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Articles » How to save a photo from Flickr

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.

Prerequisite

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’.

Step 1

Go to the Flickr page that has the photo you want. Usually it’s in the format http://flickr.com/photos/<user>/<photoid>/
Ex: http://flickr.com/photos/enteelk/629074618/

Step 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.

Step 3

Now right-click on the selection and select View Selection Source.

Step 4

A window with the title ‘Dom Source of Selection‘ will pop up with the selection source code.

Step 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)

Step 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.

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.

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