Let me begin by stating that I'm aware it's extremely tedious or virtually impossible to prevent individuals from pirating content.

I'm working on a website for a client who is a relatively well known cartoonist. We're working on methods to prevent users from ripping off his work and republishing it, or more so from reproducing it offline, be it on mugs, or similar. I intend to use WordPress on the backend.

I was demonstrating to him how ridiculously easy it is to bypass the disabled right-click.

TLDR: I was wondering what are the other methods to discourage or deter a user from copying an image, and reproducing it?

(I'm aware of watermarking, but it really spoils how the image looks.)

I've already referred to these questions:


Are there DRM techniques to effectively prevent pirating?
Is it possible to prevent unauthorized copying or recording of data by photographing screens?
Prevent Users from Downloading Javascript, Images


There is no way to block saving of images, but here are some ideas to make it harder.


To prevent right-clicking the image to save it, you can overlay a transparent div on it. The user will then right-click the div instead of the image below it and the context-menu will not show "Save image as".
You could use a data URL to show the image so that there is no separate file on the server to link to.
You could use hotlink protection by checking the referer before serving images.


Even with all these countermeasures, any user can just make a screenshot of the page and crop the image out of it. 

Given it is very easy to bypass these countermeasures, you may consider not implement any anti-downloading functionality at all. Use of the images is already protected by law.
