web design course london - Copyrighting photos

Hi Sara,

Great to hear from you again!

You can stop people from right clicking, using JavaScript code like this.

However, if the user has Javascript turned off in their browser, they'll still be able to right click and save.

But all of the above information won't make a bit of difference Sara, because there's no way to completely stop your pictures being saved. Anyone can do a screen capture (printscreen button on keyboard for Windows), then use image editing software such as Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop to crop the rest of the screen out, leaving them with your picture.

You can put watermarks over your images, like this stock photo web site, and then only release the full image with no watermark if the visitor has a paid etc. but that's only because the point of that web site is to sell stock photography.

You can also just put some small text "copyright sara sims" within the image, but then it might ruin the graphic.

Most graphic formats (jpg, gif, png etc.) can hold hidden text information with fields like Date taken, Camera used, Format, and Copyright. You should be able to assign values using image editing software. This could be good for legal requirements, but there's still nothing to physically stop people from grabbing your images and saving them on their hard disks.

If you don't want it taken, the only thing you can do is NOT put it up online.

Regards, Rich

Hi Sara,

A good method of stopping people copying your images, is to have a small thumbnail which will be the original image, then make this a click able image, which shows a larger image either within that page or a pop-up page. This pop-up page can then have the watermark on it (as Rich mentioned). This means that the user will be able to see the original image as a thumbnail (these are generally not worth stealing as the images are too small, please make sure that you shrink the image in a photo editor and not just in Dreamweaver). Then have the watermark on the larger image.

Again even though you have placed a watermark on the image it is possible to remove this using photoshop or paintshop. So basically there is no real way to stop people from stealing your images, as anyone with high photoshop skills will be able to remove a watermark.

I know this is not great news, but I hope it helps.

David