Exporting photos from lapsed Flickr Pro account
August 18, 2011 3:18 PM Subscribe
How do I get my old photos off of Flickr without paying a $25 ransom?
Like many others, I have no use for Flickr any longer, and I haven't uploaded a photo to the site in years. My Pro (=paid) account has expired, which means that only 200 of my photos are visible; the rest are hidden.
Now I want to download all my photos and close the account down - and it seems the only way to do this is to pay! I have no interest in buying a year of Flickr just to use it for an hour, and I wonder if there's a way to export everything I've ever uploaded.
It seems that by using Chrome incognito mode I can use a bit of subterfuge to get to the rest of my photos (by going to my photostream and searching for " "), but since downloading is disabled it'd be a massive chore to download all 500+ photos manually. Surely there's a better solution?
Like many others, I have no use for Flickr any longer, and I haven't uploaded a photo to the site in years. My Pro (=paid) account has expired, which means that only 200 of my photos are visible; the rest are hidden.
Now I want to download all my photos and close the account down - and it seems the only way to do this is to pay! I have no interest in buying a year of Flickr just to use it for an hour, and I wonder if there's a way to export everything I've ever uploaded.
It seems that by using Chrome incognito mode I can use a bit of subterfuge to get to the rest of my photos (by going to my photostream and searching for " "), but since downloading is disabled it'd be a massive chore to download all 500+ photos manually. Surely there's a better solution?
I'm not sure this is possible. If you have only 500-ish photos the best thing you could do would be to download the 200, delete them, you'll see your next 200, download them and then do it one more time. There was a sort of grouchy Tech Crunch post about this very problem and my assumption which may be a bit of a leap, is that if there was a way to do this without the hacky way I suggested, people would have mentioned it in that thread.
posted by jessamyn at 3:33 PM on August 18, 2011 [6 favorites]
posted by jessamyn at 3:33 PM on August 18, 2011 [6 favorites]
I've wondered about this too...I have thousands of photos on Flickr, but alas, have not uploaded anything in nearly a year. Don't mean to thread-jack, but what can one do before expiring to batch download them?
posted by teg4rvn at 3:45 PM on August 18, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by teg4rvn at 3:45 PM on August 18, 2011 [1 favorite]
What OS are you on? If you use windows there is the somewhat magical AutoIT. You can fully control Internet Explorer (*shudder*), either through recording macros, or scripting.
A firefox plugin that may help is DownThemAll
posted by a womble is an active kind of sloth at 3:46 PM on August 18, 2011
A firefox plugin that may help is DownThemAll
posted by a womble is an active kind of sloth at 3:46 PM on August 18, 2011
Be aware that free accounts can't access 'Original' size pictures through the site or the API.
posted by Memo at 3:57 PM on August 18, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by Memo at 3:57 PM on August 18, 2011 [1 favorite]
Also, DownThemAll will only help if the page you're looking at links directly to the pictures you want, not just a page that contains a picture you want. Knowing what little I do of Flickr, I don't think it works like that.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 4:32 PM on August 18, 2011
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 4:32 PM on August 18, 2011
backupify will back up 1GB of flickr photos once a week for free but I'm not sure if it'll work with a lapsed Pro account. (They have paid plans with more options and it works with lots of services.)
posted by Room 641-A at 4:52 PM on August 18, 2011 [2 favorites]
posted by Room 641-A at 4:52 PM on August 18, 2011 [2 favorites]
For those who propose backupify, how do you backup what backupify copies from Flickr?
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 8:10 PM on August 18, 2011
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 8:10 PM on August 18, 2011
b1tr0t's comment actually works although you still don't have access to the higher resolution versions.
Flickr is useful but not as a primary picture storage option. Keep the originals on your harddrive or a CD/DVD.
posted by JJ86 at 6:29 AM on August 19, 2011
Flickr is useful but not as a primary picture storage option. Keep the originals on your harddrive or a CD/DVD.
posted by JJ86 at 6:29 AM on August 19, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
Would it be worth $25 to avoid doing that? Time or money, you're going to spending one. You can never get that time back, but you'll come across $25 again.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 3:28 PM on August 18, 2011 [4 favorites]