photo copying?

[rsisland]

I have an account with blogger. I just found out that someone can go to my blog and copy my photos and take them. They are still on my blog of course, but now someone else also has a copy. I haven't made anything that needs copyrighting or that wasn't already made from a pattern. My question is...can I stop people from copying them? I have them in a photobucket account. I don't like the idea that someone can take what is mine. I am very possessive about that. I've seen that you can watermark them, but that won't stop some from taking them anyways.

 

Thanks for your help

 

Robin

[snapkat]

My question is...can I stop people from copying them?

No, there's really nothing you can do to prevent this.

 

Over the years web designers have tried a variety of things to prevent people from grabbing copies of their images. Techniques have included using javascript to disable the right mouse button, using CSS to place a transparent image on top of the real image in hopes that the transparent image will get saved instead of the photo, and so forth. There is no foolproof method, though - I've never found an image I couldn't save to my hard drive one way or another. If all else fails, I can use a screenshot-grabbing utility to select just the part of the screen I want (like the photo) and save that. Then I have a copy of the image I want in .jpg format and can go from there.

 

There are also programs that can save an entire web page and all its images to the viewer's hard drive. (Many web browsers have that feature, for example.) Why, there are even programs that can grab a copy of every page on your website, including all the images.

 

So anyway: sorry, but you can't prevent somebody from grabbing a copy of some image on your blog.

[kazily]

I think by far the best way is to discourage taking a photo--make it so they don't want to take it...by plastering your name on it lol! They can still take it of course--but they wouldn't use it on their site or ebay ...bold enough to see the object in the pic but not totally obstructing the view of the item---I think that discourages stealing someones pics for their own use.

[klouised]

That's what I had to do with my site. Plastering your name or your website name on the photo close enough to the item to where it can't be cropped out is the best solution. It's not pretty, and I hated doing it to my photos, but it was a necessity. I also put on every page of my site down at the bottom that they don't have permission to put my photo on their site without my permission. It all sounds grumpy, but just about everyone understands the need for it anymore.

[Earth Angel]

The only sure way is to not put them on the internet. It stinks I know. As a photographer I really want to advertise for my clients on the internet, but I do not want people stealing my work, so I just don't put my photos on-line. Yeah, you can watermark them and such. But there are people out there who will know how to un-do that. It will discourage the average person from taking your pics, but someone who is good with imaging and really determined will be able to remove the watermark or text with careful photoshopping.

 

Pretty much all browsers automatically save the entire websites you visit in a temporary file folder, whether you visit every page of that site or not does not matter - the whole site and all the images are saved. So somebody could go to their temp folder and get the images from there as well.

[dogymom]

How does one go about watermarking or putting their name on photos?

[Earth Angel]

Here'a a tutorial for PhotoShop: http://www.axialabs.com/v2/axia.php?axia=photoshop_watermark

 

And here is one for Paint Shop Pro: http://www.hypergurl.com/watermark.html

[mimicat]

Couldnt help you with that problem too. But I also think putting a text or mark on your photos can still prevent some outright copying. I hate it when someone "steals" just because they can get away with it, when they are obviously aware of who owns the photo and that there is an implicit copyright to it. Someone who has been posting quite sometime in this forum did that to me.

[rsisland]

Thank you all for your answers. I'll never understand those kind of people who would take someone else's work!

[snapkat]

I have no problem understanding why people might save a photo or page for personal use later on (to view when offline, for example) but I'm stunned by those who publish other people's photos as if they had taken those shots, or who steal other people's site designs.