Protecting your blog images

There has been a lot of worry recently in my bloggy circles about stolen blog images. And I got to thinking that although I know how to take precautions to protect my work because of my industry, other blogger mamas may not know how easy it is to do it too. You do not need to be a professional photographer to protect your work.  Not only is it YOUR WORK, it's also YOUR KIDS and they deserve to be protected more than anything.  Everyone should be doing what they can to protect themselves!  I do want to make it clear that there is absolutely NO full-proof way to stop online thieves from stealing your work ... if they really want your image, they can find a way to take it. But there are a few things you can do to make it more difficult and slow them down for sure.

1. First and absolutely easiest - add right-click disable html code to your blog for blogger blogs or grab a right-click disable plugin for wordpress blogs. I see so many blogs that do not have this code added and it's seriously easy to do. There are ways around it, but adding this code is an excellent starting point.  Because I think most of my readers are blogger peeps, I'll explain how to add the html code to your blog - it's really easy peasy and sounds worse than it is. But this will disable the right-click/save as function - each time someone tries to right-click anywhere on your blog, a box will pop up telling the user that the material is copyrighted and they will not be able to copy anything. Mine looks like the screenshot over to the right, but you can make yours say whatever you like.  To add this code to your blog, add an html gadget anywhere on your blog in the design tab and then copy/paste THIS CODE.  If you do not know how to copy the code, please email me at LivingOutHisLove@yahoo.com and I will gladly send it to you.  You do not need to give your gadget a title.  If you want to change what the pop-up box says, change the - "Sorry, Image is Copyrighted!" text to your liking.  Then just click "save" and voila!, you have right-click disabled your blog!  Now keep in mind that this is not full-proof - images can still by copied from mobile devices and people can still take screenshots on computers.  And eventually, this right-click disable code may not work for some browsers.  But this step, combined with the other precautions I list below, are definitely good deterrents.

2. Resize your images for web-use only.  Do not upload full-size images on your blog!  Not only do they take up lots of space and take a long time to load, full-size images are easier to use if stolen.  A typical rule of thumb for optimal web-use size is 900px by 600px at 72ppi (that's roughly about 12inches by 8inches at 72ppi.)  This is an extra step and can be annoying, but it becomes second nature and is well worth it!

3. Watermark your images! It takes more effort but is worth it! I save 2 versions of my images - a full-size non-watermarked version for myself and a watermarked, web-sized version for my blog.  HERE is a great online tutorial about how to create your own watermark if you don't know how. You can use a white background (with a low opacity) for your watermark or a transparent background like my watermark - just make sure the file is saved as a .png, not a .jpg.  It does not have to be fancy (just the name of your blog is fine!), but watermarking your images in a conspicuous place will make it difficult for a thief to crop or clone out the watermark later, an example is to the left. In the top image, I placed the watermark in an area that would be more difficult to clone out - you can see how the writing goes over a lot of different things. In the bottom image, the watermark is in an area that does not have a lot of background, making it easy to clone out later. With a few minutes worth of photoshop work, I could easily get rid of the watermark in the 2nd image if I wanted to. If I can, I try to watermark over the person in the image somewhere, although I typically try to stay away from watermarking right over faces as that is very distracting.  I do sometimes watermark over hair though - that can be a great way to stop a thief from stealing an image because they cannot crop that out.  Just remember that watermarking your image in a conspicuous place that cannot be easily cropped or cloned out makes a big difference!

4. The last thing that I do is delete the html code in my posts that allow the images to be clicked on and made larger in a new window.  This is probably overkill now with the new photo viewers on blogger, but I am so used to doing this, it's just part of posting for me.  And it also will not allow someone to take a screenshot of the bigger image - that's always a good thing.  If you try to click on the above pictures of Lovebug, you will not only not be able to right-click/save, you will also not be able to make it bigger in a new window.  Most people will not take this step, but I wanted to demonstrate how to do it for blogger blogs in case you decide it's something you want to do.  When you click on the "Edit HTML" tab in your post, you'll need to track down the HTML code for each image in your post.  The code for your image will look something like this (they are all a little different depending on the file name and size of the file):

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRsmBnCuH8uHywDZjcski14zXIcvWNmf4u2t4we3c9mSpDNorkgcR9JH3ttHlBDOvWWoENp8ZgLrRVYiUv1aBNuu14GqE5KZXw36gb6QJp7i9Jj5X_w8VmVeFlomWK8z5ctamIyoe-Otxc/s1600/watermarking.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRsmBnCuH8uHywDZjcski14zXIcvWNmf4u2t4we3c9mSpDNorkgcR9JH3ttHlBDOvWWoENp8ZgLrRVYiUv1aBNuu14GqE5KZXw36gb6QJp7i9Jj5X_w8VmVeFlomWK8z5ctamIyoe-Otxc/s640/watermarking.jpg" width="480" /></a>

I have highlighted in yellow the part of the code you delete, it's that simple!  It's always the first part of the code up to the <img border ... etc. part.

Ok, that concludes my little tutorial on protecting your blog images.  I want to reiterate that nothing is full-proof with today's technology.  But by putting into place several precautionary measures, you can feel at ease that your images are protected in the best possible way.  These steps individually will not stop a thief, but when combined, they do give you a bit more armor.  I hope you can use some (or all) of the information to protect your work!  If you take one thing away from this post though, please, please, please add the right-click disable code to your blog!  It will only take a few minutes!