Photographers: Please Stop Using Flash
ohnozen.posterous.com
ohnozen.posterous.com
Anyway, here's the comment:
Flash does absolutely nothing to prevent someone from saving copies of images. With basic knowledge of using the developer tools built into any modern browser, it's easy to see the urls being loaded for any resource on a page.
Some photographers have this fear of their images being copied. They spend way too much time concentrating on it. What any successful photographer can tell you is that most of your time is spent being a business person, not snapping the shutter. You make money by marketing yourself and growing your business, not policing the entire internet for errant copies of a photo.
This is only true if Flash is loading external jpegs. If they're embedded in a swf, you would have to go through a great deal more trouble to extract image files. But a right-click 'Save image as' is about all the trouble that most people are willing to go through, and as such, I'd guess that Flash is an effective deterrent much of the time.
I know a few photographers and illustrators, and based on what I hear from them, there is a shockingly pervasive attitude that any image on the web can be appropriated for any reason whatsoever. Even corporate types who should know better think nothing of grabbing images from portfolio sites (or flickr) to use in marketing campaigns, etc. I think it's wise for photographers to do what they can to protect their business and their work.
Also, consider the audience. Often portfolio sites exist solely to impress art directors at ad agencies, who (in my experience) aren't as hostile to flash as, say, developers at startups. And clumsy animated or skeuomorphic interfaces are often totally acceptable in that world. Many of them are still building flash 'microsites', after all. Real sales and commerce are taking place elsewhere (corbis, veer, getty images, et al).
Someone should make swfextract a browser extension.
Hitting the 'print screen' should work.
I guess it wouldn't be so easy if the photo is bigger than the screen. But if they are so worried about people copying their photos, they're probably using a scaled-down version.
I even checked to see that the downloaded image matched what I saw on my screen.
Is it supposed to do something else?
For the record, I'm using Chrome on Ubuntu, but I also tried it with Chrome and Windows and got the same results.
I'm not the best photographer in the world, but I'm better than some. Sharing my photos doesn't hurt me, but it does help me.
Found this: http://www.riecks.com/security/
Back then you simply couldn't rely on a browser to resize a photo correctly outside of Flash, which made it impossible to support different client resolutions without storing a ton of copies of the photos on the server or doing dynamic server-side resampling, both of which had their own drawbacks.
If you left the photo resize up to the browser you'd end up with a horrible non-resampled mess if the photo was shown in anything other than 1:1, whereas in Flash it was trivial to display a bilinear resampled version that looked great at any size up to and including 1:1 of the original photo.
I think at this point the usage of Flash is mostly just inertia... it is done that way because it was always done that way. But it was done that way for a purpose. Web browsers sans Flash were horrible about displaying resized images until relatively very recently.
Shooting good-looking images with flash is surprisingly hard. A friend of mine who went down that route and spent the better part of a year learning shooting with flash recommended this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Light-Science-Magic-Fourth-Introductio...
Also, you should learn how to use Lightroom, Aperture, Bibble or similar for post processing. (If you understand how the postprocessing tools work you can shoot with that in mind).
But most important: shoot every day. Practice as often as you can. Bring your camera with you everywhere. If you shoot a few thousand frames per month for a year you are bound to learn something.
Peter Norvig has a good summary of the basics on his web page: http://norvig.com/dance-photography.html
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fledsbo/
In 2010 he set himself a goal of shooting one picture every day:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fledsbo/sets/72157622990857973/
That's a good example of how to become a good photographer in just a year. (If you click through his photo stream you'll find a lot of interesting images that were shot with flash).
Assuming built-in flash alligned with the camera lens. You can mitigate a lot of this with bounce and slave units. Still, I'm finding that natural lighting and a small tripod (even a 6" mini braceable on a wall or pole) does wonders and makes for some stunning photos. At other times, even motion blur can be useful (especially for night/club shots).
I strongly suggest checking it out if you're a serious photographer. Http://strobist.blogspot.com
A bit of a tangent, but many large advertising/"digital" agencies that really should know better are still serving up all-Flash sites with little or no fallback: http://www.firstborn.com http://ff0000.com http://www.goodbysilverstein.com http://www.toolofna.com http://www.soleilnoir.net http://www.toolofna.com/
Of the above, Red is the worst, offering this one-liner (in #333, no less): "You need to upgrade your flash." Yes, even on iOS. Other all-Flash agency sites, like http://www.ogilvy.com and http://www.razorfish.com prefer to serve Flash, but manage to offer nearly all information and content in the absence of a Flash plugin.
If you want photographers to update their websites, vote with your wallet.
If you're not a consumer of professional photogs' products or services, you don't really have a dog in this fight, even if Flash blows.
To those who have used online portfolios to make actual purchasing decisions, was that a task you want to perform from your phone or tablet, or something for which you are content to use a larger display?
Absent that, please ready a trove of anecdotal evidence from other professional photographers, of the form: "I migrated my Flash web gallery to <insert alternative here> and my business grew by X%"
We have had HTML mirror sites for smartphones and tablets since the iPhone existed (+/- a few weeks). Most of our competitors do as well. So the example in the post is only semi-valid.
Of course I'll be the first in line to celebrate Flash's demise. We're rolling out all HTML5 solutions now and the future looks good.
As to "stealing", it's the nature of the internet for people to use images they find online elsewhere for gratis, usually without attribution. I can completely understand if the copier claims they alone made the image, but these sort of claims can be and are disproven by the original author or other people who have seen the original work and are sometimes removed thanks to current copyright laws (at least in the USA.) Tools like TinEye or Google Images can also help find the original image.
However people do generally attribute images; those who don't (and don't claim the image as their own) are only "stealing" potential profit from the author, which can easily be prevented by either selling it to some group, like a newspaper or magazine, or not uploading the image to the internet at all.
Aesthetically, watermarks can look pretty gnarly, but this of course depends on the person and the watermark. For example, my current wallpaper is that of my favorite anime/manga and has only the compiler's watermark (not the author's) on it, one that is small and translucent. I don't mind it, because it's unobstructive, but if I put the image on Imgur, am I "stealing" from the author or just not giving credit where credit is due?
I look at unobtrusive watermarks like I look at the BSD license: you can use the image, but you're legally bound to preserve attribution, because the creator released the work for notoriety.
I guess you're right, though, in that by removing the plain old right-click+save option it adds at least somewhat of a barrier for the unmotivated or uneducated would-be thief.
You can just as easily deter casual image saving by doing what some folks do and put a clear image layer above the actual image, so the browser prompts the user to save a 1px clear png instead. If they know enough to view the source or use a DOM inspector you can't really stop them anyway.
Anyone can do that.
Even encoding or encrypting the data to be decoded by the flash player doesn't achieve strong protection -- the same carvers can be applied to process memory with similar ease. If you are going to display content on in an untrusted (end-user) process, content producers are going to have to accept that they can save that content.
1. embed in flash/pdf
2. javascript to interrupt right clicking
3. overlaying a transparent image to capture the click
I say 'stonewall' because as a general rule: If the user can see/hear it then the user can save it. Most often in the pristine format supplied.
Content providers should be aware of this already and simply not make commercially-useful content available online. (E.g. by using low resolution/overly compressed or watermarked images.)
Where degraded quality is acceptable: Consider that even the least technical person you know is able to pickup a camera and point it at their screen.
You can still do screenshots, but it makes it much harder to suck down an entire gallery.
I was half-expecting a complaint about View Source, which would've made sense; I don't see what the gripe is here other than a word of warning to fellow photogs about Flash probably not working on the mobile phones of those who might hire them, and a general appeal to the use of Web standards. Unless I'm missing something.
As an aside, though, when I read this, I cringed:
"I know [Flash disappearing] is fairly unlikely, but even Adobe has pretty much dropped support for Flash in favor of HTML5."
Er, come again? Adobe is sunsetting Flash for mobile browsers. All other incarnations of Flash are still very much on the roadmap.
It just kills me to see how confused so many people seem to be about Flash, what it's good for, what it's not so good for, and what Adobe's future plans are for it. Certainly Adobe is to blame for a lot of this, but the "Flash vs. HTML5" theme of 2011 certainly didn't help clarify how different the two really are.
Until this is solved in all browsers, I am unlikely to ditch Flash for photo presentation.
From an artistic point of view and as the creator of the work, it's my prerogative to control the presentation of my work. I want to remove distractions and provide a clean viewing space that doesn't bias how the image is perceived. To me its akin to not having other stuff all over the presentation walls. Just the photographs, some space and nothing more.
If you want to "provide a clean viewing space" and "nothing more" then leave off the music or give me an option to opt-in. Speaking strictly as a consumer, I don't think of the web as a "push" medium. It should be a "pull" medium. I want the HTML I ask for. The same goes for audio-visual. I hate it when a web page imposes a soundtrack and/or video on me. Give me access, but don't push it on me unannounced and unasked for.
How do you know I'm not listening to my favorite mix on iTunes?
My main point was, right now Flash gives me more control over achieving clean full screen presentation, control over image scaling that doesn't destroy sharpness, and smooth and stutter-free fade in/out transitions.
I can't get that in all browsers and have it be consistent yet. When I can I'll drop Flash. In the meantime for those users that don't have Flash I'll offer a fallback view, albeit with not as nice or consistent presentation as I would like.
Allie Siarto and Loudpixel have a great Wordpress theme product that derived from and is targeted to that very need: Whitespace http://usewhitespace.com.
Strange the way technologies differentiate practices. Its years since I raised a Nikon in anger mind you.
And in that regard its annoying that a lot cameras have flash enabled as a default. :(
It's not like photographers demanded Flash as a presentation layer from the begininning. Obviously, they saw something in it that would allow them to control how the user views and interacts with their work while eschewing alternatives.
These are people who have invested not just thousands of dollars on equipment, travel and education, but who have also dedicated their lives and sometimes livelihoods on their art. To ask them to further invest in the ever-changing landscape every time a technology falls out of favor may be too much for them to bear. Just like a simple camera and film, Flash has been there, relatively unchanged, for many years.
Except that, unlike a camera and film, Flash no longer works for some fairly important use cases.
What I'm voicing is neither an objection nor an approval for one choice of technology over another. What I'm saying is that the author of the post, without any admitted experience or knowledge deems themselves so adept as to ask an entire industry segment to abandon the use of a technology without providing any sound logic behind their request or viable alternatives.
I know they shouldn't be using Flash; I've been berating people about that for over a decade. But even so, as a technologist I cannot offer a solution to that particular segment without knowing the root cause of their particular choice, their present requirements nor the necessity of a photographer engaging in a venture that for all I know won't provide them any return or benefit. I find it presumptuous to know what's best for someone else without even knowing the root causes of their alleged problem, especially artists who by virtue of their business model have more to lose than gain by presenting their work in an inferior portfolio format.
There will be some who'll find a solution that fits them best and other who'll keep paying the hosting and update fees until they've become tired and lose interest. It's the nature of the beast. All told, there will be less developers with Flash abilities moving forward and the public will become more educated, so who knows, maybe the problem will solve itself.
I think his article is a little OTT since the solution to his problem is simple - don't use Flash. In fact, the whole article is about how he doesn't actually have a problem because he doesn't use Flash, and I'm not sure why he feels the need to exhort all other photographers to do the same, but each to their own. But his reasons for not using it are perfectly valid and based on a valid use case for photographers.
This may be one of those cases.
I'm not sure why these Flash interfaces exist. More than likely someone who's good at running a restaurant isn't going to be know a lot of technology and will get roped into the most expensive flash-based design they can afford. Items like usability, mobile friendliness, etc never come up because the owner doesn't know or care about it and the designers are too invested in Flash to try anything else.
Is this hurting their business? I'm not sure. I never go to restaurant sites. I visit yelp instead. I only do takeout from places that have good systems in place. Its a competitive advantage now to take online reserverations and have a menu I can view on my phone. Considering something like 80% of all new restaurants go out of business after their first year, it might make sense for these owners to stop being so pigheaded about technology and ask themselves if that slow non-mobile $20,000 Flash site is really serving their customers.
This is the same battle we had with restaurants being cash only 15 or so years ago. The ones that embraced credit cards seemed to have flourished and the cash-only place is either gone or has degenerated into a dive. I think the lower tech your industry is, the most room there is for disruption. These blue-collar places really need to consider the big picture here.
I've tried and I let them know when I do.
When I want the experience, I'll go to the web site. When I just want to know if they have food that fits within my dietary constraints, I'd like to find out easily. That's not necessarily available via yelp (or whatever is awesome this week).
If they existed in the first place it was probably because back when the precedence was set, Flash was on the verge of being the next big thing. Resizing images, audio, video, chat, installed on 98% of browsers, etc. It was only getting better and the thought was that everyone needed a website or they'd be out of business. That didn't pan out for the restaurant business, whose model is based more on reputation than menu updates. A model dutifully exploited by the likes of Yelp.
If Flash sites still exist today it's either because of economic apathy (they don't make any money from it) or they're targeting a specific user. Yes, some things look crappy on purpose and some people actual derive value from that.
I cannot speak from the perspective of a professional photographer, but I'm assuming that they do not derive the majority of their income based on targeting devices or platforms and those people affording them advice in that particular market segment aren't on the same level as say someone who makes a living in providing technology services to companies that do.