get is a watermarked image.

Thanks John this is just what I was looking for. I do use watermark but I've only used the thin band across the image so I'm going add a new full size image mark as Andy has done!

I shoot RAW and export to jpg but do keep original size. I have the original so you still suggest not allowing the original size on SmugMug?

I agree nothing is 100% and there is a catch 22. I want to market my photos for people to find me and buy images but I have to protect them from being stolen. So I think using right click protection and a good watermark will continue to be my protection then add image tracking software and we're set!

Now all I have to do is take photos people want to steal (and buy)

Thanks everyone for your feedback

jfriend

bobrandklev wrote:

I shoot RAW and export to jpg but do keep original size. I have the original so you still suggest not allowing the original size on SmugMug?

Upload your full resolution files because that will make the best prints, but don't allow your customers to have access to the full resolution files. You do that in the customize gallery screen by setting "Largest Size" to X3Large instead of Original. This will still allow nice sized images to be displayed on the web with your watermark, but won't let customers have access to the non-watermarked full resolution versions.

MikeMcA²

Yes, as John says, even when you watermark your images the original remains unwatermarked. If you allow access to the original you defeat the whole watermark effort. Where you watermark is also important, and varies with levels of security needed. For images I intend for sale, I watermark directly across the center of the image on all public galleries. A small watermark in the corner achieves the same thing as right-click protection: keeps the honest people honest.

I also share some images on photography-related websites such as Digital Grin. For those images I wish to share for critique (or blatant self-aggrandizement :ivar) I leave them unwatermarked but put them in an unlisted gallery and only post where my customers don't generally go (i.e. most Harley drag racers don't frequent Digital Grin or Nikon Café).

As I've posted before, protection against theft of images in the 21st Century has little to do with resolution or image size. 99.999% of those stealing your images aren't interested in printing your work and hanging it on their wall or selling it in a gallery; they steal it to upload to their blog or MySpace page. Shoot, they probably don't even think of it as stealing. It's on the Internet so it's theirs. You've got to keep them from wanting to take that 72dpi 640x400 image, or they'll simply take it. You need to advertise, but restrict access to the full viewing pleasure until they actually pay for it.