Program to enhance low quality fotos

passerby · Feb 7, 2008

There are times when I want pictures from websites but unable to download them, instead only manage to save the low quality fotos as their samples. Is there a program that can enhance these thumbnails into as close as possible to the original? Smart program I guess.

Thanks for your any infos.

ScottS · Feb 7, 2008

They are low res for a reason... so you cant have them..

Here is an idea! Get a camera, and go shoot your own pics!

usayit · Feb 7, 2008

Downsized/low quality means there is only so much data in those photos to work with... which means you are limited. This is a tactic (as ScottS pointed out) used to prevent the stealing of photos... or at least limit their use.

Please don't steal..

MarcusM · Feb 7, 2008

There's virtually nothing you can do with 'em when they are real small. There is only so much data contained within the images that have been compressed. Software programs can do a lot but they can't do magic.

Icon72 · Feb 7, 2008

But regardless of all of that, why are you trying to take photos from other web sites?

Big Mike · Feb 8, 2008

It is illegal to take (steal) images from websites without permission.

cecilc · Feb 8, 2008

Big Mike said:
It is illegal to take (steal) images from websites without permission.

.... for ANY reason !!

yeti · Feb 8, 2008

Have you clicked on a page that says "You agree not to save anything from this website"? No? Read on.

The pictures are displayed by means of a JavaScript that then prevents you to save them. Those are really silly and annoying scripts aimed to discourage saving images from your web browser. You can, however, bypass them easily if you wish to and I will even tell you how:

Just view the source of the page and find the code displaying the image within the HTML. Then build the URL for the picture you want directly and VIOLA - you can save the image with no silly scripts to annoy you.

About the legal issues:

ANYTHING you see online is FREE TO SAVE AND DOWNLOAD unless you have agreed not to do it. Noone can jump out of nowhere and tell you "this is illegal to save" as they have made it publically available to you, and everyone else on the Internet. In fact, YOUR web browser will save every image and every webpage you browse to regardless whether you wish to save something from there or not. It is called caching and serves to not only to speed your access up, but also to prevent the server from being overwhelmed from serving repeated requests from clients. It's a mutual benefit.

In some cases it goes further than this: unless websites instruct otherwise, Internet Service Providers will sometimes cache content clients often browse to so that they can provide you with faster online experience as well as to cut down on external traffic. This is also perfectly legal as all they do is cache something that is already made publically available.

THIS IS WHAT IS ILLEGAL:

It is illegal to take ANYTHING you haven't created yourself and do anything with it without the copyright holder's permission.

This means you cannot upload your saved images to other websites, you cannot present them as your own, you cannot derive something of your own from them and claim it as yours, you cannot charge people to see them, and a lot of other stuff. This is common sense.

In some instances, however, copyright holders will say that they grant you privileges under some licence, for example GNU or Creative Commons. This means that in some cases they might allow you to post their image as long as you do something for them, like link back to them, acknowledge their copyright etc. This is between you and them.

In short: read the licence.

MarcusM · Feb 8, 2008

That was really informative Yeti. I kind of thought that was the case regarding downloading pics and caching and that sort of thing but wasn't sure of the technicalities. I do know that your pc saves the pics that you view anyways automatically because I've stumbled across them once or twice. It's really weird seeing pics you viewed years ago and to remember them!

Are they not deleted when you clear all your history and cookies folders and all that? I clear that stuff out all the time but I guess I'm not sure which folder the images are stored in. I'd like to get rid of those regularly also just to free up memory.

EYEAM4ANARCHY · Feb 8, 2008

yeti said:
Have you clicked on a page that says "You agree not to save anything from this website"? No? Read on.

The pictures are displayed by means of a JavaScript that then prevents you to save them. Those are really silly and annoying scripts aimed to discourage saving images from your web browser. You can, however, bypass them easily if you wish to and I will even tell you how:

Just view the source of the page and find the code displaying the image within the HTML. Then build the URL for the picture you want directly and VIOLA - you can save the image with no silly scripts to annoy you.

About the legal issues:

ANYTHING you see online is FREE TO SAVE AND DOWNLOAD unless you have agreed not to do it. Noone can jump out of nowhere and tell you "this is illegal to save" as they have made it publically available to you, and everyone else on the Internet. In fact, YOUR web browser will save every image and every webpage you browse to regardless whether you wish to save something from there or not. It is called caching and serves to not only to speed your access up, but also to prevent the server from being overwhelmed from serving repeated requests from clients. It's a mutual benefit.

In some cases it goes further than this: unless websites instruct otherwise, Internet Service Providers will sometimes cache content clients often browse to so that they can provide you with faster online experience as well as to cut down on external traffic. This is also perfectly legal as all they do is cache something that is already made publically available.

THIS IS WHAT IS ILLEGAL:

It is illegal to take ANYTHING you haven't created yourself and do anything with it without the copyright holder's permission.

This means you cannot upload your saved images to other websites, you cannot present them as your own, you cannot derive something of your own from them and claim it as yours, you cannot charge people to see them, and a lot of other stuff. This is common sense.

In some instances, however, copyright holders will say that they grant you privileges under some licence, for example GNU or Creative Commons. This means that in some cases they might allow you to post their image as long as you do something for them, like link back to them, acknowledge their copyright etc. This is between you and them.

In short: read the licence.

That's a whole lot of words used to essentially say: technically it's legal, but...

BTW, once something is published, including as content on a website, it is considered copyrighted material. It's a lot tougher to enforce than if you went through the formal process, but it is considered proof of ownership.

usayit · Feb 8, 2008

Yes yeti is correct.. but more often than not, the requests or attempt to get a good quality print from a website has a motive of making a profit. This is illegal.

I see it all the time....

Flee markets, sunday street sales, etc... tents with framed prints which are obviously done from subpar digital photos being sold for 5-10 bucks each.

yeti · Feb 8, 2008

If this is indeed a photo website, it probably has a huge terms of use agreement, which MUST state that any photos contain therein are only licensed for viewing. Going back to the first line of my post

Have you clicked on a page that says "You agree not to save anything from this website"?

I guess that's a YES now.

yeti · Feb 8, 2008

MarcusM said:
Are they not deleted when you clear all your history and cookies folders and all that?

Yes they are, and if you just leave them, they are deleted within a week or so. You certainly won't find last year's cache still on your PC even if you forgot to clear your cache and history.

MarcusM · Feb 8, 2008

Actually, what I think I saw was when I was attempting to retrieve some photos from a hard drive that crashed. I purchased some data retrieval software and that's when I saw all those old images.

yeti · Feb 8, 2008

MarcusM said:
Actually, what I think I saw was when I was attempting to retrieve some photos from a hard drive that crashed. I purchased some data retrieval software and that's when I saw all those old images.

I see. The way data retrieval software works is that it will find anything that has been deleted, but not yet overwritten with new data. You see "deleted" doesn't mean it is no longer on your harddrive, it simply means "marked as free space". Your data retrieval software will find such files because it is going through your entire harddrive surface to look for raw data.

Don't worry about it, it's normal. However if you DO want something deleted beyond recovery, for example when you are about to put a harddrive in the garbage that you used for very sensitive data, you have to run a special software that will write 0's and 1s over the entire surface of your harddrive in alternating passes.