Protect an image with a red X when the file is downloaded

How do they do that?

[Alfasys]

Hallo,
I once saw on a site that when you right-click and save a photo from this guy's website that the saved photo has a red X mark over it. The photo on the site itself was perfect. He didn't work with a background image with an image over it (checked the site code). I don't know if he used any server side scripting. Can someone provide me with a solution how to do this so I can use it to protect my own images? Thanx.

[dcrombie]

If someone is determined to copy your images then they can. Anything that is downloaded by the browser is, well, downloadable and there's nothing you can do about it other than obfuscation.

There are any number of threads on this here (2-3 a week since I've been reading) but the consensus seems to be that you're going to annoy people who aren't trying to copy images and not stop those who are.

[benevolent001]

yes
and if you want to save few of those images then you may copy those from your windows
temporary internet files
they will be there

[encyclo]

The guy was probably just using CSS: there's no server-side or any other "solution" to image copying.

That's just how the web works - you have to be able to download the image in order to see it, and if you can download it, you can save it. Most web graphics are low quality anyway, so they have less value than the high-quality original files.

[Alfasys]

Ok, I know that this all is possible, that the net isn't safe etc. etc., but I saw some place that you can embed this info in an image itself, and that's what I'm interested in. So the image and the cross (which is only seen when downloaded) are both in the imagecode (not the html image code).

[kaled]

It's beyond my knowledge but I think I am correct in saying that no image formats commonly used on the web support what you're describing.

You may be able to achieve something similar by laying a transparent image over the protected image. Otherwise, your best bet is to find the site again and work out what they've done and duplicate it. However, my guess would be that, when you've worked out how to do it, you'll have also figured out how to get around it and it won't seem like such a good idea.

Kaled.

[vkaryl]

Alfasys: there's a few commercial watermarking solutions around that operate similar to what you posted. They're fairly expensive, I believe....

You can search for "image watermarking solutions" or something like that....

[Alfasys]

Hi,
thank you all for the respons. I'll try to find the site again. I know it's a serious problem these days. People "steal" images as if these images are theirs. I tried a lot of options, disabling right click (not realy visitor friendly), set my image as some wallpaper with a transparant image over it, use flash, java protect the image itself, low quality, high compression, watermark, etc. Problem is that there is still something as Print Screen. If I find something I'll let you know, but I think you can make a lot of money if you find the perfect solution for protecting images online.

[kaled]

You will absolutely never beat print-screen no matter what you try. It's a lowish-level operating system function.

Kaled.