A bit of a rant and need some help...

photocat

Today, I found out that teenagers that I shot on demand of their parents took out pics of the online gallery, they put them on their own websites, and had them printed. It clearly states on my website that all the pics are copyrighted, and that unauthorized use is prohibited.
I do have my pics right click protected, and have taken off all the links to forums and such...
Even after all that, there still is a feature in Firefox under the tools menu that lets you see the properties of the page. You then can save all the properties of that page separate.
Since my large pics that I upload to smugmug are 800 pix, they can have them printed out by shutterfly or any other online processor.
I am pretty upset about it, so some teenagers can get around all the safety procedures that we put in, and still can get pics off...
I talked to the teenagers and have them pay damage (they have to work in McDonalds to pay me a fine), but still...
Is there more that can be done to protect our images?
I also learned from another teen that she thinks that the 72dpi screenshot is good enough for her to print out. She too uses shutterfly to order wallets and 6 by 4's from my protected images...
Am I just being stupid or what?
I have included some screendumps...






Any insight would be appreciated!

Andy

photocat wrote:

Any insight would be appreciated!

Firefox just makes it easy, this has been the case since the inception of images over the web.

Watermark your images. Block Larges. Right Click Protect.

http://www.smugmug.com/help/image-protection
http://www.smugmug.com/help/custom-watermark-protection

Sucks that they took advantage of you

photocat

Andy wrote:

Firefox just makes it easy, this has been the case since the inception of images over the web.

Watermark your images. Block Larges. Right Click Protect.

http://www.smugmug.com/help/image-protection
http://www.smugmug.com/help/custom-watermark-protection

Sucks that they took advantage of you

Yes, I have my pics watermarked, and they are right click protected.
I guess there is never any protection if they really want to get them...
I hope that the boys will spread the word that they were talked to and taken upon their actions. They are rather popular on the base.

Is there any way to do something in Firefox to avoid the save as function under the tools? Can we block that?

Andy

photocat wrote:

Yes, I have my pics watermarked, and they are right click protected.
I guess there is never any protection if they really want to get them...
I hope that the boys will spread the word that they were talked to and taken upon their actions. They are rather popular on the base.

Is there any way to do something in Firefox to avoid the save as function under the tools? Can we block that?

so wait - they printed a watermarked photo?

photocat

Andy wrote:

so wait - they printed a watermarked photo?

apparently... Thing is, my watermark was in the right bottom, so with a bit of cropping, you could easily take it out.
I have now put my watermark in the middle of the pictures, which is not nice but at least they can't make a decent print of it anymore.
I worked in a photostore myself, and if we had any suspicion that the pic was copyrighted, my manager did not want to print it off. Unless we had written permission from the photographer. Maybe some online printers nowadays are not that picky anymore... I find the teenagers now so darn smart!
The girl I spoke to this afternoon litterally said to me that low quality was not an issue... (Well, not for them...)

Guess I learn too slow... I will get there one day!

mrcoons

I can relate
I recently discovered that a similar thing had happened to me. I am strictly an amateur but I shoot school events and make my photos available to the other parents. My profits go (or will go eventually) to the school band as a donation. But I still get wind occasionally of someone who 'screen shots' a photo or two.

Shoot events as I do I have tried to keep the watermark minimal so I guess the fault is mine. For trying to be nice. I guess I'll have to go to something like this:


Or have I not gone far enough?

dogwood

photocat wrote:

Is there any way to do something in Firefox to avoid the save as function under the tools? Can we block that?

No. I'm not even a teenager and I know how to screen capture. If you can see it on a screen, you can save it with any browser, not just FF.

photocat

dogwood wrote:

No. I'm not even a teenager and I know how to screen capture. If you can see it on a screen, you can save it with any browser, not just FF.

Hi dogwood, I am not talking screengrabs here. I am talking about a tool in Firefox which lets you download specific elements belonging to a webpage.
It gives you a save as option.

I know we can not stop screengrabs.

I think putting a watermark dab in the middle will be the only way to go.
I find it takes away from the photograph, but hey, I don't want it to happen again...

corbosman

Hi photocat, the easiest way to stop this is to put a non-obtrusive watermark across the center of your image, or as some people do, repetitive watermarks.

You can create watermarks that are see-through, so they arent in the way too much..

Cor

johng

corbosman wrote:

Hi photocat, the easiest way to stop this is to put a non-obtrusive watermark across the center of your image, or as some people do, repetitive watermarks.

You can create watermarks that are see-through, so they arent in the way too much..

Cor

I agree with the repetitive watermark. Slightly less obtrusive than a more opaque watermark in the center and a REAL pain in the butt to clone out:
Of course you could make yours even more opaque than I have...

photocat

johng wrote:

I agree with the repetitive watermark. Slightly less obtrusive than a more opaque watermark in the center and a REAL pain in the butt to clone out:


Might give that a try... Thanks! ;o))))

mrcoons

johng wrote:

I agree with the repetitive watermark. Slightly less obtrusive than a more opaque watermark in the center and a REAL pain in the butt to clone out:
Of course you could make yours even more opaque than I have...

I like yours John, it's there but it doesn't block the customers view of the photo. But like you said it would be difficult to get rid of. I think I need to change the color of my text!

Mort3770

You don't have to do a screen dump to capture an image viewed on web sites. Any photo that is viewed on your computer is written to your hard drive. In Windows, the files are located in C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files. (To get to the Temporary Internet Files, you first must go to control panel, folder options, check view hidden files and folders)

Even with watermarking, someone with a little know-how can locate your watermaked images and edit them out in photo editing software, depending on how much watermark there is.

I'm not a pro at this yet, but from what I can see, one work-around might be to only load up minimally sized images with watermarks. Then in your gallery customization, set your "proof days" option to 3 days or more. This will allow you to upload full resolution images for your paying customers, not to mention the chance to tweak them if need be.

Again, I'm not a pro, but another method that I've found hard, er impossible, to grab, short of a screen dump, is pictures viewed through Flash presentation. (Andy: Any chances of Smugmug being upgraded to have images presented via Flash?)