FlickrDown (downloadable program)
January 26, 2008 by Paul Hamilton
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I use Flickr to store and share my photos. I also use a variety of online applications to create slide-shows and videos with my pictures. Some applications make it easy to import from Flickr. Other sites are problematic. In some cases, I’m only allowed to upload one file at a time. Sometimes, I can’t import from Flickr at all, and I must upload images from my computer. Today, I’m writing about a free utility that enables me to download sets of my pictures back to my computer.
FlickrDown is a free Windows program you can install and use to download photos from Flickr. It seems strange to me, but Flickr itself offers no such utility. Fortunately, Gregg Man has written a program that does the job nicely, and he has made it available to all free of charge.
With FlickrDown, you can conveniently download individual photos, or sets of images, from Flickr. You can even use FlickrDown to search for pictures that you wish to download by Flickr username, Flickr group, email address, or tag. The user interface for FlickrDown, shown at the bottom of this post, is straightforward and easy to use.
You must have Microsoft .NET2.0 installed on your PC in order to use FlickrDown. FlickrBackup is the download utility that has been developed for Mac users. Without access to a Mac, however, I’m unable to review FlickrBackup.
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One question though, does this allow you to filter for Creative Commons images? because if it doesn’t, then it’s possibly causing a bit of a problem in fair use of images? Can you elaborate on its good and bad points? Cheers, Judy
I think you are correct, Judy, about the potential for problems with fair use. As is always the case, however, the onus is on the user to ensure that only appropriately licensed images are downloaded and used. I can see how this tool makes it almost too easy to search for a particular tag and then simply download images without actually going into Flickr. This is an important point, so thanks for pointing it out.
For me, the great benefit of FlickrDown is that I can easily download my own photos from Flickr so that I can use them in any way I choose. I plan to use it, not only for my own digital storytelling, but also to conveniently back up sets of my pictures to a local hard drive. I already have everything in Picasa, but I want to back up to an external drive as well–after I’ve organized the images into sets on Flickr. –Paul