[MPDev]

If a file if in a password protected area and you don't have a password, you can't access it, right? Same as if its out of webroot. Thats the idea behind IPS - placing files out of reach from users and forcing them to use PhotoPost to access them. Not very different from the system vB used for attachments, really; we just don't store the images in the database, we store them somewhere other than in the default location.

PhotoPost IPS works the same as our on-the-fly watermarks (another feature unqiue to PhotoPost, I might add) - we read the image file in from the file system at the script level and then serve it up to the browser.

I have an adult site where I use PhotoPost to serve up thumbnails of my member galleries (I am a photographer as well) to visitors as a way of showing them what's inside - but you cannot access the thumbnails or the images themselves without accessing the members area with a password. The thumbnails themselves are served up using the same ideas.

The "image location" is simply a script and since the script is required to view the image, the script enforces permissions.

If you haven't looked at PhotoPost in over 18 months, then you have missed alot of innovation that you won't find anywhere else (but you can be sure will be copied sooner or later).