: How to make graphics that cannot be traced? We are making a website for graphic designers to sell their work to fashion designers. However the problem is that if we showcase their work, it

@Phylliss782

You can't protect the graphics 100% from copycats and thieves, but you can make it too much work for them and they'll change target.

Know that in the fashion industry, even before internet, lot of cheap manufacturers would travel to higher quality shops and simply take pictures of the prints with a mini-camera; then ask their designers to reproduce the print... So that's an issue that has always been there in the industry and doesn't really have any solution yet besides monitoring what's being sold online.

Some tricks:


You can use a very annoying watermark that blends in the colors of
the artwork; it's very hard to remove on color images and usually
not worth trying to "patch it". Additionally, you can use a standard watermark and a grid watermark over the artworks.
Don't provide images at very large size and super sharp quality. Low
resolution JPG that are big enough to be viewed and have a watermark
will make it hard to trace properly.
You can use a previewing script with a zoom on your website.
Sometimes, it's almost impossible to extract the large version and
too annoying to take screenshots and re-assemble the images
together. Lot of stock pictures sites use this.
Black and white graphics are the easiest to trace even with a
watermark, simply by adjusting the levels. One way to make it more difficult
is to use watermarks that have grids and/or glowing effects to add
blur. This will most likely require a bit more stamping tool work to remove.
Show the designs on a textured background, for example, the fabric. This adds more data that will make it annoying to clean up before tracing the artwork or will end up in a poor result.

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