Deliberate.Serendipity

I’ve just come across an interesting “feature” of the iPhoto ‘09 Flickr integration.

As background, when you upload photos from iPhoto ‘09 to Flickr, the photos are put into a new set on Flickr, and that set is then set to sync with iPhoto. Any changes to the photos in that set are reflected in your iPhoto library.

I wondered what would happen if I removed a photo from the set on Flickr (but not on iPhoto), hoping that it wouldn’t delete the photo from iPhoto (as that is what happens if you change your mind and delete the photo on Flickr… the photo is deleted in iPhoto as well).

It seems that if the photo is removed from the set on Flickr, all ties to the ‘flickr album’ on iPhoto are broken, and any title/desc/tag changes on Flickr do not get synced back to iPhoto. The photo is removed from the Flickr album but is not deleted from the Library.

However, if you then add the photo back into the Flickr set, a brand new original-sized copy is downloaded and imported into your iPhoto library (so now you’ll have 2 copies of the same photo). I thought, ooh, I don’t know if I like that… but, it dawned on me that this could be a good feature if you are trying to backup a lot of your flickr photos and their metadata.

showing "pending" backups into Library from Flickr set

Simply upload one photo from iphoto to flickr to create a new ’synced’ set. Then, using the Organizr, add the photos you want to backup into that set. Go back to iPhoto and sync that Flickr album and it will go out and grab the largest file on Flickr, including all tags/titles/descriptions, and import them into iPhoto.

The filenames will be the same as the photo original on flickr, eg., 176709303_026f53b3c0_o.jpg.

If you leave the photos in that synced set, any further changes on Flickr (ie, new tags etc) will be synced to the copy in iPhoto. Or you can simply copy those new files to another drive or backup disk, remove them from the set on Flickr, and delete them from your iPhoto library.

Voila! A quick backup of your photos, including their titles/tags/descriptions from Flickr.

Disclaimer. This worked for me but you might want to test it yourself.