Serious question about pictures. I have my zjuzdme.org website which I use to promote the clothes-free life style. Does anyone have experience with the yes and no on making pictures non-offensive (e.g. keeping genital parts blurred/out of view)? I suddenly wonder about this as it's so simple to rip pictures from a site these days, and therefore it's too easy to have your (or in this case my) pictures going to places where they don't belong.
As I use wordpress it's easy enough to make pages and posts with passwords for when they contain all-nude pictures but that defies the naturist nature of my site.
Really curious to the views of everyone here.
I stick a small (C) mark in a corner. I run my own site so no one else will add something to the images there. The rest… is in the hands of the persistent harvesters.
My watermark is only in the corner. It don't damage the picture. It's a proof that I'm the author.
I'm not a fan of watermarked images on the 'net. If the original uploader watermarks their image, and then the site owner watermarks their image, and then… it's a mess.
Regarding visible watermarks, be aware of watermark removal software.
True and I know that, I run several sites. But this is the first site I do that deals with nude imagery so I thought I'd ask around a bit. And I'm glad I did, everyone gave valuable advice that I can do something with.
🙂
Stolen photos are a real pain for anyone who posts online, not just us here. With Flash and a no right click option they can still be screen grabbed, but hopefully only in low resolution versions if the owner posts sensibly.
As mentioned above many picture thieves are too lazy to find ways around efforts to secure our photos, but people with certain IT knowledge can usually get round them, I won't mention how for obvious reasons.
Not everyone likes visible watermarks either, I don't, but I use them as well as embedded hidden ones so I can prove they are mine, after having some stolen elsewhere a while ago, so I now compromise. There is free watermarking software available, but I don't know of any good free program for embedding hidden ones.
As for blurring out genitals in nude photos for use on sites like this, I don't see the point as we're people who enjoy nudity and they are naturally visible like the rest of our bodies when nude. It also defeats the point of sites promoting naturism/nudism if we hide parts of ourselves, there is nothing wrong with naked people.
But if full nude shots are being posted on sites that would censor them otherwise, or the poster gets banned. I guess that's what has to be done, though it does defeat the point of posting nudist/naturist photos in my mind. This also makes the photos look as if they have been vandalised. I think it's the same with nude photos having faces blurred out, but I understand fully that not everyone can freely post identifiable nude shots without risking their employment etc.
I don't intend to put up big pictures. That saves bandwidth and indeed, the smaller versions usually aren't so interesting for grabbers. I am thinking about writing a script (linux user here) to add the domain-name to pictures. As you said, not too pretty but it's also a safety. Perhaps adding a comment inside the JPG is an idea as well; after all, when I'm converting them, that's a snap.
Thank you for your elaborate answer, you handed me a few more things to consider!
When I started using visible watermarks I didn't want to put them across the centre of the photos, even with a reduced opacity like some people do. I think this really reduces the interest of the photo.
The visible ones I use are generally stuck in a corner. This leaves the photo open to being cropped to remove them, but I still have the embedded watermark. I use the visible ones because that makes it obvious that I have taken steps to show that I claim ownership.
If you have certain photo editing software, you can add a layer with text in it, if you don't want to use watermarking software as well.
I'm quite experienced with GIMP (12 years using it), layers and stuff is easy. Embedding a message in the picture is easy with that as well.
I plan on adding the visible text in the top left corner. That's usually a good spot.
For me, I'm using flash galleries. However, I know that some people don't like flash (Richard, for exemple;-) That does not prevent the pictures to be stolen, but it make the thing more complicated…and robbers of photographs are often so lazy!
Flash, interesting. I'll have to see if there's a WordPress plugin for that. Thank you for the idea!
-edit- Ah, look here, a -no rightclick- plugin. Just what I needed. 🙂
Hi Paul. No right click is pointless and annoying. The fastest easiest way to foil it is simply to turn off JavaScript. If you have developer tools as I do, you simply view the page resources.
If an image can be rendered in a browser, it can be downloaded and posted elsewhere.
Unfortunately you either have images in the public domain or you don't. There is little to no control as to where your image might appear.
At a personal level I think if you're not indifferent as to where images might appear, you should carefully consider whether you want to post them at all. If the image is striking and appealing its likely to be shared. At that point it's more or less in the public domain.
I know it's not very difficult to scrape any image from the browser cache once a page is loaded. As Jacques said, images can be taken from a page always, even when you simply use a screengrabber. I just don't want to make things too easy for picture-hoarders.
I doubt that my pictures are 'striking and appealing' to many others, as I'm not a girl in her twenties. 😉
I have thought about this a lot, including the password thing.
I've never done the blurring out technique as I find it a little disturbing. And all of our photos are taken from angles where it would make it very difficult to positively identify us. (I think a person who knows us, looking at our photos, would immediately know it was us, but if someone stumbled into my blog, or our photos were posted someplace else, I don't think it would immediately dawn on them as to our identity.) And photos that show genitalia and NO faces are maybe the most awkward of all in the campaign for naturism.
Really a tricky situation, to be sure!
BTW… Just checkout out your site. Really nice. Will add it to my follow list. 🙂
I was (and am still) leaning towards making things visible the way they should be, thanks for affirming that idea. And thank you for the compliment, I try to make something of the site.