URL Hack: View and save original photos on Flickr

Contributed by jasperthedummy  
Tagged: Internet  

Have you ever been frustrated of wanting to save a really nice photo on Flickr, but when you try to save it, what you got was “spacer.gif”, a picture nothing more than, yea, nothing.

This recipe not only allows you to save the resized image you see on that Flickr page, but we can also hack the URL to see the Medium, Large, and even Original photos on Flickr, and even saving them!

This isn’t really a long manual, all you need to do in this hack is to find the URL, change the URL, and paste the URL. It’s that simple!

Firstly, of course you will need to choose a photo you want to save.

Once you are at the photo’s unique Flickr page, view the html source of the Flickr page.

On the html source page, search for “photoImgDiv“, which is a text found unique within the region where you can find the photo URL. Once you are at the region where “photoImgDiv” can be located, it’s pretty easy.

Search for a similiar URL, example: “http://static.flickr.com/27/88869304_sdg72h322.jpg?v=0“. The URL should be located at the middle region of that chunk of code.

You may notice the additonal “?v=0″ at the back of the code. Remove it.

Your URL should look like this: “http://static.flickr.com/27/88869304_sdg72h322.jpg”.

(Note: There is a easier way to search for this URL in Firefox. Just right click anywhere on the screen and select “View Page Info“. Go to the “Media” tab and find the link for the photo in the list. Take some time, but gets easier once you are accustomed to the URL format.)

Everything just gets easier. For example if you wanted the Original photo, just add “_o” before the file extension (example: “.jpg”), and paste this into the address bar. The original picture should load for this URL: “http://static.flickr.com/27/88869304_sdg72h322_o.jpg”.

If you wanted other sizes, no problem. Below is the list of strings to append before the file extension:

Square: “_s”
Thumbnail: “_t”
Small: “_m”
Medium: The original file name without any appended text is the middle size.
Large: “_l”
Original: “_o”

Enjoy Flickr!

(Note: There had been concerns withgarding the illegal use of copyrighted photographs or pictures posted on Flickr. Many Flickr users have reported seeing their copyrighted photographs appearing on public forums, external non-affilated web sites. This recipe only serve as a purpose for downloading uncopyrighted materials only. If you are going to download the copyrighted original photographs/pictures, please seek the permission of the copyrighter.)