[Kosmo]

I have a client that wants to have her images protected. Now, I have a few javascripts that don't allow a user to click on the image and download it but she also wants the image to be protected against being printed out. I've never seen this type of protection, does anyone know if this is even possible?

Thanks for any help you can give.

Kosmo

[Terri]

Originally posted by Kosmo:
<STRONG>I have a client that wants to have her images protected. Now, I have a few javascripts that don't allow a user to click on the image and download it but she also wants the image to be protected against being printed out. I've never seen this type of protection, does anyone know if this is even possible?

Thanks for any help you can give.

Kosmo</STRONG>

Nope

You could disable the print menu, but there is nothing to stop you from taking a screen shot and printing that. The javascript that prevents you from downloading also is very easy to bypass as is the javascript that prevents from viewing the source code.

About the best you can do is use htaccess to prevent hotlinking the pics, but that is not what you are looking for.

[Millennium]

It can't be done in a bulletproof manner, but there are a few tricks you might want to try...

• Terri's .htaccess trick is a good start. This should help keep some of the more determined prople from getting stuff (those who aren't smart enough to just take a screenshot, anyway, but you'd be surprised how many of those there are).
• Put your image in a DIV or table cell (uggh...), but do it as the background image. This keeps users from right-clicking to try and save it.
• Use Cascading Style Sheets to have the image hide when printed. If you don't want to make a separate stylesheet just for printing (though I do recommend it), you could just add a rule like this:<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1"face="Geneva, Verdana, Arial">code:</font><HR><pre><font size=1 face=courier>
  image @media print {
  display: hidden;
  <font color = brown>/* Alternatively, you can use display:none . The advantage
  ** to display: hidden , though, is that space will still be
  ** where the image would be, so your layout is preserved.
  */</font>
  }
  </font>[/code]
• There are supposedly some plugins which can defeat the screenshot trick. Unfortunately, these require that your users install the plugins to view the images; I doubt your client wants this.

Anyway, a truly determined pirate is still going to get your images. There's nothing you can do about that. But this should deter most of them.

[unremarkable]

Any old dude, though, can just do a screen snapshot and print that. Basically, with the web, if they see it they can have it.

[Raman]

the images are downloaded into the users cache. on windows at least, it's VERY easy to go look in your cache and find the pic if you want to.

above tips and tricks will deter most users. if its computer savvy people you're trying to deter - sorry..

-raman

[Moonray]

very true... you can make it difficult but you can't make it impossible... the picture is in fact already on the user's hd.
How about enlightening your client that the www is not customisable at their liking?

-

[cmcleod design]

what about using watermarks on the images so that even if they print them, it will still be recognised as your clients work. This is something I am looking into as I am creating a site for my dad who is a jeweller and wants his images "signed" as his.

[Clive]

Ditto. Photoshop has a plug-in for doing watermarks, there's some commercial version you can get where a spider crawls other sites looking for the watermark and reporting back if it finds it.

[Gee4orce]

Yep - use a watermark. There are 2 kinds:

* visible: create a greyscale logo, or text, and apply to the image with the 'hard light' or 'soft light' layer method in Photoshop. Obviously, this visibly effects the image

* invisible: embeds a digital code into the image (by minute variations of pixel brightness). You can later prove that an image belongs to you. Some methods even withstand prining and re-scanning !

An alternative: have small thunmbnails linked to high res PDF versions. Using Acrobat you can prevent a PDF document from being printed

Another idea: using javascript pop up a new window with the image in it - you can control whether or not the window has a menu bar, but I'm not sure about contextual menus.

The most involved method: all images are displayed using a java applet. This gives you total control over downloading and printing of that image.

Of course, there is still the screen-capture method...

Basically, you can only do so much. If you *really* care about copyright, don't put it on the web

[parallax]

Originally posted by Kosmo:
<STRONG>I've never seen this type of protection, does anyone know if this is even possible?</STRONG>

In no way. Rule #1: If the browser can see it, you can use it. JavaScripts are absolutely silly, because they're annoying and can easily be bypassed. Someone could use lynx or wget without any hassle, or just load the image from the URL in the source, -or- take a screen shot. Each way is extremely effective.

As for watermarks, people can obscure them.

So, really, there is no way to prevent stealing of images, and it's only gonna annoy your visitors a whole lot.

[madra [again!]]

i don't see that it matters. if your client is trying to protect copyright on artwork she has produced then no-one is going to be able to get a decent print from a crappy 72dpi web graphic anyway. your client will presumably have original higher resolution versions of the images in question to 'prove' authorship.

if your client simply doesn't want anyone copying her web designs then tough sh*t*. tell her not to put them on the web then. you wouldn't broadcast your honeymoon video on the discovery channel if you didn't want the world to find out about the birthmark on your left buttock, neither do you 'broadcast' your designs on the web if you're not prepared for people stealing, grabbing, copying, adapting and otherwise plagiarising them.

i always think an attitude like your clients is a sign of an over-inflated ego anyway. what's so special about her stuff that out of the hundreds of millions of pages out there the pillaging hordes will descend on hers?

[kernel_panic]

Originally posted by madra [again!]:
<STRONG>i don't see that it matters. if your client is trying to protect copyright on artwork she has produced then no-one is going to be able to get a decent print from a crappy 72dpi web graphic anyway. your client will presumably have original higher resolution versions of the images in question to 'prove' authorship.

if your client simply doesn't want anyone copying her web designs then tough sh*t*. tell her not to put them on the web then. you wouldn't broadcast your honeymoon video on the discovery channel if you didn't want the world to find out about the birthmark on your left buttock, neither do you 'broadcast' your designs on the web if you're not prepared for people stealing, grabbing, copying, adapting and otherwise plagiarising them.

i always think an attitude like your clients is a sign of an over-inflated ego anyway. what's so special about her stuff that out of the hundreds of millions of pages out there the pillaging hordes will descend on hers?</STRONG>

I have to disagree with that. I received a request from a client that wanted to use the web for focus groups. Select individuals would be able to go online and complete a survey about pre-release products. They wanted the images of the products to be protected from download and printing to deter any type of industrial espionage.

I don't consider that situation to have anything to do with ego, copying of a web design, or reproducing an image pulled from the survey.

[madra [again!]]

well that's a different kettle of fish. why don't you password protect that part of the site then so only the focus groups get access to it?

or is it the focus groups who you want to prevent from being able to nick the images?

if the latter then i think you're stuck. maybe they should do an apple and sew a bit of disinformation. put a few images of dummy products in there to confuse the industrial espionagists.

or better still, get the new products posted on macosrumours. no-one will believe they're real then.

[Xeo]

What about png files with alpha masks. I made some cool OS X-like windows for my web page and recreated the shadows so they would appear nicely on any color. I also reproduced the dock. Now, no one can truly steal these from me, as I have the PS documents and can alter them easily. The dock, for example, is still seperate in my PS doc, but merged together in the .png.

Parallax, for example, said, "Now I have some images to steal " which I don't really mind, except if I wanted to, I could stop this right? Or, at least to a point? (I'm sure I couldn't stop parallax even if he wanted to SSH into my computer, that haxor...) But taking a screenshot wouldn't help them at all. They lose all the transparency I worked so hard to get right. They may as well just take screenshot of OS X itself.

Anywho. How do you use htaccess to stop the files from getting downloaded (or whatever it does)? I'm curious, even though I probably won't implement it.

[Raman]

Originally posted by Xeo:
<STRONG>What about png files with alpha masks. I made some cool OS X-like windows for my web page and recreated the shadows so they would appear nicely on any color. I also reproduced the dock. Now, no one can truly steal these from me, as I have the PS documents and can alter them easily. The dock, for example, is still seperate in my PS doc, but merged together in the .png.

Parallax, for example, said, "Now I have some images to steal " which I don't really mind, except if I wanted to, I could stop this right? Or, at least to a point? (I'm sure I couldn't stop parallax even if he wanted to SSH into my computer, that haxor...) But taking a screenshot wouldn't help them at all. They lose all the transparency I worked so hard to get right. They may as well just take screenshot of OS X itself.

Anywho. How do you use htaccess to stop the files from getting downloaded (or whatever it does)? I'm curious, even though I probably won't implement it.</STRONG>

O.k. maybe you're missing the point. If I can see the image, i can steal it. It would be harder to steal if somehow you were able to make the image write directly to my screen via hardware (similar to apple dvd player) BUT on the pc i can make screen grabs with my software dvd decoder so it doesn't matter anyway - the point is if i really want them, i'll get them.

Now, for someone to see your images, the browser has to download. Sure you can probably put java applets all over the place instead and implement some security but, as you guessed, i can take ANY java program and give you back teh source code. Anyway, about images. If i can see them, they're on my hard drive (or i can right click and download).

yes, i wouldn't get the individual layers so that i can mess with it in photoshop but if i wanted that much control over images that i stole, i would probably be artistically inclined enough to do it in photoshop or whatever.

bottom line: unless you dont' want someone to steal your images, don't put them where that person can view them via web page or any other way. or you can catch someone stealing them and sue their pants off and put the story up on your website and that might deter someone from using it on the internet (but not extranet or intranet).

So you're out of luck. What's your web address, anyway?

[dogzilla]

Originally posted by kernel_panic:
<STRONG>

I have to disagree with that. I received a request from a client that wanted to use the web for focus groups. Select individuals would be able to go online and complete a survey about pre-release products. They wanted the images of the products to be protected from download and printing to deter any type of industrial espionage.</STRONG>

Well - this isn't really a problem that technology can resolve. This is more of an organizational problem. If they need this level of protection, then it should be a simple matter to fly the folks to a central location and show them the products in a controlled environment.

I mean, even if you can't print the image out - so what? You could take a picture of the screen which, for industrial espionage, would be nearly as useful. Heck, even a verbal description of the product would be enough to cause problems for a truly secure product.