Topic: Suppressing Right Click in Web Galleries (Read 14426 times)

EdRosch · « **on:** May 30, 2009, 10:11:30 am »

Hi,

I've been using LR 2.3 to create my online portfolio. On other sites I've noticed that there is some way to suppress the right click in order to make it a tad more difficult to misappropriate the pictures and was wondering how this might be accomplished sort of becoming a HTML guru. Ideally it's a feature in LightRoom that I've yet to discover.

Any advice or pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Ed
artislens.com

EdRosch · « **Reply #1 on:** May 30, 2009, 11:25:23 am »

I did explore the web and find a way to do this that doesn't require advanced web creation skills. This Link contains a script that you can copy and paste into the HTML pages created by LightRoom which seem to work. You need to open each and every .htm page in Workpad or other text editor and paste this script in directly after the first <body> heading then save it. In my case it was 44 individual open-paste-save cycles. Tedious but not conceptually difficult and it seems to work.

NOTE to any LR Developers who might lurk here. It would be really nice to have a simple checkbox as part of the Web creation controls that would do this. While I understand that even with this it is not that hard to steal pictures posted online, at least having the option to prevent single click pilferage would be an option I think most photographers would appreciate.

If this is already in LightRoom, I would certainly appreciate knowing.

Thanks,

Ed

tomrock · « **Reply #2 on:** May 30, 2009, 11:50:46 am »

You could use a Flash gallery, too. A lot of people use right-click to go back so removing that ability will drive some viewers away.

Panopeeper · « **Reply #3 on:** May 30, 2009, 12:31:33 pm »

Quote from: tomrock

A lot of people use right-click to go back so removing that ability will drive some viewers away

At which level will this function be specified? My Logitech driver does not allow for overwriting the right click, and even if it did, that would not appear as "right click" in the application but as "Back".

feppe · « **Reply #4 on:** May 30, 2009, 12:59:20 pm »

Disabling right-click is widely considered bad web design and is plain rude, among popups, pop-unders, forced window resizing (my pet peeve) and numerous other annoyances.

Even if you install a script to disable right-click, it's trivial to circumvent by going to Tools/Options/Content/Disable Javascript in Firefox, similarly easy in IE. Flash sites can be screencapped - but such sites are a whole different user interface nightmare.

If someone wants to "misappropriate" your photos, they will do so regardless of javascript or Flash tricks. You risk alienating a good portion of your visitors to protect web-sized photos. As said, many users use right-click for bookmarking and other uses.

Panopeeper, you can right-click on the background of a web page in FF, and there is a "back" option in the popup.

edit: Ed, I shouldn't tell you this, but your right-click blocker doesn't work.

frugal · « **Reply #5 on:** May 30, 2009, 01:06:28 pm »

Quote from: EdRosch

I did explore the web and find a way to do this that doesn't require advanced web creation skills. This Link contains a script that you can copy and paste into the HTML pages created by LightRoom which seem to work. You need to open each and every .htm page in Workpad or other text editor and paste this script in directly after the first <body> heading then save it. In my case it was 44 individual open-paste-save cycles. Tedious but not conceptually difficult and it seems to work.

I find it amusing that the page claims that, among other things, it will prevent users from easily viewing your html source, this assumes that they're right-clicking to view source as opposed to simply going to something like View -> Page Source (in Firefox).

I'd be a little wary of just blindly copying scripts or other methods like this to "protect" your images without making sure you understand how they work and just assuming that your images are "protected". This script disables right-click which only prevents the absolutely most casual grabbing off an image. However, here's just some of the gaps in it's "protection":

Viewing the source code and grabbing the image directly
Grabbing the image from the browser's cache
Mouse drivers which allow for programming specific actions to a button

Even flash-based galleries may not offer much protection depending on how they're implemented. A great example of this is the site Webshots, they use a flash app for full-screen display of images. I've noticed that this app routinely fails on my browser for some reason. At first this was really annoying, then I found that by doing a view source on that page I could easily see in the html both the URL for their flash app and the URL to the full-sized image file (it's passed as an argument to the flash app), meaning that at any time I can circumvent their "protection" in about 2 seconds (note that I do this for viewing the image in full-size, not for copying images).

The fundamental problem is that in order for the user to display your image they have to be sent that image somehow, which means there's going to be some method for them to save a copy of that image. In the grand scheme of things though, the resolution that you'd be using for web images is likely to be so low as to make the images useless for anything other than maybe a wallpaper image on your computer. Personally, that's not a use I really feel I want to discourage, nor would it be worth my time or effort to do so and I'd rather not clutter up my web page with a pile of javascript that I'll continually have to test against various different browsers.

Panopeeper · « **Reply #6 on:** May 30, 2009, 02:02:33 pm »

Quote from: feppe

Panopeeper, you can right-click on the background of a web page in FF, and there is a "back" option in the popup.

That's trivial, but I understood tomrock's post as if the right click could be turned into the "back" function.

Panopeeper · « **Reply #7 on:** May 30, 2009, 02:39:21 pm »

Quote from: EdRosch

to make it a tad more difficult to misappropriate the pictures

I wonder what your concept of "misappropriation of images" is, when the images on your site are 346x450 in size, which is about 1"x1.5" printed.

EdRosch · « **Reply #8 on:** May 30, 2009, 05:00:23 pm »

Quote from: Panopeeper

I wonder what your concept of "misappropriation of images" is, when the images on your site are 346x450 in size, which is about 1"x1.5" printed.

Ok Ok already. I had no idea that disabling the right click was such a hot button issue. Now I know.

Ed

Panopeeper · « **Reply #9 on:** May 30, 2009, 07:41:45 pm »

Quote from: EdRosch

Ok Ok already. I had no idea that disabling the right click was such a hot button issue. Now I know

Ed, I think you misunderstand the issue. One should see these issues in proportions.

1. Disabling the right click is not only intrusive, but it is not really useful.

I don't understand your question in the first place, as the right click on the image IS disabled as of now - however, this did not prevent me from getting to image, so that I can check out its pixel dimensions.

2. The images you are posting are ONE PERCENT of the proper image size. Do you find your images SO important as to protect thumbnails? Then you are better off by putting an embossed or inverse color copyright in it.

EdRosch · « **Reply #10 on:** May 30, 2009, 08:04:37 pm »

Quote from: Panopeeper

Ed, I think you misunderstand the issue. One should see these issues in proportions.

1. Disabling the right click is not only intrusive, but it is not really useful.

I don't understand your question in the first place, as the right click on the image IS disabled as of now - however, this did not prevent me from getting to image, so that I can check out its pixel dimensions.

2. The images you are posting are ONE PERCENT of the proper image size. Do you find your images SO important as to protect thumbnails? Then you are better off by putting an embossed or inverse color copyright in it.

Thanks PanoP,

I was just taken by surprise, I thought I was asking a simple technical question and was caught flatfooted at the direction this went. I simply had no idea at all that there was any issue involved in disabling the right click, nor have I ever been bothered at a site in which this was done, nor had I ever, until today, heard that there were any issues involved in doing so.

This has been quite educational, and tomorrow I'll reload without the 'anticlick' script. You are correct that the images are small enough not to be all that useful for those with ill intent, but hopefully large enough for interested people to appreciate the work.

Ed

Panopeeper · « **Reply #11 on:** May 30, 2009, 08:49:45 pm »

Quote from: EdRosch

tomorrow I'll reload without the 'anticlick' script

Ed, I suggest you to give a try with putting the copyright text in some important spot (where it can not be cropped away), very large font, embossed (Stylize filter), blending mode luminosity or darken, lighten, etc. If you weaken it with opacity, then the result will not be very intrusive but noticable and difficult to remove without damaging the image.

You may find that you can post even larger images without giving away much useful.

EdRosch · « **Reply #12 on:** May 31, 2009, 09:35:21 am »

Quote from: Panopeeper

Ed, I suggest you to give a try with putting the copyright text in some important spot (where it can not be cropped away), very large font, embossed (Stylize filter), blending mode luminosity or darken, lighten, etc. If you weaken it with opacity, then the result will not be very intrusive but noticable and difficult to remove without damaging the image.

You may find that you can post even larger images without giving away much useful.

Thanks for the suggestion. However, I spend consider time in the field and in Photoshop getting the design and composition 'right'. While the small copyright LR adds doesn't substantially affect this, I think a huge prominent mark would attract the eye detracting from my intent to what would be, to me, an unacceptable amount. Again, speaking for myself, while I've never left a site because the right click was disabled, I do find huge copyright marks distracting to the point that I do not spend much time looking at a site whose photos are so marked.

I think your initial point that smaller jpegs aren't that usable is the real key to dealing with this. In fact I could probably make them a bit larger and still not have to worry all that much (assuming that I have to worry at all ) I think my intent reads well enough for interested people to see what I'm about as a photographer, and this is, given all the billions of images out there, nothing I should be fretting all that much about.

Ed

BTW- I have revised the site adding a few photos, removing the hated right click suppressor, and making the pictures larger. That is one thing I really like about LR, I spend hours a day working on my photography, but hate the thought of wasting the learning curve that becoming a webpage guru would seem to require when there is so much else demanding my study time. LightRoom does let me put up a decent looking portfolio and modify it very easily, in a few minutes in fact.

frugal · « **Reply #13 on:** June 01, 2009, 10:30:48 am »

Quote from: EdRosch

BTW- I have revised the site adding a few photos, removing the hated right click suppressor, and making the pictures larger. That is one thing I really like about LR, I spend hours a day working on my photography, but hate the thought of wasting the learning curve that becoming a webpage guru would seem to require when there is so much else demanding my study time. LightRoom does let me put up a decent looking portfolio and modify it very easily, in a few minutes in fact.

This was more the vein that I intended my comments, apologies if they came across otherwise. Not that disabling right-click is annoying or "stupid" but simply that it's not a very effective means of securing your images and that given the sizes typically used on webpages, not worth the effort to employ more effective (and likely, intrusive) methods.

I work in IT which means I spend a lot of time every day in front of a computer dealing with technical stuff. While I have an interest in the technical side of web design I've discovered that outside of work what I really want is to have things easy to manage and not requiring a lot of technical work because otherwise it makes my hobbies feel too much like work.

Author Topic: Suppressing Right Click in Web Galleries (Read 14426 times)