Digital Workshop

Disable the Print Screen Key

Does anyone know a way to capture/block the print screen key from capturing the screen. I want to include some historic images in a publication which I'm allowed to do, however I not allowed to let the end user copy for their own use.

In Opus 4.5 I can set the print screen key to hide the fame containing the image but it captures the screen before it closes.

Thanks

Surely anyone with Snagit (or similar) will be able to capture all or part of the screen regardless?

That may be correct.

I found with the 3 screen capture utilities that I have available, including Snagit, if any key or key-mouse combination is used in the screen capture it activates the hide image frame correctly. The print screen key is hard wired and always captures the screen before it hides the image frame.

I can accomplish what I want by using a delayed "Copy to clipboard" action to copy a hidden page object to the clipboard which overwrite whatever is on the Clipboard.

A Clipboard utility that lets you append items to the Clipboard may allow the user to capture and save the image for print. However, I don't think the general computer user use this type of utility.

You'll have to set that hide image on the 'Windows key' too then as both of those methods-hiding the image and using the copy-to-clipboard to overwrite it are only going to work while the publication has input focus.

Normally even if it's full screen if a user hits the 'Windows' key it'll lose focus and presumably they'd then be able to screengrab as they please.

There's also a couple of programs about which will disable certain special function keys, maybe you could have Opus launch one of them in the background.

Depends how much trouble you want to go to though. Are you just trying to deter 'casual' copying or do you think your users are going to be determined to try and steal your images?

The software is for the general public and I want to hinder casual copying. I want to allow users to view 2 images, a present day image and then a historical image on the same subject.

Attached is a sample that I came up with.