I am working on a project with a client who has some exclusive content to sell and present.

We want to ensure that aside from a screen capture which I cannot control (to my knowledge) that no one can take the images from the site via right click or otherwise.

I have seen some sort of java that prevents the right click but I would imagine you could browse to the image folder and also some browsers may not support this.

other options I thought about were

• visible watermark (may be unsightly on the website however)
• digital hidden watermark with tracking ($$$)

But right now I simply put the image in a very small flash file and protected it from import.

any ideas?

Originally Posted by frodiggs

I am working on a project with a client who has some exclusive content to sell and present.

We want to ensure that aside from a screen capture which I cannot control (to my knowledge) that no one can take the images from the site via right click or otherwise.

I have seen some sort of java that prevents the right click but I would imagine you could browse to the image folder and also some browsers may not support this.

other options I thought about were

• visible watermark (may be unsightly on the website however)
• digital hidden watermark with tracking ($$$)

But right now I simply put the image in a very small flash file and protected it from import.

any ideas?

DON'T use the JavaScript rick click disable code. I hate that code. Besides being annoying it really does not stop anyone from stealing your images. Guess what the source file(can be viewed in any browser just about) contains every image on your site.
Basicly there is nothing you can do. A visible watermark will be annoying and detract from the professional aspect of your site. Put a copyright at the bottom of every page and say images copyrighted by yourself. This alone will stop some people from stealing the images.
I have seen images that have hidden watermarks but I don't believe they would be worth it. Depends on the images you have and how important they are.

From your post I can't be sure what the content is.

Assuming images, forms or other matter that would need to be a certain quality to be printed for use, your best bet is to reduce your images to the lowest quality that will produce an acceptable image for the web, explain what you have done and add the small copyright as suggested VISIO.

Sadly, no matter what you do a few will steal it anyway. That person would never have been a paying customer unless this is a very unique product.

content is unique rock and roll images. Print qualiy images are secured in a members area but I am speaking of the images on the site.

So just like any other site, images in tables or div tags or whatever. I need to at least stop the right click 'save as' option and I'm using swf files as an option right now and wanted to get some other feedback.

If people are viewing images in thier browser they ahve already downloaded them and they already know the location of them. doing the flash thing is probably the most effective way of stoping people getting the pictures as image files.

Javascript for the right click does nothing. It's just annoying and aggravating. To get round it all you have to do is view the page source, which will then give you the exact path as to where it's situated.

Personally, I'd do something like Corbis. However that's not secure either... and if you're good in Photoshop or other image editing programs you can easily get rid of those ugly watermarks.

Unfortunately, no matter what you put on the Internet it's vulnerable and accessible in more ways than you think. No matter what you try to do someone will get round it. If your files/images are so important my only suggestion would be not to put them on the Internet.

May I ask, what is so important about your images?