Are you looking for a WordPress plugin to prevent image theft?

Theft of images is a significant issue that photographers often face. Anyone may easily copy photos and text from the internet. Therefore, it is essential to secure your unique work.

This post will discuss four methods for preventing image theft on WordPress websites.

Image Theft and Intellectual Property

Copyright laws are global and applied everywhere. The original inventor immediately acquires the proprietor of the copyright to their work.

Even if it is not specifically stated on a WordPress website, users should presume that the content they see is copyright protected. This includes photos, text, videos, logos, and other forms of web-based material.

The issue is that pictures and text are readily reproducible. Many individuals believe that no one would notice if they took a picture and uploaded it to their website.

It is both unlawful and immoral to take the work of others. There are several locations where royalty-free and public domain photos are readily available.

While it is nice when others utilize your work in their ventures, it can be infuriating when your rights are flagrantly disregarded.

There is no way to prevent individuals from stealing your photographs entirely; however, there are several techniques to discourage and prevent image theft on a WordPress website.

Here are the four most frequent methods for protecting your WordPress photos.

Deactivate Right Click

A user may easily steal photographs from your website by right-clicking and selecting “save image as” to download them. You may deactivate your right-click on your website to make it more difficult for the typical user to steal your picture.

Here are two WordPress plugins you may use to deactivate right-click on photos.

Envira Gallery

Envira Gallery is the market-leading WordPress gallery plugin. Envira has a plethora of capabilities in addition to its ability to help you build attractive picture galleries. One of these characteristics is image security.

Go to Envira Gallery » Addons in your WordPress dashboard. Next, install and activate the ‘Protection’ addon by navigating to it.

Create a brand-new picture gallery with Envira Gallery. Using Envira Gallery, you can easily create responsive picture galleries in WordPress.

When creating a gallery, click the Misc tab and scroll down to the Image Protection Settings. The option to Enable Image Protection is available. Check this box, and your gallery will be saved.

Additionally, an option exists to activate a pop-up notice showing when a user tries to duplicate the picture.

This picture gallery may now be added anywhere on your WordPress site. It will deactivate right-click on photos automatically.

WP Content Copy Security

You may disable right-clicking on your WordPress website with the free plugin WP Content Copy Protection.

By default, the plugin disables right-click functionality throughout your whole page. You may deactivate protection on certain pages, posts, and categories.

Additionally, you may manage security settings for registered users and admin users. It is also possible to display a notification whenever a user attempts to right-click a picture.

Embedding a watermark in your WordPress images

Watermarks seem to be effective for several stock photo websites. The apparent disadvantage is that your snaps or images may not seem optimal.

However, watermarks may be added tastefully. The objective is to maintain the visual appeal of your photos while deterring their theft.

Option 1: Utilizing Environmentally-Friendly Gallery

Envira Gallery has a Watermarking extension. This add-on requires a Plus license or above for Envira Gallery.

Install and activate the plugin for Envira Gallery. After activation, you must click on Envira Gallery » Addons and locate the Watermarking addon. Could you install and activate it next?

You will notice a new ‘Watermarking’ option in gallery settings when creating a gallery or updating an existing one.

Clicking the checkbox next to “Enable Watermarking” will reveal different choices. Next, submit a watermark for your photographs, pick its location and margin, and decide if the watermark will be applied to existing images.

Option 2: Employing the Easy Watermark Plugin

The other choice is to use the Easy Watermark plugin. Install and activate the Easy plugin Watermark. Please see our article on installing a WordPress plugin if you want assistance.

After activation, you can access the Easy Watermark page under Tools to adjust the plugin’s settings.

Click the “Add New Watermark” option and then give a name for your watermark. After that, you may access the ‘Text’ tab and the ‘Watermark’ field by clicking the ‘Text’ tab.

It is also possible to alter the text’s font, size, color, angle, and opacity. Additionally, you may alter the text’s alignment and establish applicable rules.

You can submit a watermark image if you select the ‘Image’ option. When you are executed, click the ‘Save’ button, and your watermark will be added to your photographs.

Turn off image hotlinking in WordPress

Another typical method of stealing photos from websites is to load them directly from their source. The picture will be loaded from your servers without your consent and shown on third-party websites.

It also uses more bandwidth and puts more strain on your servers.

Integrate Copyright Statements into Your WordPress Site

Including a copyright notice on your website might help deter picture theft. You may easily add a copyright notice in plain text or HTML to the footer file of your theme. 2009-2016 xyz.com. p>©/p>

This disadvantage is that you will need to modify this code annually. A superior strategy is to implement a dynamic copyright notice in WordPress.

How to Identify a Stolen Photo

Using Google Images is the simplest approach to determine whether an image is stolen. Several expensive solutions are available, but Google is free and immediately reveals whether someone is exploiting your photographs.

Visit the Google Images website and click the camera icon to get started.

After that, you may upload your picture to Google Images or paste the image’s URL.

Google will now provide picture information, potentially related queries, and aesthetically comparable photos.

Scrolling down will reveal the ‘Pages that contain similar photos’ section. Here, you may see any website utilizing your image without your permission.

Once you have determined who has stolen your photographs, you may contact them and request that they give you full credit. You may also directly contact Google and file a takedown request.