Ways to prevent downloading of product images

  • Resolved dalemoore

    (@dalemoore)


    10 years, 11 months ago

    I’m looking for ways to prevent the typical user from downloading WooCommerce product images. I know, there is always a way around it. But I am looking for unobtrusive ways to do so for this client, who doesn’t want their patterns saved easily. I know you can disable right-click/save as with JavaScript, but I find that incredibly annoying and am trying to avoid it. Is there a known method or plugin I can use that will use the method that Instagram uses, converting the images to background images automatically? That way when you right-click/save as, it tries to get you to download the entire webpage instead, and you can still right-click for opening new tabs, etc.

    We are also going to explore watermarks, but I was hoping to find a code solution. I am also going to explore trying to overlay a 1px x 1px transparent PNG over every image, but that too seems kinda lame. Any suggestions?

    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/woocommerce/

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • bheadrick

    (@bheadrick)

    10 years, 11 months ago

    The short answer is don’t put anything publicly visible that you don’t want downloaded.

    The simple act of an image loading on a page IS downloading it. the only way to protect your images from being downloaded is to not put them online in the first place.

    Using watermarks is a good way to keep someone from using the image and claim it’s theirs. Just look at how any stock image site does it. (shutterstock, istockphoto)

    You could also use lower-resolution or blurred images, but you have to ask yourself just how much this would take away from a potential customer being able to see what they’re buying.

    The overlays and javascript stuff doesn’t stop anyone – it just might slow them down a bit.

    Thread Starter dalemoore

    (@dalemoore)

    10 years, 11 months ago

    Yeah, I know. I don’t need convincing it’s a dumb idea, but the client wants it done and isn’t budging. They have been told it’s not possible to completely prevent, but they want it at least made difficult for the average tech-illiterate person, which is pretty much every customer of theirs. The content images they want to not be savable isn’t publicly visible, it’s behind a password-protected area and access is only granted to their customers.

    I have implemented a solution of my own using div overlays with a transparent background, and some custom JS on the Fancybox pop-ups. This is solved.

    audiomuse

    (@audiomuse)

    10 years, 10 months ago

    How about writing a function that replaces the following:

    <img src="image.jpg" width="300px" height="400px" />

    with this:

    <div style="width: 300px; height: 400px; background: url('image.jpg');"></div>

    Then maybe you can call the function:

    <?php place_image( 'image.jpg' ); ?>

    To return the second code example.

    Technically, users can still download the image, but they’d have to inspect the code, and manually navigate to the image file. I came across this notion while trying to find ways to present photos in a responsive design.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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