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Known Participant
April 20, 2018
Question

How to prevent images from shared collectios to be downloaded

  • April 20, 2018
  • 3 replies
  • 1398 views

Hello,

I have created a collection and shared a link to that collection via Lightroom CC. Is there a way to prevent people from right-clicking then downloading images from that collection while viewing that collection in a browser?

Thank you.

This topic has been closed for replies.

3 replies

selondon
Community Expert
Community Expert
April 23, 2018

Hi Michael,

There are no other settings you are missing. If you right click I guess it’s just like doing the same on any web page image.

The only other option would be to Watermark them if you are concerned, either from Classic or Mobile (but don’t think that Shared Links honour Watermarks).

Participant
September 4, 2023

In the age of AI this is a huge drawback, that I cannot securely share my photos without them being downloaded for who the hell knows what use.  Even sending to people I know is not secure as it's only an internet link and those links inevitably get passed around.  What a ahame.

Community Expert
September 5, 2023

This is the internet. If you can see it in a browser, you can steal it. There really is nothing you can do about that to completely stop it. You can't stop screenshots and you can't completely prevent saving the image even with javascript. If you can see the image, it means it is now stored on your computer/device and you can get the browser to save the images in a different spot. Absolutely nothing you can do about it and nothing to do with Lightroom. Lightroom web could make it a bit harder to save the images you see in the browser, but it cannot be completely prevented. This is just the way the internet works and you really can't stop this. When people do it it is still copyright infringement and applicable laws such as the DMCA in the US apply however! This is true also for the AI people when they use internet material to train their AI bots and there are a number of lawsuits in the courts around this that still need to be resolved and from what I hear very well might go the way of the copyright holders but that is currently still unclear and it is still the wild west out there.

 

cmgap
Community Expert
Community Expert
April 21, 2018

Yes you can enable or disable right clicking on an image to download it. However that in and of itself will not prevent someone from screen shotting an image.

Select the collections gear icon and go to the share tab. Uncheck Allow downloads

Known Participant
April 21, 2018

Thank you both.  When logging into lightroom.adobe.com, I can see that the Allow downloads checkbox is not selected. Looking through a different browser and making sure I was not signed in, I can still right click on an image and download it.

Two questions:

1. Is there some other setting that I am missing

2. Should there be a way to prevent downloads from Lightroom CC rather than going to lightroom.adobe.com and selecting the gear icon?

Thank you.

selondon
Community Expert
Community Expert
April 20, 2018

Hi,

You can determine download settings for Albums at Photo Editor | Online Photoshop Lightroom

However, I don’t think you can stop someone right clicking on the image in the browser, although I guess this would be low res.