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FlickrToPlus.com Screenshot

FlickrToPlus.com – Flickr to Google Plus Migration Tool

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On January 1, 2013

In Google, Internet, software

FlickrToPlus.com Screenshot

FlickrToPlus.com Screenshot

I have been using Google Plus a lot more lately, and now feel that the social layer (permissions and annotations) adds substantially to the photo experience. I know this is not a new revelation, but as a long time Flickr Pro customer I felt that the options of “Friends” or “Family” visibility, when I don’t really have either on Flickr, were not enough. Therefore over the 2012 Christmas holiday break I decided to work on a new web tool, FlickrToPlus.com.

There are two really annoying things about doing this migration for me:

  1. Losing metadata – especially titles and geo data
  2. Downloading/Uploading every file

This tool solves both these problems with the help of the Flickr and Picasa API’s. In fact my server doesn’t even see the photo files, you can pass a Flickr original image URL directly to the Picasa API. This means the service is fast and reliable. All you need to do is log in with both Flickr and Picasa, and then check the box against the set you would like to migrate. The site will then provide a progress update on the migration status. Google Plus albums and Picasa albums are currently pretty much the same thing, so these migrated albums are available straight away in the Google Plus interface for sharing with your friends.

Please give it a try and let me know what you think!

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89 Comments

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  1. Gina

    It worked like a charm. Google+ has a nicer interface and I have room for tons more pictures. Thanks!!

  2. John

    It created albums in Picasa but didn’t import any photos yet. I have a lot of sets! It ran all night but nothing yet.

    Also, Picasa accepts videos now. Why videos transfer now?

    • Scott Savage

      Hi John,
      I am improving some of the error handling code at the moment, so I had to stop and start things a bit and that slowed the migration down. You might see some weird things over the next 24-48 hours, but everything will migrate normally eventually. Sorry for the delay!
      Scott

  3. John

    It is working now, Scott. Thank you! I feel better having another backup and I do like how + handles and shows photos. Now if I could just find a way to transfer videos…

  4. Brian

    This is awesome!! Thank you so much.

  5. Ryan

    Thanks Scott – this tool was a lifesaver for me. You need to drop a tipjar on your page.. I’d gladly contribute.

  7. xero bookkeeper

    I don’t know whether it’s just me or if everybody else experiencing issues with your website.
    It appears like some of the text in your posts are running off the screen.
    Can somebody else please comment and let me know if this is happening to them too?
    This may be a problem with my internet browser because I’ve had this happen before. Appreciate it

  8. Tim

    Ran across this today, WHAT A LIFE SAVER!

    Question though. Is this a one time move? Meaning if I come back and migrate again, will it delete and reupload? I ask cause I cannot get back to the main page to migrate again. I assume if I clear cache it will.

    Thanks

    • Scott Savage

      It’s tied to your Flickr account, so it will remember which albums you have migrated and which you haven’t. It will never delete anything.

      You should be able to get back to the main page to check though. What happens when you try?

  9. Anthos

    Thanks mate; this is such a life saver. sure one day google might buy you out !

    • anthos

      The flickrtoplus reports all files are copied they all don’t appear in plus due to shortage of space. I have bought more space in plus but I am unable to reset and repeat the flickrtoplus transfer. I tried by deleting one copied set in plus; still no luck. please help.

  10. Jonathan

    Interesting looking tool. I have the same question as Tim from 18-4-2013.

    Is this a one-time use? Could I come back and migrate again (say to bring over some files at original size and some at ‘large’ size?

  11. Tim

    Thank you so much!! I also wanted to leave Flickr for Google+ and this worked perfectly.

  12. Ross Graham

    Hiya! Worked like a charm!!!

    I want to migrate the photos from Flickr to ANOTHER Google+ account tho. Possible? Right now when I log BACK into Flickr-to-Plus and sign into the same Flickr account but a different Google+ account it looks like I can’t select anything to migrate over to the new account.

    Is this something I can pull off?

  13. Gordon

    Your transfer tool worked without any problems whatsoever. I would certainly recommend it to anyone thinking about making the switch to Google +. I especially appreciated the straightforward procedure and format. Thanks!!!

  14. Adam

    Did nto work for me. I get the error below:

    Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/flickrtoplus/flickrtoplus.com/build_albums.php on line 43

    Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/flickrtoplus/flickrtoplus.com/build_albums.php:43) in /home/flickrtoplus/flickrtoplus.com/build_albums.php on line 68

  15. Hudson

    Is this still working? I activated a transfer a few hours ago and selected all my albums. Now it just shows me ‘Processing’ on every single one, all the albums have been created in Google+, but no photos have been transferred yet. I sure hope this works because I’ve been looking to do this for a while now and your solution seems pretty neat!

  16. Sun-E

    Hi,
    nice thing, but the transfer itself need horrible time. An album with 7 pictures is 2 days in process… 🙁

    • Scott Savage

      Sorry things are a little slow at the moment because the service has become a little too popular! It is processing as quickly as it can. The service has moved 750k+ images since launching in Jan!

  17. Mike Ellis

    Hi Scott

    I set the system running about a week ago and it seems to have stalled. I wondered if you could help?

    thanks in advance!

    Mike

  18. beglen

    Amazing. Totally amazing. You FINALLY enabled me to make the switch (for similar reasons to those you state). Byt, bye Flickr!

  19. Eugene Blackman

    Thank you so much for providing this tool.

    Since Yahoo in it’s infinite wisdom decided to turn Flickr in Tumblr I have been incandescent with rage.

    Thanks to you I’m able to rid myself of Flickr and delete my account. Hopefully the migrate doesn’t take a month. I have over 1K images (thankfully all in sets).

    I have a feeling Flickr to Plus is going to get very popular. I’ll certainly plug it.

  20. Martijn

    After the Google IO changes and Flickr’s “refresh”, I guess the queue has been growing a lot lately. Do you have any estimates on how long migration is going to take for everyone/anyone?

  21. Scott Savage

    Yes, the site is still getting slammed post IO and Flickr changes. Currently migrations are taking 4 days or so sorry, but I will work to speed things up over the next few days.
    Scott

  22. Dave Sweeney

    I have been trying for 2 weeks. Step 3 – Select Flickr albums to migrate – says processing. It does not allow me to click on anything.

    Should I abort? Doesn’t seem to be working.

    Thanks,
    Dave

  23. Scott Savage

    I have optimised the upload process, it should be ~6x faster now. Hopefully will get through the backlog in 2 days or so.

    Thanks,
    Scott

    • Martijn

      I don’t think it’s working 🙁

      My photos have been “processing” for over a week now, and I can’t cancel, retry, or anything else (except add more sets to the “Processing..” list)

      • Sun-E

        @Martijn, my processed finished now, flickrtogoogleplus tells me all completed, but the albumns not in G+!? And whats your status?

        Bye,
        Sun-E

  24. Scott Savage

    The site has processed 1 million photos now, but still has a queue of 350k! Some albums were mistakenly marked as completed, even though photos were yet to transfer due to a bug. They are still transferring though! If you want a status update on your albums then please use the contact section of my blog and provide the flickr set id.
    Thanks and sorry for the delays,
    Scott

  25. Peter B

    Works pretty well, but it looks like it stripped most of the metadata when it copied over to Google+, and my photos now all show dates of 1970. Any way to keep all the original metadata?

  26. Gipsyspirit

    Hi there – great tool, though I need to re-migrate two of my Flickr sets to Picasa as I added a couple more photos to them from the Photostream AFTER doing the first migration. But I don’t seem to be able to check the boxes of these two sets now the migration’s done. Any ideas?

  27. Sun-E

    How long you waited for the migration? After 2-3 weeks no more photos updated yet. In the backend the status is still finished… :-/

  28. Michal B

    Hi Scott,

    Just migrated 165 photos in less than 10 minutes. The interface is looking great. I got some confusing messages about headers already send and I was unable to check albums to transfer on the last screen but it did the job. Great work and many thanks for saving my time!

    Michal

  29. Sun-E

    Interesting Michael,
    then several album of myself are broken. I waited several weeks, but no more migrated yet. All album checked as completed, but not all complete. And its not possible to check them again… :-/

    • KZeni

      My albums, too, are marked as complete. I’ve had one album appear in G+ but the title of the album & photos were set to “1/f_7I70[…]” (it’s rather lengthy). I figured it was temporary & part of the process, but it hasn’t seen an update since (this being weeks ago). Meanwhile none of the other albums/photos have appeared.

      Now I’m curious of the state of my transfer seeing Michal’s having gone smoothly, and wondering if a restart is possible and/or if it’s needed.

      • Sun-E

        I guess its broken. Nothing happend anymore since the transfer of few album. And we cant restart it. So stupid… :-/

  30. Martin

    Working great, sadly i also missed the image size to original but i selected 30 sets . . . i guess ill have to wait for it to finsh and then delete them all from G+ and try again.

    Can the processing ones be stopped?

    Thanks

  31. chris

    We just used your tool and it worked perfectly. Now we need to copy our Flickr photos to our Google+ company page. Any tips on how to do that? We can download albums from the personal page and then upload them to the company page so we do have a process, however it would be easier if we could go direct from Flickr.

  32. Dhan

    This has saved me a million hrs. Thank you kind sir. You are a gentleman and a scholar.

  33. susan dennis

    I found this fabulous tool yesterday. Less than 24 hours later, more than 90% of my 6,500 photos are now nicely nestled in their new home on Google+. Thank you so very much for this great service.

  34. Joakim Johansson

    Just wanted to say what an awesome tool this. Now in 2014 I guess maybe the load has dropped a bit, just 20 minutes in and 500 pictures have been successfully migrated.

    Now if only I could g+ the page 😉

    Thanks for making this possible!

  35. Otto

    After more then a week it’s still processing my photo’s. Is this normal?

  36. Susan

    Worked great, looks like they all made it over during the night, thanks so much!

  37. Mischa

    Thank you for Flickr to Google+. I was able to migrate 9 years of photos seamlessly. It looks like it stopped working recently though. looks like the flickr authentication is failing.

  38. Rachel

    Changed everything to Google+ and found your app to migrate my Flickr pics to Google Photos. Apparently 8500 or so pics made it before my 8yr closed the browser and now the VERY last album containing 473 pics hasn’t migrated after about 3 days of “processing.” Something has gone wrong but I don’t know how to fix since it won’t let me restart the migrate process. Keep in mind the 8500 migrated in like under 2 days so I don’t think it just needs more time.?? Ideas? The album in question is my “Cape Cod 2013” album. Thanks for your help and creating an awesome tool!

  39. Markos Giannopoulos

    Hello, thank you for this service! I tried to sync an album with 35 photos, the page says it is completed but no photos have appeared (https://picasaweb.google.com/109098983561044225374/GManProject) Any ideas?

  40. roger

    Hi Scott,
    Thanks so much for offering this app. What’s the current status of the migration? I transferred a bunch of albums about 2 weeks ago and they’re still queued. No rush, but just want to confirm it’s still working.
    Thanks again,
    Roger

  41. Colin

    Hi Scott,

    I’ve been using you amazing tool for a long time. It’s really helpful. I love it very much. Thank you!

    But recently seems it’s not working, my photos have been in the queue for several weeks.

    May I know if you will continue to make it work? Thank you!

  42. Avigdor

    I have a problem, I’m attache to Picasa, but the still ask me to login to it.
    When I press the link, it goes to a site that says that it is no longer doing this service, following the link does not return to the transfer application. so I’m stuck.
    How can I start the transfer?

  43. Avigdor

    Further info: when trying to login to picasa, I get transfer to https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6206267?p=authsub&rd=1
    which has the message:
    “If you’ve been redirected to this page, it means that you’re using an a website that uses AuthSub to ask your permission to access data in your Google Account. AuthSub is replaced by OAuth 2.0, and we no longer provide this service for Google accounts.”
    Trying the link to https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/OAuth2
    I get login, but there is no way to return to the transfer application, which still asks to login to picasa.
    Help is needed, please.

  44. avigdor

    Hi Scott,
    I wrote somewhere, but I don’t see my question so I repeat.
    I can’t start the tool. I login to flickr, but when I try to login in to picasa, the is a page that says that it’s not doing the service anymore. and it transfer me to some other page but I can’t return to the tool page.
    What do I do.
    Thanks for answering, prefer to my direct mail.
    Avigdor

  45. Jan

    It’s not working anymore due to googles updated API. Can you plrase fix it?

  46. Mike

    I tried using the tool today and it appears that Google has replaced the AuthSub tool with OAuth 2.0. Therefore the exising conversion tool not longer works. The have a note to developers on https://support.google.com/a/answer/6217830?p=authsub&rd=1 Any possibility of updating your tool? I would really like to find a way to transfer my photos to Google.

  47. Scott H

    With the recent changes to Google Photos, I was curious if you planned to update flickrtoplus to use Google’s new OAuth 2.0 system? If not, would you consider releasing the source code? I’d love to move my photos from flickr to Google now that Google is offering unlimited storage for Photos.

  48. Michael Babcock

    Unfortunately the flickrtoplus site no longer works because of Google+ abandoning the authentication system you’re using; https://support.google.com/a/answer/6217830?p=authsub&rd=1

  49. Ralph Averbuch

    Your tool has stopped working since Google changed the way they authenticate 3rd party connections. Do you have any plans to resolve this?

    Cheers

    Ralph

      • Leonard

        Hello,
        I started using the migrate tool a few days ago. It worked fine at first but now has crashed and it will not let me check any boxes and photos have stopped migrating.Can you give me any help in resolving this?
        Thanks

  50. Shahar

    Great tool – thank you! Unfortunately seems to have crashed, any chance you can look into this? Error dump:

    “Fatal error: Uncaught exception ‘Google_Auth_Exception’ with message ‘Error refreshing the OAuth2 token, message: ‘{ “error” : “invalid_request”, “error_description” : “Missing required parameter: refresh_token” }” in /home/flickrtoplus/flickrtoplus.com/Google/Auth/OAuth2.php:363 Stack trace: #0 /home/flickrtoplus/flickrtoplus.com/Google/Auth/OAuth2.php(278): Google_Auth_OAuth2->refreshTokenRequest(Array) #1 /home/flickrtoplus/flickrtoplus.com/Google/Client.php(457): Google_Auth_OAuth2->refreshToken(NULL) #2 /home/flickrtoplus/flickrtoplus.com/Picasa.php(2004): Google_Client->refreshToken(NULL) #3 /home/flickrtoplus/flickrtoplus.com/Picasa.php(1697): Picasa->maybeRefreshToken() #4 /home/flickrtoplus/flickrtoplus.com/Picasa.php(1562): Picasa->getAuthHeader() #5 /home/flickrtoplus/flickrtoplus.com/Picasa.php(1995): Picasa->constructContextArray(true) #6 /home/flickrtoplus/flickrtoplus.com/index.php(34): Picasa->setOAuthInfo(‘{“access_token”…’) #7 {main} thrown in /home/flickrtoplus/flickrtoplus.com/Google/Auth/OAuth2.php on line 363”

  51. John

    Hi Scott,

    It’s down with an error message of:
    Fatal error: Call to a member function query() on a non-object in /home/flickrtoplus/flickrtoplus.com/Picasa.php on line 2007

  52. H

    GUI is stating the tasks have completed. But when I look I have empty folders, can you help?

  53. Leonard

    HI Scott,
    Still waiting for a reply.

  54. Hok

    Hi Scott,

    Thanks for creating this tool. I started the migration and no photos have been transferred in the last hour. How long does it usually take?

    Can you confirm that the service is currently active?

    Thanks,

    Hok

  55. Leonard

    And still waiting,waiting,waiting .

  56. Christoph

    Scott, is the tool still working? I set up a transfer of three small albums more than two weeks ago. It created the album, but hasn’t transferred any pictures.

    Hope it is still working!

    Cheers,
    Christoph

  57. Martin

    Says it transferred the pics. Albums are present in Google but without photos.

  58. David Sidwell

    Hi. Thanks for this migration tool. Is it currently working? I kicked it off a few days ago and only empty albums were created on the G end.

  59. Helen

    Hi Scott, this looks like an awesome tool but I’m not sure it’s working at the moment – all the transfers are listed as ‘queued’ and all the picasa/plus albums are empty. Have google changed the api and broken it again? Will you be fixing it?
    Cheers
    Helen

    • Helen

      Scrap that, I turned off the quid-protocol stuff in chrome and they’re all now saying processing and there appears to be movement – guess it was a problem at my end.
      Cheers
      Helen

  60. Richie

    Hi Scott,

    Fun to see how this website you made back in 2013, still has lots of users and fans :).

    I have a question about it, I’ve started a migration and the site says its completed, but the folders on google photos are empty. Is this the usual way of working and will it fill up later? Or did something go wrong?

    Regards,

    Richie

  61. Trevor

    Hi Scott, is this toll still functional? It created albums and says processing but no photos have actually moved over.

  62. Andy Bennett

    Hey Scott,
    Thanks for developing this. All of my albums went over, but no pictures. Everything on Flickr to Plus just says Queued. Does that mean it is working or I need to do something differently?

    Thanks for your help regardless!

    Andy

  63. Harry

    Hello! It seems the tool is stuck again. I let it run for a very long time and it seems everything changed to “processing” but nothing seems to change. I have many blank folders and no photos are migrating.
    Is there anything I can do? Thanks for your help! If this works for me it would be great! I know I am coming a bit later than all the others.

    ~Harry

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