Sunday, September 11, 2011

Protecting Your Images and your Art work Online

So many people seeking the one true answer to the one true question. How can they can protect their images online? How? How indeed. There are no true ways to stop images from being stolen from your website. However, there are a few ways to slow them down. However, to understand this you most first understand your foe. How are thieves getting the pic from your website? Below I have listed some of the top 8 ways to steal pics and animation/movies. You must first understand that nothing you put on line is truly protected.

How they are Stolen
1."Save Image As" with the right click mouse action.
2. Saving the page in Internet Explore Five (IE5) grabs all images on the page including backgrounds.
3. Directly linking to where the image is stored on the server and dragging pic out of window
4. Open the image from browser cache located in the Temporary Internet Folder
5. Screen capture programs and PrintScreen.
6. Taking an actually digital picture of it with camera and photo editing it in photo Shop
7. Recording flash movies or animation that is copy write protect on to your camera and then upload it to the PC and covering AVI or MPEG in to Flash files. Ready to use.
8. Siting down and drawing art work from site
9. Downloading the entire web site on to your hard drive.

How to Protect Images
Now that we know how most images are being stolen, it's good time to learn how to protect them from Internet thief's.
Watermarks
Placing your trademark or name on your image is one way to protect it. This can be done by using programs as Paint Shop or Corel Painter. Another good program to use called Digiarc (http://www.digimarc.ge/). Sigimarc embeds into your image so it can then be tracked across the net. Pretty cool, but its futile. Just like when the music industry were hunting down kids and the elder for downloading music illegally. That was a saw of time. They should have been looking for the people mass producing and bootlegging. The image once marked can be tracked for a fee. One advantage/disadvantage is there is no visible type to interfere with your image quality. Digimarc plug-ins are available for several different graphics programs including Photoshop and Corel.
As include a copy write notice at the bottom of each page. Some people like to emboss the on their image or make it look official. I've seen many people brand their name over the entire pic. A lot of arts do it. It's just stupid, because you can easy remove it in Paint Shop. It's just a pain to do it someone has their name about 50 times on a picture, but it can be done.
When making a water mark, it is best to but it in the picture and somehow make it look apart of the picture. I suggest to many artist that they do this in the their art. Some that is seen, but is not understood or seen by the wood be thief.
Beside side see the Word Copyrighted by MR. Stinky or something other is pretty annoying and takes away for the image your selling. Many people just might look some place else for a cleaner image so they can get a good look at the protect. They may figure that your trying to hide something.
Roll Over And Java Script
Roll over images are easy. When your mouse is moved over the image, a second appears. The second unseen image is rolled over the first. On the second image you can use your copy right image.
The right clicking mouse is one of the mouse gemon to grab an image. Deactivating this action is an obvious solution . There are several Java Scripts that can be used to disable the right click action. You will need a different script to protect you from other browse for the same script doesn't work in all the browsers. One trick is not to use Java, but normal scripts. Because this script does work if the user has Java script disable. Also a lot of the script do not work on Mac platforms
Table Method/Layering
The table method is similar to the roll over method, however it works like a layer. Start by making a table that is the same size as the photograph you want to protect. Insert the photo as the table background image. Then create a a table with in the first table. The tab second table should be the same size as the first table. In the second table you will insert a nul image.
To create a null image is easy. Open a new transparent document in your image editor and set the dimensions to those of the picture you are hiding. Save the image as transparent GIF file, then place the null/empty image with in the second table. What have you done. you may asked? You have copied over the first image with a see through image. Now it appears that you can right click and grab the image. But the truth is that you'll be grabbing the empty GIF or null image file.
The draw back to have this many table some times cause funny effect on your web page. But worst the image your attempting to hide is located in the browser cache. And you can take the image by taking by locating the file name in the image source code. A whole lot of work for nothing.
IDP - Image Directory Protection
Here's one important step that many people often over look. Most web designers place images and graphics in a separate image directory. Browsers look for an index page with in each subdirectory. If there is not one there, a geplete list off all your images and grab anything they want. The best way to stop this is to place an index page in some directory where you have placed your images.
This slow some people down, but they can just as easy now download your entire website on to their hard drive. Saving them a lot of trouble and can look in your info at any time they please.
Java Slide-Show
Some of the best affects are done with Java. Using Java Slide show is a great way to display your images. But the draw back is the slowing loading process. My favorite program for this are applets with can be found at http://www.anfyteam.ge/ .You can also assign link to each picture. My favorite has always been water effect and rain.
Browser Caching
You can prevent the browsers from caching the images on your web page. Insert the following code between the

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