Backing Up Photos to Flickr with a Python Script

2014-08-09-flickr.md

In trying to find a tool that would allow periodic synchronization of photos with Flickr, I discovered a small script. It works with a python2 written small command line software called flickrsmartsync and works pretty well. The tool can even be automated using a cron job. In what follows the steps to make this work will be presented.

The tools

We will be using two tools:

1. flickrsmartsync and
2. cron .

Installing flickrsmartsync

You can install flickrsmartsync through the instructions (using pip):

sudo apt-get install python-pip
sudo pip install flickrsmartsync

In order to use for the first time, go to your pictures directory and run flickrsmartsync. Then login to your flickr account when prompted by the previous command.

Setting a crontab job

Now to the automation. In order to make the system perform periodical syncs, you must create a crontab entry. In my case I did:

crontab -e

then added the line:

@weekly flickrsmartsync --sync-path ~/YOUR_PICTURES_DIRECTORY/

This tool can be helpful if one wants to keep a copy of photos in Flickr in sync with local directories. It can also simply be used as a way of backup of photos instead of synchronization. The main limitation to this approach is that it is unable to upload RAW formats, as Flickr itself does not support them.