Blog Marco

In the past I've downloaded many flickr photos. However some are protected using some smart HTML/CSS coding which covers the real image with a stretched transparent gif image file called spaceball.gif. (Other websites which utilise the same protection methods use gif file names called space.gif or clear.gif). Why would I want to download the images? So I can compile a collection of reference photos on my hard drive from which I like to refer to when seeking inspiration or ideas for future photoshoots... So how do you remove the spaceball.gif? to download protected photos from flickr?

Well there are a few ways to do this. The first is a very easy way and handy if you are only going to do it once or twice but becomes irritating if you have more than 10 or so... simply do a complete web page save (File>Save Webpage As... and choose complete). The photo will be in the folder amongst the other images on the webpage.

There is a web-based option to download the protected flickr spaceballed image is to visit deFlickr.

If you've got Firefox - you have a few more options on removing that darned image protection spaceball. The easiest option is this one:
1. Open the Flickr page that has the picture.
2. Right-click on any blank part of the page (Do not right-click on the image) and click View Page Info. This opens the Page Info box.
3. Select the Media tab. You will find all the media files here. Once you get the image, hit the 'Save As' button to save the image.

Another option is to use the Web Developer extension to download any image present on the flickr page or any webpage which has protected photos... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60 (Once installed go right click > Web Developer > Images > View Image Information)

Finally, a longer term option (the best one) would simply be this option. Install Firefox extension Adblock or Adblock plus and block this address:
*flickr.com/images/spaceball.gif

Easy!

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