How secure are the pictures we post ?? Someone recenty made reference to folk 'nicking our pics'. I copied and pasted a pic frome here onto my PC but it was just a blank white square. I guess the wizz kids can find a way of copying and pasting then ?
It's nice to be able to post a large image on here but if they can get nicked, it makes me wonder if it's safer to send lower res images.
What's the consensus guys?
Colin, this has been discussed quite a bit over the last several weeks as I recall. There were numerous sightings, tracing, and tracking down of images from NPN and NPN member's personal sites as well as portfolio sites to back up the recent discussions.
Overall, as most all images that are posted are "saved for web" processed the ending result is a 72 ppi image. With that said the resolution issue is very minimal to work with. In fact as you discovered downloading nets nothing to speak of, and the 'nicking our pics' is more then likely done as a screen save of sorts. Resulting in the robbed image quality becoming even less to work with, and quite frankly to look at.
I chased one of mine recently from what appeared to be a screen print off the optional "Larger Image" I had posted here at NPN with the resulting robbed image that was posted being not too much to look at by then. The person had given full credit information to me on the image so I left it as is. Although, that brings up even further issues about the robbed image and the poor presentation results with full cedit listed too.
I concur with Paul's comments and here are some additional thoughts.
The ONLY way to stop an image from being swiped is to NOT put it on the web. But then it would be pretty difficult to share and display your work. :-) You can have scripts that disable right-clicking, but the general consensus seems to be that it either a. turns people away or b. makes them more determined to copy the image. All one has to do is take a screen shot of any page (don't matter if it's flash based, right-click protected or whatever) and paste in to any photo editor or MS Word for that matter. Crop it, and whala, you've got the image.
Having said that, you just need to weigh the risks of having your image stolen <and used> vs. the size and quality that would be worthy to get your images noticed online. It's a rock and a hard place. Take some basic precautions to protect yourself.
1. use an unobstructive copyright/watermark/name in your images. Yes, small copyrights in the corner can be cropped/cloned out, but you've at least put notice in front of the culprit.
2. Include all your information, copyright, etc. in the files "info" embedded in the image
3. Put copyright infrigement notices on your website
4. Keep size and resolution small enough that no one can make a good print from it, but have enough quality to fairly represent your work online.
5. Buy some software that embeds copyright info into the file and can be tracked online (fairly expensive I believe)
6. Copyright your images, which can be done in batches now I believe.
All of the above won't prevent theft, but may curb it somewhat.
Quite a few years ago I discovered an image of mine that was swiped by, of all places, the
earthobservatory.nasa.gov..... without my persmission. It was a small thumbnail they used for an article and like Paul, they did give full credit to me so I never persued it.
In the end, I don't worry about it too much, at least not like I did a number of years ago.
Even scripts that disable right clicking are no insurance against copying/saving. I have a screen clip utility (CaptureWizPro) that will copy any area of the screen I choose. It is far from being the only software available that does that. In fact a lot of users aren't aware of it but Vista has such a capture utility built in (the snipping tool). These utilities will beat both transparent GIF overlays and script disabling of right click by directly copying the displayed screen pixels rather than the source file. Because they don't use the source file, they will not pick up any copyright data from the EXIF/IPTC fields.
Your best bet for protecting your photos is to put your copyright into the image itself. Not the most attractive solution but it at least gets you credit unless they severely crop the image to cut out your copyright.
And if you have a mac, you just click in our image and drag to desktop and you have the image in as good a shape as we all see in these forums...NOT a white out square. I have used that copy method and then manipulated the image and sent it back to NPN when someone wanted to know how to fix something. Of course I then delete it from my system. For sure, any print would have looked pretty bad at 72DPI these files are "suppose" to be in. The problem is that someone might want to use the image on their website. And as I said, it will look JUST AS GOOD as we see here. So, to truly protect yourself, you have to use the software that imbeds watermarks, etc. Oh well!
This is a pretty common thing you might see, but the dpi setting in a file on the web or your computer is completely meaningless for the web. A file saved at 72 dpi is identical to one saved at 720, 7200, or 72000000 dpi. Only the pixel dimensions matter.
So a file that 3000x2000 pixels at 72 dpi is EXACTLY the same as one that's 3000x2000 at 7200 dpi when displayed. The only time dpi matter is for software that works in inches - print drivers mainly. And even then, it just gives the print driver a default amount of inches to assume.
Posted by Al Andersen on November 28, 2009 at 3:15 PM
This has probably been beaten to death, but for you non-programmer types, if you can see it in your browser, it can be copied. Notices like "Not to be downloaded, copied, etc.", are meaningless. A web browser HAS to download an image to display it and usually stores it in a cache on your hard disk, which can be perused at the user's convenience.
Point-in-fact, using FIrefox it takes all of 10 seconds to "make off" with an image here on NPN by using the View Page Info menu option, finding the image in the media list, and saving it. The transparency GIF overlay does absolutely nothing to protect you from this. This is not secret information... it's well known and easily found on Google.
Watermarks are also meaningless for they're easy to remove. Many a forum contains posts on the pertinent procedures to do so.
The best way to protect your images is not to post them on the web, but that's not practical.
So, what can you do? Accept the fact that your images are going to be pinched and make some display decisions to minimize the damage.
Make your watermarks so they're not intrusive and therefore not worth the effort to remove. making it more likely that credit for your photo will remain intact. Keep your photo sizes and PPI to the smallest possible values while still providing the detail you wish provide for viewing your images. The smaller the size and PPI, the less suitable the image is for printing, and therefore less suitable for monetary gain. Put your copyright or an innocuous string into the EXIF data, so that you can search for it to prove ownership, but be aware that EXIF data can also be modified, manipulated, or removed.
Last of all, register your photos with the US Copyright Office. Google it. It's relatively cheap and will provide you with more protection than anything you can do to the photo itself.
Discussion
6 repliesIt's nice to be able to post a large image on here but if they can get nicked, it makes me wonder if it's safer to send lower res images.
What's the consensus guys?
Overall, as most all images that are posted are "saved for web" processed the ending result is a 72 ppi image. With that said the resolution issue is very minimal to work with. In fact as you discovered downloading nets nothing to speak of, and the 'nicking our pics' is more then likely done as a screen save of sorts. Resulting in the robbed image quality becoming even less to work with, and quite frankly to look at.
I chased one of mine recently from what appeared to be a screen print off the optional "Larger Image" I had posted here at NPN with the resulting robbed image that was posted being not too much to look at by then. The person had given full credit information to me on the image so I left it as is. Although, that brings up even further issues about the robbed image and the poor presentation results with full cedit listed too.
I concur with Paul's comments and here are some additional thoughts.
The ONLY way to stop an image from being swiped is to NOT put it on the web. But then it would be pretty difficult to share and display your work. :-) You can have scripts that disable right-clicking, but the general consensus seems to be that it either a. turns people away or b. makes them more determined to copy the image. All one has to do is take a screen shot of any page (don't matter if it's flash based, right-click protected or whatever) and paste in to any photo editor or MS Word for that matter. Crop it, and whala, you've got the image.
Having said that, you just need to weigh the risks of having your image stolen <and used> vs. the size and quality that would be worthy to get your images noticed online. It's a rock and a hard place. Take some basic precautions to protect yourself.
1. use an unobstructive copyright/watermark/name in your images. Yes, small copyrights in the corner can be cropped/cloned out, but you've at least put notice in front of the culprit.
2. Include all your information, copyright, etc. in the files "info" embedded in the image
3. Put copyright infrigement notices on your website
4. Keep size and resolution small enough that no one can make a good print from it, but have enough quality to fairly represent your work online.
5. Buy some software that embeds copyright info into the file and can be tracked online (fairly expensive I believe)
6. Copyright your images, which can be done in batches now I believe.
All of the above won't prevent theft, but may curb it somewhat.
Quite a few years ago I discovered an image of mine that was swiped by, of all places, the
earthobservatory.nasa.gov..... without my persmission. It was a small thumbnail they used for an article and like Paul, they did give full credit to me so I never persued it.
In the end, I don't worry about it too much, at least not like I did a number of years ago.
Lon
Your best bet for protecting your photos is to put your copyright into the image itself. Not the most attractive solution but it at least gets you credit unless they severely crop the image to cut out your copyright.
Jim Bullard
Troup
So a file that 3000x2000 pixels at 72 dpi is EXACTLY the same as one that's 3000x2000 at 7200 dpi when displayed. The only time dpi matter is for software that works in inches - print drivers mainly. And even then, it just gives the print driver a default amount of inches to assume.
Point-in-fact, using FIrefox it takes all of 10 seconds to "make off" with an image here on NPN by using the View Page Info menu option, finding the image in the media list, and saving it. The transparency GIF overlay does absolutely nothing to protect you from this. This is not secret information... it's well known and easily found on Google.
Watermarks are also meaningless for they're easy to remove. Many a forum contains posts on the pertinent procedures to do so.
The best way to protect your images is not to post them on the web, but that's not practical.
So, what can you do? Accept the fact that your images are going to be pinched and make some display decisions to minimize the damage.
Make your watermarks so they're not intrusive and therefore not worth the effort to remove. making it more likely that credit for your photo will remain intact. Keep your photo sizes and PPI to the smallest possible values while still providing the detail you wish provide for viewing your images. The smaller the size and PPI, the less suitable the image is for printing, and therefore less suitable for monetary gain. Put your copyright or an innocuous string into the EXIF data, so that you can search for it to prove ownership, but be aware that EXIF data can also be modified, manipulated, or removed.
Last of all, register your photos with the US Copyright Office. Google it. It's relatively cheap and will provide you with more protection than anything you can do to the photo itself.
-Al