Nine Ways to Keep your Photos Safe

March 26th, 2014
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The Internet has been a game changer for many professions, especially photographers. Over the past two decades, photographers have willingly traded film for digital, darkrooms for workstations, and promo cards for social media posts. But with online content everywhere for the world to see, it’s that much easier for people to steal photos or try to hack into password-protected galleries. And, when simply trying to sell photos online, you have to risk the dreaded right-click action. Here, we outline the ways to keep your photos, and your name, safe.

Control who sees your photos

It’s your website, your work, and your name. Keep it safe by controlling who sees your photos with the various access controls available through Zenfolio. You can apply this to an individual photograph or an entire gallery or group with the following access control options: public, private, locked with a password, or allowing access to registered Zenfolio users only.

Create a not-so-obvious password

All Zenfolio password-protected galleries are secure and cannot be accessed without a password. However, you have to be smart when creating passwords. Combining a mixture of capital letters, numbers, and characters will make your password unique and less obvious for hackers to figure out. With a hint below each password field, you need to make sure it isn’t too obvious for the general public to easily figure out so you can ensure that only the people you intended to view your photos can do so.

Password lockout

Zenfolio just added a brand new feature that takes password-protected galleries one step further: if it detects too many failed login attempts, it will lock out that person for a certain period of time. When this happens, the photographer will get a notification, so that if it is a client who forgot the password, you can easily grant them access right away. This is also a great way to see who is visiting your galleries and if additional security measures need to be put in place.

Right-click protection

Think it’s impossible to keep people from illegally snagging your work? Think again. With the right-click protection feature enabled, visitors are unable to save your images and instead are prompted with other options: Buy, Show Link to Photo, Dim the Lights, and Download Original (if that’s a feature you’ve enabled – there’s no ‘Save’ option in sight.

Download access control:

Once photos are uploaded, you as the photographer have the power to control whether the option to download originals is available. You can also decide who can and cannot download the photos with a simple password.

Restricted image size:

Unfortunately, no technology can prevent your visitors from taking a screen shot. But you can limit the image size displayed, so that if the perpetrator goes to print the image, it is too small to be legible.

Watermark creation

Watermarks act as both marketing and security for your photos: they let people know it’s yours. A watermark is a semi-transparent symbol, text or pattern added to a photograph for easy identification. With a watermark in place, you can rest assured knowing that if someone does take a screenshot of your photo, it will have your name written all over it.

Hidden galleries

Aside from password-protected galleries, there’s another option to enable only certain people to view specific galleries via direct link or email invite. This is great for when you want to keep a gallery public but not make it visible through regular browsing from the homepage. For example, if a prospective client wants to see one type of work, you can quickly send them a link to view the gallery.

Hiding content from search engines

Zenfolio wants your photos to be noticed and easy to find on search engines, so each gallery is automatically included in public search and browse unless they are specified to be private or password-protected. But you can always turn this function off using the simple steps outlined in the help guide.

Whether enabling a watermark, using password-protected galleries, or hiding certain images, you can rest assured that you are taking the appropriate measures to keep your images and your brand safe. Implementing some of the security measures outlined above will give you peace of mind that you and your photos will not be taken advantage of, so you can focus more on shooting and interacting with your clients.

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