How to download all images from your Flickr account

I’ve been a Flickr Pro user for many years in a row. Lately, I haven’t been using the site so much. I think Yahoo! has been missing the boat by not making any big improvements to their services and forgetting mobile altogether (their current Flickr app is a sorry excuse for social software). The biggest letdown however, is the lack of good tools for downloading en managing your images.

When my Pro account ends, I have no access to my fullsize images, and I want a complete download of al my content, so I can host them elsewhere. Antagonist now has unlimited storage and bandwidth for approximately 7€ a month, which is a bargain.

It took me some time to figure out a decent way to get all the images. One of my biggest requirements was, that the downloaded files had a filename equal to the title on the site (e.g. “London Eye”), and not the Flickr filename, which is not really human readable . the app promoted by Flickr itself is Downloadr, which only works in Windows, or Bulkr, which is quite good but the full version costs a hefty $30 a year.

How to download all images from your Flickr account

Here are the step for my free and successful download of all images and videos in full resolution:

1. go to Flickr.com, login and in the Menu, go to”You”–>”Organize”.
2. Create a new set, and add all of your images (or all the images you prefer to download)
3. go to Flickandshare.com, and authorize the website to access your content. You can revoke that later if you want.
4. Go through the wizard (all straightforward) and select the set you want to download.
5. A link with all the URL’s to your images is provided. Including the original image title in the link. Copy this link or note it down.
6. For the next step you’ll need Firefox. Download it here if you don’t already have it.
7. After installation, go to Addons in the menu (Crtl+Shift+A in Windows), and search for the plugin “DownthemAll“
8. Install it and restart Firefox.
9. Go to the link provided in step 5.
10. Start the plugin from the menu:
    
11. A dialog appears. To use the original Flickr titles instead of filenames, change the mask to “*flattext*.*ext*”. Use the tag label to the right of the field to select another template. In the filters section, you can select what filetypes you want to download. Don’t forget to provide a download folder
    .
12. After pressing “start”, a progress dialog appears and all your precious pictures are downloaded automatically. Presto!
    

It is a true shame that Flickr doesn’t provide any tools for bulk uploading or downloading. Especially for Pro users this is a must-have.

You might want to consider making a donation to FlickandShare or DownThemAll.