How to get around Flickr photo protection

Ever find a cool photo on Flickr, but when you went to save it you only wound up with a useless (and oddly named) spaceball.gif file in your directory?

Here's how to get around photo protection on Flickr using Firefox. (IE directions may differ slightly)

1. From the page with the protected photo click on "View", then "Page Source".
2. Do a search (ctrl-f) for "jpg". Look for a string of text similar to "farm3.static.flickr.com%2F23127%2F3fErd08_723455d5a7.jpg". This is actually telling you the location of the file on the Flickr servers.
   
3. Open up a new tab or browser window and copy that text into the URL line. Don't hit enter just yet.
   
4. You should see two occurrences of "%2F" in the text string. Replace them with a forward slash (/). The text should now look like ""farm3.static.flickr.com/23127/3fErd08_723455d5a7.jpg". Hit enter. You should now see the protected photo and be able to view it normally.

In addition, depending on how the person uploaded the photo, you may be able to view larger sizes. Try these tricks.

The "original" is usually the largest photo available. To view the original, place an "_o" after the file name and before the ".jpg". (ex. instead of 1234.jpg, try 1234_o.jpg) If that doesn't work, the next best bet is the "large" file. Try "_b" instead to view the large size (ex. instead of 1234.jpg, try 1234_b.jpg)

Sometimes the "_o" and "_b" work, sometimes they don't. Again, it depends on how the person uploaded the photo.