Given the Filename, Finding the Flickr Photo, photo.gne

Given a link like http://farm1.static.flickr.com/22/39727523_af63f401a8.jpg, you can get to the photo on Flickr at
http://flickr.com/photo.gne?id=39727523 .

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/22/39727523_af63f401a8.jpg http://flickr.com/photo.gne?id=39727523
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/22/[id]_[salt].jpg http://flickr.com/photo.gne?id=[id]  

Ment's Face On The Floor

I regularly find myself viewing a photo either hosted on Flickr or with that tell tale file name and no link to the photo. Unfortunately, sometimes without the photographer’s permission. A comment on the photo’s page in Flickr always seems appreciated.

It seems the salt, randomizing the file name, was added some time ago to discourage copyright infringements (image security). Specifically given a file name of a small version of an image, there is no way to guess as to the web address of the larger version.

Updated Aug. 24 changing photo_zoom.gne to photo.gne based on tip from Thomas Stache!

Updated Nov. 9th Came across Photo Source URLs which describes the construction of the file names in detail.

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This entry was written by Lloyd, posted on August 1, 2007 at 10:11 am, filed under Consuming, Web and tagged , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

5 Comments

  1. adam
    Posted August 1, 2007 at 11:41 am | Permalink

    clever! i’ve been looking for a way to do this for a while, either to find the source of a photo, or to see something a little closer.

  2. Mark Jaquith
    Posted August 2, 2007 at 4:30 pm | Permalink

    One other reason for the salt is privacy. Say I post a photo for “Friends” only. If I post the URL for that photo page publicly, without the salt someone could engineer the photo URLs for that photo. Photos aren’t protected by cookie/auth, so they’d get to see photos they weren’t supposed to see. So really, it’s acting as a cheap authentication method.

  3. Xsoft of pocitac.com
    Posted August 6, 2007 at 2:43 am | Permalink

    Its same (familiar) with YouTube and preview images. There is 1,2,3 image (2nd is used) but if you onetimes know that hash_id (from videolink), then you can explore a bit more.

  4. Alopeica Areta of cure-for.info
    Posted August 17, 2007 at 11:20 pm | Permalink

    Sometimes I feel it’s unsafe to put up photos on the net. There are high chances that some unworthy people may modify it to meet their demand.

  5. Thomas Stache
    Posted August 24, 2007 at 1:09 pm | Permalink

    It’s even easier:
    use http://www.flickr.com/photo.gne?id=39727523
    to go directly to the photo page. Saves one click ;-)

    via http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/41252/#reply218608

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