BetterPhoto Q&A
Category: Software Techniques, Tips, & Tricks

How to Prevent Copying of Photos

To love this question, log in above
May 14, 2005

To love this comment, log in above
May 14, 2005

To love this comment, log in above
May 17, 2005

I don't have PSP, but I do use Photoshop, which has Digimarc's Embed Watermark function. This digital watermark (and PSP's as well) will do nothing to prevent the saving and distribution of images, and it will not disable right-click functionality in your browser. The right-click function can only be disabled by a JavaScript program within a web page.

Even then, it doesn't prevent an image from being copied. An image can easily be fished out of Internet Explorer's cache, even if the right-click has been disabled. And for that matter, a quick press of the "Print Screen" button will copy the image to the clipboard, which can then be pasted into any paint program, pixel-perfect. (I would also add that disabling the right button is considered extremely bad form on websites, and is discouraged by most professional web developers and usability experts.)

A digital watermark does one thing: it embeds copyright information into an image without (greatly) affecting the image itself. This digital information can then be retrieved from the image, and could be used to prove that a given image belongs to its original copyright owner. (See www.digimarc.com for details.)

A digital watermark is generally invisible, and is completely different from a physical watermark, as described by Gregory above (where a layer of transparent text appears over the image).

Neither one will prevent an image from being copied and redistributed, but both will provide some means of ascribing identification to the image.

To love this comment, log in above
May 17, 2005

To love this comment, log in above
May 22, 2005

If you are preparing your web sites on your own, you can do some things which will make coping very difficult if not impossible.

Step 1 :
When you write a html page write header as

<META HTTP-EQUIV="expires" CONTENT="Wed, 26 Feb 1997 08:21:57 GMT">//http
1.0<META HTTP-EQUIV="Pragma" CONTENT="no-ache"><META name="Expires"
content="Tue, 01 Jun 1999 19:58:02 GMT"><META HTTP-EQUIV="CACHE-CONTROL"
CONTENT="NO-ACHE">

In this use the dates which are in past.

This step will avoid storing image is IE's or browsers' cache.

Step 2:

Now you should not restrict right click option because it is not good practice. and also there are ways where u can do right click even if such function is present.
So instead show an tranperent gif image over your image. So if somebody right clicks , and downloads he will download the empty image.
See code below.

//http 1.1

<META HTTP-EQUIV="expires" CONTENT="Wed, 26 Feb 1997 08:21:57 GMT">//http
1.0<META HTTP-EQUIV="Pragma" CONTENT="no-ache"><META name="Expires"
content="Tue, 01 Jun 1999 19:58:02 GMT"><META HTTP-EQUIV="CACHE-CONTROL"
CONTENT="NO-ACHE">

<div STYLE="position:relative;" VALIGN="CENTER">

<img height="330" width="220" src="myoriginal.jpg" border="0">

<img height="330" width="220" style="position:absolute;TOP: 0px;LEFT: 0px;" src="empty.gif">

</div>

Step 3:
If you know php you can right some code and then instead of image name you can call this php in the image source like shown below,
<img height="330" width="220" src="image.php?myimage=<image name without
extension>" border="0">

The php source will be as below:

---------------------------------

// Date in the past
header("Expires: Mon, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT");
// always modified
header("Last-Modified: " . gmdate("D, d M Y H:i:s") . " GMT");
// HTTP/1.1
header("Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate");
header("Cache-Control: post-check=0, pre-check=0", false);
// HTTP/1.0
header("Pragma: no-cache");
/**
we should add a check of domain name also along with referer.
**/
/*
if (!isset($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']))
{

exit;
}
if (strpos("x".$_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'],"www.swapnali.com")==0)
{
exit;
}
$getval = $_GET['imgname'];
$image_name = $getval.'.jpg';
// Output PNG Image
header("Content-Type: image/jpg");
print fread(fopen($image_name, 'r'), filesize($image_name));
?>

---------------------------------

I hope all the html looks proper on this web page,

and this solutions help u all.

Swapnali

To love this comment, log in above
June 09, 2005