ArTips©-The newsletter dedicated to the business of art.

Sometimes practical, sometimes techy, always helpful.

Here are three more tips from Chris Mahar of Selling Your Art Online to protect your images. Two of these tips help prevent someone from stealing your on-line images, the third tip keeps them from being printed without your authorization. These methods involve using a graphics program. If you did your site yourself, you probably already have something like Photoshop. If your site is maintained by someone else ask them to make the appropriate changes.

Use a mouseover swap image. With JavaScript, you can have a different image appear whenever a user's mouse passes over the picture. The replacement image can be anything you want, including a warning about copying your images. You or your web designer can get free javascript code at places like Dynamic Drive or The JavaScript Source.

My favorite tip is the transparent image. It's more complex but very clever. Create a table for each image, and use the image as the background of the table. The table should be the same size as the image. Then place a transparent .gif file in the table with the same dimensions as the background image. If anyone tries to steal your image using a right click, all they'll get is the transparent .gif file.

Finally, keep your images small. Make sure they are at 72dpi (screen resolution) and no larger than 500 pixels on the longest side. This doesn't prevent them from being stolen, but if anyone tries to use them in print form they will either be very small or pixelated. Also, make sure your .jpg files are compressed (again, this is a function of graphics software) just until they show artifacts. This helps them load faster and makes them unusable for print.

Next time, a simple marketing tip-business cards for the business of art.