Stop, Thief! How to Protect Your Images Online

This post grew out of a question from our client, Ken Kolpan, asking how he could prevent people from stealing the images from the website supporting their upcoming book, Child is Father to the Man: an inter-generational photographers’ memoir, due out in September.

Their plan includes selling framed art-prints of some of the images, so it’s important to prevent, or at least minimize, theft of them.

But you have to show them to sell them, right?

If They Can See It, They Can Copy It

So let’s start with the bottom line truth that nobody likes — except the thieves. As far as our research has revealed, there is simply no foolproof method to prevent an image displayed on a screen from being copied.

If a photo or other image is visible on screen:

• A user can grab a screenshot with the Print Screen button or a snipping tool
• They can right-click and copy/paste or save the image
• They can use the browser’s developer tool to find and download the image source file
• And automated scraping bots can do the same

Efforts to stymie these thefts can interfere and make the thief work harder. But in the end they cannot completely prevent copying, once the image is displayed on a screen.

One of the better WordPress plugin tools, WP Content Copy Protection & No Right Click (PRO), is lauded by a reviewer for offering “multiple layers of protection.” (Note: the reviewer also warns that the plugin, like many, can cause conflicts with some WordPress themes and annoy legitimate visitors to your site.)

But the plugin maker admits on its website:

“Inspect, print screen, view source, browser main menu, iPhone & android Print Screen buttons can’t be prevented. … Our plugin just has the ability to (listen) to that keypress and show a message to tell the user to not click this key on your website, but nothing more than this, and the screen will still be copied after that keypress. … We try for years to find any solution for this issue but with no success …”

Among the layers of protection offered by their plugin are watermarks and transparent overlays. Transparent overlays will frustrate someone using the right-click copy/paste method, because all they’re copying is the transparent layer on top. But it has no impact on someone using the Print Screen or snipping tool method.

Watermark protection places visible watermarks on the image. But AI tools are getting better and better at removing the watermarks and then repairing the pixels below to recreate the original image quite well. Back in 2017, GitHub published a study concluding:

“We show that visible watermarks as employed by photographers and stock content marketplaces can be removed automatically.”

Another watermark technique embeds invisible watermarks in the image data by a variety of techniques. A recent entry is Google’s SynthID, which is focused on the reverse problem of making AI-generated images identifiable as such. But a study from the University of Maryland last October, mentioning SynthID, reviewed numerous variations and listed somewhat repetitious conclusions. The author first stated his own, then quoted other researchers:

“We don’t have any reliable watermarking at this point. We broke all of them. …
‘It is well established that watermarking can be vulnerable to attack.’ …
‘All invisible watermarks are vulnerable.’ …
‘Watermarking at first sounds like a noble and promising solution, but its real-world applications fail from the onset when they can be easily faked, removed, or ignored.’ …
‘Watermarking is not effective … Entire industries … have sprung up to make sure that it’s not effective.'”

Even Google’s page about SynthID is careful to warn, “SynthID isn’t foolproof against extreme image manipulations.”

You may have come across a free option, Watermark Ninja, which provides tools for both visible and invisible watermarks to your images and makes some pretty broad claims. Regarding its visible watermarks:

“Our technology embeds subtle yet identifiable patterns that persist even after AI-based attempts to erase the watermark, ensuring your images remain traceable.”

For it’s invisible watermarks, the claim is only slightly more measured:

“Our DWT-DCT watermarking technology provides enterprise-grade security. The watermark is embedded across multiple frequency bands, making it extremely difficult to detect or remove without knowing the specific algorithm and parameters used.”

As shown above, there are a number of computer science researchers who beg to differ.

I am NOT saying don’t use watermarks. I’m agreeing with one of the professors quoted above who acknowledged that watermarking alone cannot provide complete protection, but advised that is “part of the solution.” We’ll talk about how it fits into a robust toolkit for protecting your work in a moment.

Be Prepared to Fight for Your Copyright

After dismantling the notion that there’s any silver bullet solution, it’s important to start over with the basic awareness that your work is protected by copyright law here in the US and many other countries from the moment you create it in a fixed form. For photographs, that means as soon as you click the shutter. Registration is not required for basic copyright protection.

But for Ken and others who want to have the best protection available, registering your photos with the Copyright Office adds the following benefits:

• creates a record of ownership and presumption of validity
• enables filing a lawsuit in federal court or a claim at the Copyright Claims Board for infringement
• allows collecting statutory damages and attorneys fees (without proving actual damages)

While you can register individual photographs, it’s likely to be more efficient and cost effective to register collections in a Group Registration (up to 750 photos, for either unpublished or previously published sets, all by the same photographer).

The Copyright Claims Board provides a streamlined process for claims up to $30,000.

Your Online Image Copyright Protection Toolkit

Okay, we know that image thievery cannot be completely prevented. So, the goal here is to make it as difficult, time consuming, and expensive as possible. Chances are that most thieves will move on to easier pickings, right?

1. Register your copyright. Do this first, as it will tie into Nos. 6 and 7 below.

2. Smaller size, low resolution. In the public pages of your site, in marketing materials, or when sharing on social media, only upload the smallest, lowest resolution copy of your photo that will convey its quality and value. Some rules of thumb I’ve seen suggest 1200 to 2000 pixels on the longest side (honestly, 2000 seems too much to me). And 72 or 96 pixels per inch.

This will deter most who want print quality, but even here the AI “image upscaling” software is getting better and better. It’s even built into Photoshop now.

Keep all your high resolution, print-ready image files behind your paywall, in password protected storage.

3. Apply visible watermarks. With all the caveats above, this is still an effective deterrent to all but the most determined and tech-savvy thieves. It’s also a marketing opportunity. Your watermark can include your logo, name, and website, among other info.

4. Apply invisible watermarks and metadata. Once again, not as the full solution, but as a useful additional barrier to annoy and inconvenience anyone tempted to steal your work. If you use Adobe creative tools, Lightroom can embed metadata in your image file.

5. Consider tools that offer additional layers. And yet again, subject to the caveats we started with, tools like WP Content Copy Protection & No Right Click (PRO) and Watermark Ninja do offer multiple layers of protection in easy to use tools that you may find valuable as part of your toolkit.

6. Monitor the web for improper use of your photos. There are a host of tools out there for “reverse image search” to monitor whether your images are being misused. Beyond manual Google Image searches, photographers can use services like Pixsy, ImageRights, and Copytrack, which continuously scan the web for matches to your portfolio and help you send takedowns or pursue fees. For DIY monitoring, tools like TinEye, and newer services such as FrameClaim and Berify, offer ongoing reverse‑image search and alerting. [Disclaimer: I have not tried any of the tools or services mentioned in this post; I was trying to answer Ken’s questions and think what we found together may be helpful to others.]

7. Have a response plan in place. Know what you’ll do if you find your work being misused. Your response will likely depend on who’s using your image, how it’s being used, and whether you see harm or potential benefit from what you find. For example:

• You may find someone sharing a thumbnail or a cropped section of one of your images as an example of beautiful photography, with credit to you and a link to your site. You may conclude this is covered as a “fair use” under copyright law and your planned response may be to thank them publicly.
• You find a similar sharing of a full size, complete copy of your image, with no credit or link. Depending on whether the usage could benefit your marketing, you may decide either to request credit and a link, or you may informally request a takedown.
• You might find a misuse of your image in a noncommercial setting that you feel diminishes the image or your brand and issue a formal DCMA takedown notice.
• Or you may find a commercial use where the infringer is profiting from your work. In such a case, you’ll probably want to issue a formal takedown notice and consider filing a claim with the Copyright Claims Board, where you can proceed without a lawyer, or a lawsuit in federal, where you can pursue statutory damages, actual damages, and attorneys fees.

Remember, with the impact of AI on both the ability of thieves to steal and remove protections and the tools for defending your work, this is a rapidly changing area. You’ll need to keep a constant vigil for new threats and protections.

And be on the lookout for our announcement of Ken’s and Alex’s book!