Protected photos in Flickr are protected by putting the transparent spaceball.gif on the photos to prevent the photos from being downloaded. It’s been done by the users not wanting to publish their private photos. Normally, in browser firefox or Internet Explorer, you can right click on the photo, and then click on “Save Image As…” to save the picture. But with following the method above, you may com across with a 1×1 pixel picture. You may either use the good-old Print Screen or any of the methods below to defeat the Flickr image protection.

1. Firefox Media Tab

For Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 users, Goto Tools -> Page Info -> Media – Scroll down until you see that Flickr image in the Media Preview Window. Click the Save As button.

2. Internet Explorer, Safari and Opera

For Internet Explorer, Safari and Opera users, just right click the Flickr web page and choose to view the HTML source code for the web page. Then within the HTML code, try to search for “spaceball.gif”. You’ll find the full location of the protected image enclosed in the <img src=”..”> tag just before the tag that encloses the spaceball image. Paste the URL onto your browser, and you will be able to see the image where you can save it by right-click it.

3. GetFlickr

GetFlickr is a tool developed by TechRoam that helps you retrieve the original size of  a protected Flickr photos easily. The page provides a text box where you have to copy and paste the photo ID of a particular Flickr photo. By entering the ID, GetFlickr will show the URL of the image’s largest version. You can then save and download the photo to your local computer.

4. Firefox AdBlock Add-on

With AdBlock Add-on installed in your Firefox browser, you can Hit CTRL + SHIFT + A to open the list of blockable items. Navigate to the entry with spaceball.gif at the end and choose to block this item by right-clicking it. This prevents that spaceball.gif is loaded so that you can save any items at Flickr by right-clicking it.

6. Opera Blocked Content Tool

Go to Tools -> Advanced -> Blocked Content, and press the Add button. Add this as the URL to block:
*flickr.com/images/spaceball.gif and http://l.yimg.com/g/images/spaceball.gif

5. Bookmarklets

Add the following bookmarklet to your browser and it should also allow you access to the Flickr protected photos.

javascript: location.href=document.evaluate('//div[@class="photoImgDiv"]/img',document, null, null, null).iterateNext().src;

6. DeFlickr

DeFlickr is a simple web page that allows you to enter the Flickr URL and it will display the protected photo that you can save to your local computer.

Disclaimer : The author does not authorize any sort of downloading photos from Flickr without the consent from the owner. If users want to protect their Flickr photos, it is advisable that they should either make them private, stop uploading them at all to any photo sharing sites where they can be downloaded.