How to protect your images on the internet

Copy protection on the internet is partly a contradiction in terms. By the act of publishing an image online, those with the means to to access the file have also, inherently, been given the means to save a copy of it. The web is built on this premise. Despite numerous and often elaborate schemes to prevent printing, screengrabs, right-click saving and even dragging images off the browser and onto the desktop, the nature of the internet ensures that these counter-measures will tend to cause inconvenience, rather than affording any genuine protection.

Image Watermarking

A preferred solution is to limit the size of the images displayed, and to use visible watermarks. The combined effect of this is to reduce the re-use value of the images so that users do not get distracted from the intended purpose of the preview, their purchase. Additionally, images can be tagged with copyright information in their metadata, which is useful as a method for tracking the origins of images that have been removed without permission, or monitored proactively using tools such as those provided by Google.

Third Light digital asset management software protects high-resolution originals from being accessed without authorisation, and includes automated watermarking tools and metadata tagging to deter casual copyright abuse.

Useful links

For your convenience we have included links to a number of relevant web sites, below: