Protecting Images from Theft for Novices

twhite87

twhite87

Messages
1,829
Name
Tim
Edit My Images
Yes
So which valid points did they make - how about enhancing on the article rather than just posting a link.
What did this make you change and why?

Low res images. Most are just used on line these days, on articles, on facebook, all perfect places for these low res images, even after they've cut off your watermark.
I've had images used on Facebook, foreign travel articles, and in the early days, several stolen and sold on a cd of car images on ebay. That one I could chase, although ebay were useless against a power seller.

With the world being small, it's difficult to chase in other countries, usually it's not worth the effort - they just ignore it.
Disable right click, just use snipping tool

Cloud storage - use a secure, different password. Use a password library something like keepass to make it simple to remember passwords.
 
Byker28i said:
So which valid points did they make - how about enhancing on the article rather than just posting a link.
What did this make you change and why?

Low res images. Most are just used on line these days, on articles, on facebook, all perfect places for these low res images, even after they've cut off your watermark.
I've had images used on Facebook, foreign travel articles, and in the early days, several stolen and sold on a cd of car images on ebay. That one I could chase, although ebay were useless against a power seller.

With the world being small, it's difficult to chase in other countries, usually it's not worth the effort - they just ignore it.
Disable right click, just use snipping tool

Cloud storage - use a secure, different password. Use a password library something like keepass to make it simple to remember passwords.
Click to expand...

It got me thinking more about using lower res images, and I didn't know about the disable right click. You're right about the snipping tool, but I'd like to make it as difficult as possible. I've also been in conversation with a friend of mine who designs the websites and apps for British Gas, who is helping me to look into an program that runs different algorithm's that will check the web for copies of my images and notifies me of any hits. (Similar to the google image search, but it runs automatically off my websites).
 
twhite87 said:
It got me thinking more about using lower res images, and I didn't know about the disable right click. You're right about the snipping tool, but I'd like to make it as difficult as possible. I've also been in conversation with a friend of mine who designs the websites and apps for British Gas, who is helping me to look into an program that runs different algorithm's that will check the web for copies of my images and notifies me of any hits. (Similar to the google image search, but it runs automatically off my websites).
Click to expand...

Interesting cheers
Whats the program? Ones I'm aware of are:
ImageRaider - allows 20 images at a time https://www.imageraider.com/
Tineye - single image https://www.tineye.com/
Google - single image search https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/1325808?hl=en



Also be aware that most image searchs don't match on flipped images, or slightly changed ones
https://fstoppers.com/pictures/five-simple-tips-how-find-your-images-online-3272
 
Byker28i said:
Now thats interesting - does it work, any limit to numbers I wonder?
Click to expand...
It's found almost all the ones I could find for myself, and I think I know why it couldn't find the few I did find that it hadn't.

As a trial I've given them four unauthorised uses that they found to follow-up, two of which they've accepted to pursue. The other two they declined as unenforceable jurisdictions (and I'd agree with them on that).
 
Byker28i said:
Interesting cheers
Whats the program? Ones I'm aware of are:
ImageRaider - allows 20 images at a time https://www.imageraider.com/
Tineye - single image https://www.tineye.com/
Google - single image search https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/1325808?hl=en



Also be aware that most image searchs don't match on flipped images, or slightly changed ones
https://fstoppers.com/pictures/five-simple-tips-how-find-your-images-online-3272
Click to expand...

It hasn't got a name yet as it's only in a design and experimental stage. But he reckons he can build a program that simply uses google image search to find possible candidates and then trawls those hits to find matches. I'd have to then review each of the likely matches myself to see if they are indeed mine. May be a complete waste of time and bring up to many hits, or not bring up any at all, but he seems confident and has built a couple of example algorithms that seem to work, and considering it's well above my technological head, I thought I'd let him have at it. I will post something up on here once for people to sign up to once there is something tangible.
 
I recall reading of a technique that though easy to overcome by simply screen grabbing was intended to defeat right click downloading.

As I recall it used an overlay transparent image that was made up of segments.......the principal was that the person doing the download was not getting the image they thought they were!

No idea if it got anywhere but I think "they" said tests worked well!

But as noted above, once on the web images are as good as available as a 'free for all' even watermarked ones. Hence my perception is keep them small and watermark if you want to.

Oh, another old recall and not 100% sure if recall it right. When making image files for the web at the saved resolution make them say 10dpi or even 1dpi rather than the default 72dpi........the theory being that as web is DPI blind the factor is ignored but if downloaded for print it would produce damn all at printable size/quality. Does that theory work in practice???
 
Box Brownie said:
I recall reading of a technique that though easy to overcome by simply screen grabbing was intended to defeat right click downloading.

As I recall it used an overlay transparent image that was made up of segments.......the principal was that the person doing the download was not getting the image they thought they were!

No idea if it got anywhere but I think "they" said tests worked well!
Click to expand...

This is what Photoshelter (and others) do by default. Works against a lazy drag and drop to the desktop, or right click.

Box Brownie said:
Oh, another old recall and not 100% sure if recall it right. When making image files for the web at the saved resolution make them say 10dpi or even 1dpi rather than the default 72dpi........the theory being that as web is DPI blind the factor is ignored but if downloaded for print it would produce damn all at printable size/quality. Does that theory work in practice???
Click to expand...

A 1,000 pixel image is still a 1,000 pixel image. So if someone downloads it, they can print it to 10 inches at 100dpi. Or they can print it to 1,000 inches, and it will come out at 1dpi.
 
neil_g said:
so it's a google images api then?
Click to expand...
Indeed like so many 'tools' out there which basically are just a different GUI for something that is already available.

twhite87 said:
It hasn't got a name yet as it's only in a design and experimental stage. But he reckons he can build a program that simply uses google image search to find possible candidates and then trawls those hits to find matches. I'd have to then review each of the likely matches myself to see if they are indeed mine. May be a complete waste of time and bring up to many hits, or not bring up any at all, but he seems confident and has built a couple of example algorithms that seem to work, and considering it's well above my technological head, I thought I'd let him have at it. I will post something up on here once for people to sign up to once there is something tangible.
Click to expand...

If it utilises google image search than there is no new algorithm invented by your friend ;) A typical case of where some programmers use the following definition of Algorithm;

ALGORITHM noun. Word used by programmers when they don't want to explain what they've just done.
 
Box Brownie said:
Oh, another old recall and not 100% sure if recall it right. When making image files for the web at the saved resolution make them say 10dpi or even 1dpi rather than the default 72dpi........the theory being that as web is DPI blind the factor is ignored but if downloaded for print it would produce damn all at printable size/quality. Does that theory work in practice???
Click to expand...
No.
 
twhite87 said:
It hasn't got a name yet as it's only in a design and experimental stage. But he reckons he can build a program that simply uses google image search to find possible candidates and then trawls those hits to find matches. I'd have to then review each of the likely matches myself to see if they are indeed mine. May be a complete waste of time and bring up to many hits, or not bring up any at all, but he seems confident and has built a couple of example algorithms that seem to work, and considering it's well above my technological head, I thought I'd let him have at it. I will post something up on here once for people to sign up to once there is something tangible.
Click to expand...

Or you can just right-click on an image in the Chrome browser and "Search Google for this image".
 
Once an image is on a website, I don't know of any way to completely stop somebody downloading that specific image.

The guide would help prevent non technical people downloading images by disabling right click and embedding images in CSS but for the IT geeks among us, that is not hard to get round.

HTML sites need to reference a CSS document in order to load its content, you can view the source of the HTML, find the link to the CSS and view it from there.
Boom, you have the links to the images.
 
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