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Hi everyone!

I’m wanting to create a slideshow using flash (so that people can’t just click and save copyrighted images).  Is there a good way to do this using EE, and also giving viewers the ability to still comment on each photo?  Is there a way, other than using flash, to keep people from easily copying images to their computer?

How would I implement this?  Any suggestions would be VERY appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

I am not experienced enough with EE to tell you how to do this via expression engine but I do know that the Slide Show Pro is downright awesome. You can find it at…

Slide Show Pro

I have used it on several sites and in Myspace and it works well…

M.

Thanks a lot for the reply.  I checked it out, and it seems that you can click on the photo to make it open in a new window, thus enabling the image to be copied.  I wonder if there’s a way to turn that off.

I also read that the “full-feature” paid version lets you add a watermark to the image…  hmm…  I’ll have to investigate further.  I really want the ability for members to post comments, as my photo albums will be “alumni” oriented.  You may know how university alumni like to chat, leave comments, etc…  😝

Thanks again!

Christian - if I can make a suggestion: give up now - that is, give up on stopping people from downloading the images.

If someone really wants an image, they can take a screenshot. The best you can do is watermark it so that it is unusable. But if someone wants a photo badly enough, they’ll find a way to get it. If you’re showing it on the web it has to be accessible by the browser - that means it’s accessible by a person.

I wouldn’t spend that much time on this, honestly.

Yeah, it was a request from the university.  Our photographer requests it…

The watermark is the only way I can think of to make it “unusable”, so I think I’ll go with that.  I can understand him being so picky about this, and I tried to explain to him that most of our users are alumni - from WAY back!  They won’t really won’t know how to “save as” anyway.  lol

The next best thing is to make the images “members only”, I suppose; that is, if he doesn’t like the watermark idea.

As always, Thanks!

Watermarks can often be cleaned out too.  This is really more an issue of education - if someone really wants the image, they’re going to find a way.  You can restrict it to trusted folks, and that is probably your best bet. 

I’ve seen people do some crazy things trying to stop others from taking pictures or source - usually they take about 2 seconds to overcome, sometimes a little longer.  In the end - if someone wants something from a website, and they can see it - then they can get it.

i agree with Lisa. It is useless to try and keep people from stealing the images. The only nice thing about the wb is the only place that they would be able to reuse the images is on the web and how many people will want to do that for pictures that are obviously going to be specifc to a location and audience? the images will not be printable as you are going to use them at 72dpi vs the usual 300dpi for printing and at 350-450pixels wide or so… well let’s just say someone would have a hard time making a decent 4x6 out of an image that small..

But check back into the Slide Show pro app. I have used it extensively and been very pleased. For instance
http://www.jamesraybuilders.com/homes.htm is one. For the life of me I cannot figure out how someone would get to those files…

Another is Simple Viewer (http://www.airtightinteractive.com/simpleviewer/). I have used it on my photography site (which is in dire need of a redesign so don’t judge 😉 http://www.marcusneto.com/commercial.htm Again. I can’t think of how someone would get to those files. They would have to know the name of the xml file specified in the flash swf in order to get the images names and directory…

M.

Hiya,

Again just to go on with what Lisa and Marcus have said. Using Flash and Slideshow Pro is probably one of your best bets as they are ‘fairly’ secure in the way that they deal with images. With Slideshow Pro you don’t have to allow the images to be clicked to go larger so that will help on one level. Also if you don’t make the images in the Flash file too big then they also won’t be of much use to anyone.

Unfortunately if someone really really wants the images or the location of the XML file then this is actually really easy to get. In Safari for instance if you go the ‘Activity’ window then this will show you all the links that are loaded into the current page(s) that are open in the browser. From this you can find out all the information you like. The only way (I think) that you could really protect images (other than screenshots) is to use an Applet but I would really really advise going down this route as personally I think they are very very old fashioned and can slow an awful lot of computers down.

As others have said if you can view it on the screen then you will always be able to get the image at screen resolution even if it is just by a screenshot. I don’t think there will ever be a way around that but I don’t think there are too many people that are going to be wanting to do that anyway and even if they do then they are only going to be able to use them on the web and not to print as the resolution is just way too low.

If you make sure that your photos are well copywritten as I’m sure they must be if a professional photographer has taken them then you shouldn’t really have too many problems.

Hope this all helps you decide on what to do with the images and wish you the best with everything.

Best wishes,

Mark

Again, thanks for all the input you guys have provided.  I believe I know which route to take from here.

Thanks everyone!

You might consider zoomify - there’s a free version of it.  It divides the image into tiles and pieces them together in the browser through a flash client. A user can get the “viewport” size of the image with just a screen print, but getting the larger image would take a little work.

Not totally secure, but it will stop the lazy and the amateur from getting an image larger than the “viewport”.

For artistic work, it’s also a great way to let the user see the detail.

But it’s not a slide show - you would have to build that around it.

Unfortunately I would have to disagree with Zoomify. It is a great way of showing images but with it you could (if you really were vicious and probably moronically bored 😊 ) get hold of the hi-resolution image if a site was using that. It is broken into tiles but from what I remember they are sequenced quite well and so someone with enough know how would be able to re-stitch them together and get the large image.

I’m probably just being picky now so I will shut up though!! 😊

I think that your best bet would probably still be Slideshow Pro or Monoslideshow as they are probably the cheapest and easiest to set up and pretty well secure.

Best wishes,

Mark