Hello,
I am looking for ways to protect my product images and I don't know if there's anything out there better than what I've already found: disable right click, use a transparent image in front of your picture and watermarking. Obviously none of them is perfect but I was curious if someone came up with a better solution to this problem.
Also is there any rails plugin to aid with that ?
Thanks
There is no way you can do that at all, that is just smoke.
When you uses images in your website, they are downloaded to the client and they can be found in the cache, even if you try to block the user from right clicking and saving it.
They can even look at your html/css/javascript find the location for your picture and put that in their address bar.
I really, really hate blocking right mouse click. It reminds me nineties when on right mouse click you get message that coping of this site is forbidden ;).
You can't protect your picture. For me the best way is just to put some copyright information and that's all.
You can't stop people from pinching images on the internet, so don't waste your time trying. Instead use a combination of strongly worded copyright messages underneath the image, and only store low-resolution files on the server.
For a photography site I've built in Rails, I have Paperclip trash the original high-resolution photo after it has generated a selection of smaller thumbnails. Combine it with a watermark in a corner of the image and you should have enough to make it a pain to steal a high-quality image, while not inconveniencing users.
Frankly, if I was to visit your website and you'd disabled right-click, I'd be gone in a matter of seconds.
have a look on how commercial image suppliers (like iStockphoto.com) protect their images that and see if that fits your need.