Quote Originally Posted by shutterman
What I would be concerned with is that anyone can download your pictures and save them to their harddrive...
...is how big a deal this is. I agree with Photo John's philosophy that there is really little we can do to prevent image copying, and so am not concerned at all about it.

It's like getting upset because someone tore off a magazine cover you shot and taped it up on their wall.

As for the Flash programs and galleries, I would have no trouble copying the images in the links you posted to my HD. Just takes a bit more time, that's all.

In fact, one time I came across an image protection site (that charged a large fee, btw) with a sample of a photo that "they said" could not be copied. It also had a large, clearly viewed watermark across the middle.

It took me all of five minutes to copy the shot to my pc and ps out the watermark. The result was a clean, full size copy of the original. I emailed it back to the site explaining what I did, but funny, never heard back from them.... ;)

IMO, the best way to protect your online images is to make sure the size is not too big, your logo is very visible somewhere in the shot, and to make it clear that you will deal with any unauthorized commercial use of the pic.

As John has said in the past, I see anyone copying my work and sharing it with others free advertising...