Shozam Community

Mark, the latest Beta (1.0.0.4) allows control over what navigation links you want to display/hide in Step 5 --> Link Tab.

As mentioned in the help files regarding protection, the best (fail-safe) image protection is watermarking (at the expense of marring your images). It is the method used by stock image agencies. All other methods have workarounds which allow persistent infringers to circumvent them. The obstacles may make it harder but not insurmountable for users to grab images, one way or another.

http://www.helpconsole.com/Shozam/default.aspx?page=5Gallery-Protect-RightClick.aspx

However, for all practical purposes I personally consider the trade-offs of protection on the Web not worthwhile. Web images are too low resolution to present much value since the print quality is not usable. I advocate this approach to music files as well; music label companies would be better off selling MP3s without DRM (digital rights management) and align their interests with their users, rather than criminalize their customer base... but I digress... I typically do this with my galleries:

1. Have gallery (including large images) as generated by Shozam!. I do not use right-click disable since, like many DRM technologies, it can be circumvented by a savvy user and it provides annoyances to legitimate users. I do not use watermarks that detract from viewing the image. At the most I add a signature text, in the lower right, specifying name/copyright.
2. I add a Creative Commons (CC) license notification in the footer of the gallery. For more about (CC), see: http://creativecommons.org/

The idea is to make it easy and free to share/use/promote the Web version of the images and charge users only if they want to upgrade to print resolution images. The promotional benefits of making the Web version of the image freely available under the (CC) license (which requires users to give you attribution) more than offsets any drawbacks; at least in my experience.

Hi Ravzvan

Thanks for replying i did try the links tab but people can still click on the first picture and get the larger image we take photos i night clubs on a daily basis and sell them to customers they also go to our current galleries and buy larger versions to display on their desktops and print at this time i am resizing all our images down to 449x337 to stop the them from just casualy copying them i did notice that there is a tick box under step 2 that hides the larger image well thats what i thought when i read the help text next to it but when i checked the box i could only see the thumb nail it did not display the pic which is  a shame our business relys on the sale of photos to the customers and this would have been very good for us so that the customer does not get hold of a full size pic i dont mean full res as with over 10,000 we would not be able to acomodate that ammount of hi res images on our server.

with most printers that the general public can buy today give a faily good quality print with a photo of about 150k 1200x1600

it was just a sugestion as we have to reduce all our files to a lower size so that ther is not a larger version available.

Thanks

Mark

 

The largest images genrated by Shozam! are about 753 px X 565 px. If these are large enough to warrant protection, I would watermark them. You can choose a large watermark with your club's logo and very transparent or a smaller opaque one in the corner. Would this adequately address your concerns?

Would it be possible to have the ability to enter the Collective Commons coding into the individually albums. or not.  This would allow a person to post pictures that would be either protected completely under Copyright law or under CC license.

Ted, I just wrote a small tutorial on setting a Creative Coommons license for your gallery. It is posted in the new HTML Forum:

http://shozam.communityserver.com/forums/thread/636.aspx

Mark, I see the following options for your situation:

1) Use Web Gallery Wizard, which has smaller images, albeit not as an elegant interface or navigation

2) Watermark images, which would further promote your club. You can either put a BIG watermark, which would make images "unusable" or a tiny watermark such that users may take your images use/share them, offering your club the potential of increased exposure

3) Resize the images in an external image editor before you import them in Shozam!

4) Lower compression level for all images so they look poorly

For 2), 3), 4) you can also use PayPal for nice high resolution prints or digital downloads. I would think option 2) is best since I find users want to see a sufficiently large image before they buy. Otherwise it is hard for them to understand if the quality of the image, of the focus, the expression on their face, etc. is really to their liking. You may want to test out option 2) AND option 3) and see which one will provide more traffic, exposure and sales.

However, if your upload bandwidth is a bottleneck, you may be restricted in your options. Maybe the increase in image sales will offset the cost of getting a high speed upload link? (if available in your area)