How to save a photo from Flickr — July 25, 2007 (3 Comments)

Tags: Flickr, how-to, Internet, photo, WWW

Flickr is my favorite photo sharing service. I always start from Flickr search whenever I want an insight to a real-world scenario. The irony is that sometimes the most interesting photos seem to have missing the All Sizes button. As a result the photo cannot be downloaded even if it’s declared public. Flickr hides the source URL of the image by using a decoy ‘space ball’! This post explains how you can overcome this issue with a simple trick.

The prerequisite is Firefox. No need to install any fancy third-party plug-ins although there are many to automate this task. We’ll be using a great feature already built into Firefox called ‘View Selection Source’.

1. Go to the Flickr page that has the photo you want. Usually it’s http://flickr.com/photos/<user>/<photoid>/
   (Ex: http://flickr.com/photos/enteelk/629074618/)
   
2. Select the photo by clicking just out the left-side of the image and dragging your mouse to the right-side of the image and releasing.
   
   Notice how the photo is now selected with the selection color overlay.
3. Now right-click on the selection and select View Selection Source.
   
4. A window with the title ‘Dom Source of Selection‘ will pop up with the selection source code.
   
5. Select the source attribute text (img src="<text>") of the image tag without the ?v=0 portion which is the path to the photo.
   (Ex: http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1405/629074618_20f6542a03.jpg)
6. Copy and paste the text on the address field and press enter. Select Save As from the File menu or right-click on the picture to save it.
   
7. Done!

Please note that even if a photo is made public, you have to obtain license for commercial use. This post is about making your life easier and not about stealing other people’s intellectual property.