Photo Protection

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Permalink Reply by Rob Bixby on January 9, 2009 at 9:31am

No photograph posted onto the internet is completely safe from being stolen. Even with the ability to watermark an image, the ability to remove that make is out there too. If you are able to deny the "right click" download, any image viewed is able to be captured through a screen capture. There are ways to avoid serious commercial use of your images through. First, only post relatively small, low res images. Unless you belong to some group or organization that would need to see extremely large files, such as a photo restoration group that I belong to, nobody needs to post an image at a higher resolution than 72-100dpi. Additionally, posting an image larger than 1000X1000 is useless. Watermarking will also eliminate a portion, or at least give you the ability to identify your images. The problem there is that most people put a watermark in the lower corner of an image, a perfect place to crop it out with no Photoshop experience at all.

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Permalink Reply by Jenni on January 9, 2009 at 2:00pm

Thank you so much for your replies. I will look into the link, tressillan. Would be interesting if I see any of mine there. I do agree about the uselessness of watermarking. don't want to take away from the image by putting it in the middle, but don't want to lose a photo either by just putting it in the lower corner and having it cropped out, like you said, Rob. Thanks again. I will tone down my images and put them on like that.

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Permalink Reply by Travis on January 10, 2009 at 10:40am

All you have to do is view the code for the site, copy the URL for the image itself, drop it in the address field and anyone could have your image. As Rob was saying, there is no protection for images (or much else) on the internet. This should be taken into consideration prior to uploading anything.

Invariably, if your a good photographer, your stuff will be used elsewhere. That is an unfortunate reality of our current digital age. That link to tineye is awesome...thanks Tressillian for sharing that one. =D

Cheers

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Permalink Reply by CameraClicker on January 11, 2009 at 6:58pm

Inhibiting right click will perhaps slow down a novice. If you open Chris' pBase photos with Internet Explorer you will have a pure copy of each one opened, left on your hard drive. All you have to do is go to the correct folder and collect the file -- right click and save is not required.

Travis is correct, if you have the URL, you can show the photo on other web pages without having a copy at all. The page will show the original for as long as the original file remains in place.

The answer to the original question is that photos posted on this site are as safe as photos posted on any other site on the Internet. If it can be viewed, it can be taken.

For what it is worth, even if you copyright a photo and it appears in a book, newspaper, on the Internet, etc., it can still be copied and used by someone else -- all perfectly legal. Copyright legislation typically has a fair use exclusion so someone could show your photo in a blog or even a magazine, comment on the photo, and be within the law. There are other examples but if you want to nit-pick consult a lawyer that specializes in that area of the law. Filling in your name and a copyright notice in the EXIF data may be worthwhile to aid you in copyright litigation if one of your photos ends up in a major advertisement or some other work making it worth spending thousands of dollars on lawyers to assert a claim of damages.

Copyright law is there to protect you from someone getting rich using your work. Be flattered if someone likes your image enough to use it as wallpaper.

If you are a commercial photographer, do what most seem to do -- post a few good photos as samples of your work and contact information so potential customers can contact you about work they are interested in, or to see your whole portfolio.

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Permalink Reply by MandDStudios on January 12, 2009 at 1:28pm

I use flash in my websites, So if they want them they would have to copy the whole page.

Go to my website to see if this will work for you..

DandMStudios.com

DebbiesImages.com

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Permalink Reply by Jenni on January 13, 2009 at 7:40am

Thank you so much for your responses. I will look in to the "right-click disable" and also to the other websites available. Thanks again...Jenni

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