Moving photos from Flickr before it is shuttered

February 23, 2016 5:53 AM

I have accumulated - and curated - around 5K photos on Flickr. Quite a few of these are embedded/pulled into various places (blogpost example). In case Flickr does go under, I'm looking for quick/non-teccie solutions for moving the entire bunch of photos and also for easily updating all of those places where a bit of code pulls in the picture from Flickr.

To add additional detail:

1) I want to move all of the pictures with their associated metadata e.g. tags, titles, date taken, and if possible albums/collections or other attributes linking photographs across the bunch. I'd greatly prefer a service that did all of this automatically and requires little or no teccie knowledge or fiddling about on my part. Said service must also allow me to easily resume adding new photos and metadata post-move.

2) If the service could throw up a bit of HTML that I could easily swap into e.g. blog posts such as the one above, thus meaning the photo would still appear even if someone literally pulls the plug on Flickr, then super-great.

I don't mind paying a bit; it's worth it for something that may otherwise take me many fiddly hours instead. I'm already paying for Flickr Pro anyway. And because of the time thing, I'm not self-hosting, nor spending a lot of time learning and doing scripts and coding. I am perhaps looking for something that is like Flickr (photo archive which has a focus on metadata) but is likely to still be around several years from now. Even if Flickr isn't shuttered, it would be sensible to have a backup.

I've looked at the recent AskMe but found Google Photos a timesink to get to function correctly, and Dropbox not to display photos or have the metadata capabilities.

Thank you.

posted by Wordshore to Technology (7 answers total)

I moved all mine to ipernitya few years back using their transfer app. It was lengthy and slow - I had about 7500 photos - and not all my metadata made the transfer. But a lot of it did, tags, I think sets. They're used to Flickr refugees - they're very much like Flickr, but French. Am I 100% happy with them? No, not really, but it seemed like the easiest solution at the time and it may still be. I do feel that I have just never fully engaged with ipernity and so my dissatisfaction is probably more on me than on them.
posted by mygothlaundry at 6:39 AM on February 23, 2016

I don't have a good alternative to Flickr, but I would be cautious about transferring photos to Ipernity for safekeeping. The most recent post on the Ipernity blog admits that they are struggling financially. Flickr is likely to exist in some form post-Yahoo, whereas Ipernity, being small and independent, is more likely to disappear without much notice.
posted by plastic_animals at 8:34 AM on February 23, 2016

I am also worried about this and want to maintain my albums, etc.
One thing to consider might be merely to do a backup to dropbox or google drive to ensure that you have the photos SOMEWHERE.
posted by k8t at 8:36 AM on February 23, 2016

I've used Bulkr in the past to download all my photos off Flickr, and it works fine. Also saves most of the metadata, although you're bound to lose some in any migration.

I wouldn't be too quick to assume Flickr will entirely be shuttered. Especially if you're a paying user, I'd say you'll not be forced to migrate in any rush.

The best online alternatives I'm aware of are Ipernity and 500px, but I can't vouch for either as user.

There are lots of ways to self-host photos, but you'd have to investigate whether they meet your needs. For example, you mention Dropbox. My Synology Diskstation NAS has an app called Photo Station that'll create albums etc. for your photos, and optionally share them online. There's also Monument, a new hardware solution currently on Kickstarter.
posted by snarfois at 8:39 AM on February 23, 2016

Hopefully not a thread derail but why is everyone so down on smugmug? I'm quite happy with it and I (perhaps naively) assume that because they have so many paying subs they are financially stable?
posted by H. Roark at 9:03 AM on February 23, 2016

Suggestions - so far - from this thread and the previous one are:

Hosting pictures
- 500px
- Dropbox
- Google photos - n.b. Picasa is being shuttered
- Monument
- ipernity
- Photobucket
- PhotoStation
- SmugMug
- Tumblr

Other possible options recommended in other AskMe threads such as this one. Have not examined these much, but have not included ones which have been shuttered. Some of these look teccie:

- Amazon Prime
- arcivr
- box
- Coppermine
- Fotki
- PhotoShelter
- Picturelife
- Pixieset
- Snapfish
- Piwigo
- zenfolio

Moving pictures from Flickr
- Bulkr
- FlickrEdit
- FlickrTouchr (old, script)
- IFTTT
- Zapier

Overall, SmugMug and Photobucket seem to get the most recommendations.
posted by Wordshore at 12:55 PM on February 23, 2016

IFTTT will not help you get existing pictures out of Flickr, though. It seems like it should, but their triggers only work on new photos and not existing ones.
posted by soelo at 7:48 AM on February 24, 2016