Have you ever copied pictures from the internet without a permission from the owner? Most likely, the answer is ‘yes’. Well, I have, but only for private use and when the picture doesn’t have any copyright in it.

What if you WERE the owner? Is there something you can do to prevent this? The answer is no, you can’t really 100% prevent this. What you can do is to make it harder.

There are four ways I know how to protect your pictures on your website:

1. Disable right-clicking. This can prevent a user to use the feature “save image as…”. This is done using Javascript. While it may be a good idea, this can be countered just by disabling the Javascript on the browser, which is not so difficult to do.
2. Overlay method. If you’re the webmaster, you may want to overlay your pictures with a second, transparent graphic in order to stop the users from downloading the original. When a user right-clicks to save your picture, he will save only the second layer and get only the transparent image. However, this method can be easily defeated by getting a screenshot , and a savvy user can use any photo editor to cut the image as he likes.
3. Watermarks. I use this method if I want to protect my pictures. Not to say that this is the best way, it is just the simplest. You can put any information you want (your website, your name, initials, etc) with watermarks without ruining the whole pictures. You can do this with basically all photo editors. But there is no guarantee that a skilled graphic designer can’t remove it.
4. Low-quality versions. You can post a low-quality version of your pictures on your website, good enough for the naked eyes but if a user tries to print it, it will become unusable.

So that’s it. Now let’s hope that your visitors are all saints and not doing something evil!