Protect photos from mobile downloads???

Z06Nut

I recently saw a lot of my photos posted on Face Book. I asked the person how they got the images and they replied, "I just saved them on my phone." :huh Why doesn't the site protect my images?

AceCo55

You can't stop anyone doing a screen capture and then cropping.
That's what the kids around here do with my photos. Still leaves my "big ugly watermark" on it so that everyone knows where they got it from!!

denisegoldberg

As AceCo55 said, anyone can take a screen shot - and instructions for taking a screen shot on iphone, android, and windows phone are a quick search away.

You should also be aware that the ability to take photos extends to web browsers as well. If an image is shown online it is sitting in the browser cache and is easily grabbed. I don't know what you have set on your site, but you should be aware the right click protection feature in smug does not protect your photos - it simply adds a stopping point before the viewer jumps to the browser cache to grab the image.

You need to decide how comfortable you are with the size photos you are sharing on your site and the possibility that those photos can be grabbed. It's a hard balance - to show a photo large enough that your viewers enjoy your work while you are comfortable with the knowledge that the photos shown on your site can be taken for free.

If you have a portfolio or business account you might want to use a watermark. Be careful with that though - a watermark that obscures the image will possibly drive viewers away. If you are in an industry where your subjects tend to grab photos, take a look at AceCo55's site for a good example of a watermark that protects but still allows the viewer to enjoy the photos.

--- Denise

mrhoni

Photos can be saved to a phone or iPad simply by tap and hold. I think of that like a right click. Even though I have disable right-click turned on so photos can't be downloaded from a desktop browser, that does not stop someone from doing similar on their iPhone or iPad, so it's either Safari on the mobile device or something needing to be built into Smugmug to not allow this simple method to download an image.

denisegoldberg

mrhoni wrote: »

...I have disable right-click turned on so photos can't be downloaded from a desktop browser, that does not stop someone from doing similar on their iPhone or iPad, so it's either Safari on the mobile device or something needing to be built into Smugmug to not allow this simple method to download an image.

You should be aware that right click protection does not stop someone from taking one of your images. If an image is shown in a browser it can easily (and quickly) be grabbed from the browser cache.

--- Denise