=== Selective Image Guard | Protect your images from unauthorized downloads and scraping ===
Contributors: giuse
Tags: image protection, anti-scraping, photography, content protection, security
Requires at least: 5.0
Tested up to: 6.8
Requires PHP: 7.2
Stable tag: 1.0.2
License: GPLv2 or later
License URI: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html

Protect your images from unauthorized downloads and scraping.

== Description ==

**Selective Image Guard** is a lightweight WordPress plugin that adds multiple layers of protection to your website's images. It's ideal for photographers, designers, and content creators who want to deter theft and unauthorized use of their visual content.

### Key Features

* **Desktop Screenshot Prevention**: Applies a blur filter to protected images when specific keyboard shortcuts for screenshots are detected. This is a deterrent, not a foolproof solution.
* **Print Protection**: Blurs protected images when a user attempts to print the page.
* **Selective Protection**: You control which images are protected. The plugin only affects images you mark as protected in the media library.

### How It Works

1.  Navigate to your media library and select the image you want to protect.
2.  Check the **"Protect this image"** option.
3.  The plugin will automatically apply front-end protections to the selected image to help prevent unauthorized access.

### Demo

You can see the plugin in action on the [demo page](https://josemortellaro.com/how-protect-specific-images-from-unauthorized-downloads-and-scraping/).


### Important Note

This plugin provides a **deterrent**, not a foolproof solution. No client-side technique can offer 100% protection against a determined attacker.
For this plugin to work correctly with a CDN, you must bypass caching for any URLs that contain the sig-prot=1 parameter.
For **Selective Image Guard** to function correctly, any caching mechanism on your website—including browser, server, and CDN caching (like Cloudflare, Varnish, etc.)—must **exclude URLs that contain `/protect-image/` and `sig-prot=1`**. These URLs must be served directly from your server without being cached.

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== Frequently Asked Questions ==

= Will this plugin completely prevent image theft? =

No. While this plugin provides strong deterrents, a determined user can still bypass them, for example, by taking a physical screenshot of the screen. However, these protections are highly effective at stopping most casual users and automated scrapers.

= Does this plugin affect all images on my site? =

No. Only images that you explicitly mark as protected in the media library will be affected.

= Is JavaScript required for the main protections? =

Yes. The key protections rely on JavaScript to detect user actions. However, the plugin will still provide a warning for users who have JavaScript disabled.

= Will this affect my site's SEO? =

The plugin may interfere with how protected images are indexed by search engines. This is why **Selective Image Guard** is designed to be selective—you can choose which images to protect, ensuring that other, unprotected images remain fully accessible to search engine crawlers.

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== Changelog ==

= 1.0.2 =
* Fixed: protected images not showing in some situations.

= 1.0.1 =
* Fixed: protected images not showing in the backend.

= 1.0.0 =
* Initial release.

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== Credits ==

Developed by [Jose Mortellaro](https://josemortellaro.com)