What is The Grid? Image protection for artist websites explained

The Grid is a 5×5 tile image protection system. Each artwork is split into 25 tiles that display blurred by default. Only one tile sharpens on hover — meaning collectors can appreciate the work without ever seeing a capturable full-resolution version.

Why artists need image protection

When an artwork image is displayed on a standard website — including Shopify, Squarespace, and most website builders — it can be right-clicked and saved at full resolution. It can be screenshotted. It can be downloaded and used however the downloader chooses.

Australian artist Lottie Rae discovered this firsthand when her artwork appeared on Temu — stolen, reproduced, and sold by a third party without her knowledge or any payment to her. This is happening to artists everywhere whose work appears online without protection. Read the full story on Solène Haus.

How The Grid works

The Grid solves the image protection problem without degrading the viewing experience for genuine collectors. Here is how it works technically:

• Each artwork image is divided into a 5×5 grid — 25 individual tiles
• The entire image renders blurred by default when the page loads
• When a visitor hovers over the artwork, a single tile sharpens — revealing detail in that section only
• Moving the cursor across the image reveals different tiles progressively
• Right-clicking saves only a single blurred tile — not a usable artwork image
• Screenshots capture only the partially blurred state — not a clean reproduction

The full-resolution artwork is never rendered in the browser in a form that can be cleanly captured. The protection is not a watermark that can be cropped — it is structural.

Where The Grid is used

The Grid was developed for and is used on two platforms:

Solène Haus — the zero-commission artist platform founded by Leah Justyce. Every artwork displayed on Solène Haus uses The Grid. Artists who sell through the platform have their work protected from the moment it is listed.

LeahJustyce.com — the personal website of Leah Justyce, a professional fine artist with 26 years of practice, featured in British Vogue, World of Interiors, and House & Garden UK. The Grid protects every artwork in her online gallery.

ContentFactoryAI builds The Grid into artist websites as part of every custom build — from Tier 1 through to Tier 5.

The collector experience

A common concern with image protection is that it degrades the viewing experience and discourages genuine collectors. The Grid is designed specifically to avoid this.

The hover interaction is intuitive and engaging — collectors naturally move across the artwork, revealing it tile by tile. This progressive reveal can actually increase engagement and time spent with a piece. Collectors can assess colour, texture, and detail through the interaction. What they cannot do is capture a clean copy.

The Grid is protection that works with the viewing experience, not against it.

The Grid vs watermarking

Watermarking is a common but ineffective approach to image protection. A watermark can be cropped, cloned out in Photoshop, or simply ignored if the watermark is placed on the edge of the image. It does nothing to prevent downloading — it only marks the image after the fact.

The Grid prevents the clean capture of the image itself. There is nothing to crop, nothing to edit out. The protection is in the rendering, not the image file.