Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Transfer High Quality Pictures from Kodak to Picasa

In this post, I'll let you know on how to automate the transfer of your photos (in original quality) from Kodak to Picasa.




Lately each of us would have heard that Kodak has changed its policies and has mandated to make atleast a minimum purchase every year so that they would maintain your photos in their system. Some of us (including me) would have thought, why should not I move my photos from
Kodak to Picasa (which is free as of now). Yes, you could do that in an semi-automated way, by following the steps below. I thought of fully automating it, but the global meltdown has showered a few other important problems on me, which I have to work0ut now!

Okay. Let us get our hand's dirty now. You would need the following, which are all available for free and if you are computer enthusiast you might already have it!

Items needed:

1. Firefox 3.0 or above (http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/)
2. iMacros for firefox (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3863, Click "Install now" and then select the add-on from the dialog box and click "Install now" button. Restart firefox, once.)


Basic Strategy

1. Get all the photos in a album from Kodak to a directory in your local computer, using macro
2. Upload all the photos to Picasa
3. Repeat the above steps for all your albums


Setup steps

Note: If these steps do not work. Then follow the steps that is mentioned in the youtube video below.




1. Create a file as detailed below (Note: My earlier approach of choosing file based on resolution won't work, as there is another factor [zoom], which could change the cartesian co-ordinates under consideration!. If you don't understand the note, just ignore it, it is written for the sake of the people who post the valuable comments, which made me rethink the whole approach. Thanks anonymous commentors. :-) )

Save the snippet 1 below as "C:\FromKodak\macro1.txt" using notepad.

Snippet 1:
VERSION BUILD=6210326 RECORDER=FX
TAB T=1
ONDOWNLOAD FOLDER=* FILE=+_{{!NOW:yyyymmdd_hhnnss}} WAIT=YES
CLICK X=[##Number1##] Y=[##Number2##] CONTENT=EVENT:SAVETARGETAS
CLICK X=[##Number3##] Y=[##Number4##]

[##Number##] will be substituted with numbers based on the steps mentioned below.
a. Click "Click Mode" button in the "Rec" , select "Use X/Y position" radio button and click "Ok"
b. Open a new firefox window and visit "http://www.kodakgallery.com/"
c. Enter your E-mail address/mobile number and click "Sign-in"
d. Click "My Photos"
e. Select the album from which you need to download all pictures. You will see picture list in the album
f. Click on the first picture in the picture list
g. Goto "Rec" tab and click "Record. Now we are in the recording mode.
h. Click on "Download high-resolution " link
i. Click on the "next" navigation button
j. Click "Stop" button in the "Rec" tab of iMacros frame
j. Goto "Edit" tab and click "Edit Macro" button. You would see something like this in new iMacros editor window (Say MacroEditWindow).
...
CLICK X=704 Y=569
...
CLICK X=987 Y=159




Now substitute the above four numbers in "c:\FromKodak\macro1.txt". You would get

Snippet 2:

VERSION BUILD=6210326 RECORDER=FX

TAB T=1

ONDOWNLOAD FOLDER=* FILE=+_{{!NOW:yyyymmdd_hhnnss}} WAIT=YES

CLICK X=704 Y=569 CONTENT=EVENT:SAVETARGETAS

CLICK X=987 Y=159

2. Substitute the existing macro in "MacroEditWindow", with content of "Snippet 2".

3. Click "Save & Close"

Now we have created a macro which now can download pictures in an album automatically. Now with just one click you could download all pictures in an album. So if you have 5 albums and each album has 200 pictures (totally 1000 pictures), you just click 5 times, viola your pictures will be in your local drive/disk. Look into steps below for running the macro once for each of the albums.

Look into YouTube video below for more clarity.



Download all pictures in an album to your Computer in three easy steps

1. From logged in KodakGallery.com site opened in Firefox browser, click on the album you wish to download from the album list (How do I do this)

a. Open a new firefox window.

b. Visit "http://www.kodakgallery.com/"

c. Click SignIn

d. Enter your E-mail address/mobile number and password and click "Sign-in"

2. Click on the first picture in the picture list of the album you are interested in.
3. Enter the number of photos you are yet to download in the "Max" textbox and click "Play (Loop)" button.

Where are my saved photos?

1. Click "Options" button in "Edit" tab

2. Click "Paths" tab in the "Options dialog

3. Look into "Folder Downloads" textbox value. That is the folder where-in you have all your files.

Tip: After everytime the macro is run, create a new folder and move all the harvested photos into the new folder. This way you could keep your photos organized by folders. Without doing this, all your album photos will be in a single folder and it might be a headache later to sort them out.

Now that you have got all the files in your local drive/disk, you could move it to Picasa as usual.

Lesson learnt:

The lesson learnt from KodakGallery policy change is that, use online services just to share media files and information. Things that are closer to your heart, should be closer to you. I mean, have back-ups on optical disks and you will not be worried, about the policy changes.

Any issues or do you want to share something? - post as comment
Feel free to reach me,
if things does not work, or you would like to know how to do write the macro and retrieve the photos from KodakGallery yourself, post your requests through comments.





20 comments:

  1. I'm confused on step 1 "Create the following file, based on your resolution..."

    i'm not sure how to create a file with that extension. newbie here. downloaded and installed frefox and the imacros fine. where do you create this file and where do you save it? thanks for the help. much appreciated

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi,

    I've used the macro for 1024 x 768 resolution.It's giving me an error at line 5. Can you pls gimme a solution to this?

    ReplyDelete
  3. A couple of things I have found helpful. If you load the FF plug in to turn off images, the pages load quicker and the script only has to be edited in one place depending on the length of the album title and if you used comments. Also, not referencing the XY coordinates for the "Next" button worked more reliably for me.

    http://buzz.yahoo.com/article/1:8e3e2fed309a0b47bd276bf93f378e67:81a443c7e47f91e5847851183cec1f66/Use-this-macro-with-Firefox-plug-in-iMacro-to-download-your-photos-from-Kodak.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This is great, but it doesn't have to be so complicated.
    This method catches all image sizes, isn't XY dependent, and you only need to paste the code in one time.
    go to your kodak account, click on the folder you want, and then on the first image.
    go to the edit macro (as above), and paste this in (new lines equal a return, as I can't paste long lines in, AND replace in the following code all [ with < and ] with >):

    VERSION BUILD=6210326 RECORDER=FX

    TAB T=1

    TAG POS=1 TYPE=A ATTR=TXT:Download[SP]high-resolution[SP]image[SP](*)[SP]

    ONDOWNLOAD FOLDER=* FILE=+_{{!NOW:yyyymmdd_hhnnss}} WAIT=YES

    TAG POS=1 TYPE=IMG ATTR=SRC:http://www.kodakgallery.com/images/quepos/buttons/button_right.gif


    then do the run, loop thing, and you're good!!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks Dave--

    Your solution is much more elegant than any other I've found.

    peter

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hey David!

    Your solution works perfectly! Thanks.. today was the last day to download my pics. it's all safe now.

    Cheers!
    -Esha

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hi there, thanks for this very helpful post! I now have a way to get the photos before they are deleted.

    I have a request if you're up for it. I'd like to also copy the photo tags (comments) as well but I don't have enough programming knowledge to do so. Would you create a macro to do that too? If I go to View-->Page Source, all the info I'd want are all there, like which album, which photo (i.e. 2 of 63), and of course the photo tag.

    I thought about copy and pasting for each photo but it's such a monumental task since I have so many photos online. My photos will be deleted on after 5/28. Thanks for any help!

    -kixx

    ReplyDelete
  8. It took time but figured out a way to do what I asked in the previous post. In addition saving the photos, the macro will extract album name, photo number(i.e., 1 of 25), and photo caption and save them in a csv file.

    Here's the macro:

    Note: Replace in the following code all [ with < and ] with >):
    Note: The EXTRACT FOLDER path should be your own path.

    VERSION BUILD=6210326 RECORDER=FX
    TAB T=1
    SET !EXTRACT_TEST_POPUP NO
    TAG POS=1 TYPE=H1 ATTR=TXT:*&&ID:photoTitle EXTRACT=TXT
    SET !EXTRACT_TEST_POPUP NO
    TAG POS=1 TYPE=SPAN ATTR=CLASS:no-wrap&&TXT:* EXTRACT=TXT
    SET !EXTRACT_TEST_POPUP NO
    TAG POS=1 TYPE=SPAN ATTR=ID:photoCaption EXTRACT=TXT
    SAVEAS TYPE=EXTRACT FOLDER=E:\FROMKODAK FILE=myextract.csv
    TAG POS=1 TYPE=A ATTR=TXT:Download[SP]high-resolution[SP]image[SP](*)[SP]
    ONDOWNLOAD FOLDER=E:\FROMKODAK FILE=+_{{!NOW:yyyymmdd_hhnnss}} WAIT=YES
    TAG POS=1 TYPE=IMG ATTR=SRC:http://www.kodakgallery.com/images/quepos/buttons/button_right.gif

    ReplyDelete
  9. Hi kingsley, you video is very useful, but how can i download the photos from kodakgallery .co.uk?? because as there is no download high resolution link beneath after selecting the photo in the album in kodakgallery.co.uk while recording. can u please provide solution to this??

    ReplyDelete
  10. An alternative if you don't mind paying $5 is:

    http://backupgallery.com

    It downloads your albums and your friends albums.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Having a heck of a time getting this to work with the newly redesigned kodakgallery.com. This is a really great thing you've published for folks, so hate to even ask for more, but do you think you could offer a tip or two?

    When I play the loop on the new redesign, the page just sorta "bumps", like a blip up and down, without downloading the image or going to the next one. Guessing it must have something to do with the ajaxy pop-up the new site uses. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  12. anybody figure out why it cannot work now?

    ReplyDelete
  13. Hi All,
    When I recorded the first photo of album,In Edit Macro I am getting below macro:
    VERSION BUILD=6600217 RECORDER=FX
    TAB T=1
    URL GOTO=http://www.kodakgallery.com/gallery/creativeapps/photoPicker/albums.jsp
    CLICK X=873 Y=47

    There is only one X and Y coordinate.I replaced this with macro1.txt as suggested.But it is not working.

    Please provide solution for this.

    ReplyDelete
  14. HI
    There is no download in high resolution link now at kodak gallery, and they have suspended giving out premier accounts upgrades at this point. All I get by downloading my images is a jpg file with 96dpi resolution.
    Any other solution will be very welcome.
    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  15. just follow the steps and see examples of the Kodak gallery and this gives us a very good result we can work photos

    ReplyDelete
  16. Hi, I am not to good with computers. what is:
    Save the snippet 1 below as "C:\FromKodak\macro1.txt" using notepad
    how do i do it? I have mor than 2.2 GB of pics (5 years) I don´t want to loose them.
    please help
    thanks
    (alexm_m_b@hotmial.com)

    ReplyDelete
  17. You need to save that as a file named "macro1.txt". Open notepad, copy-paste the content and save the file with the filename "macro1.txt". :-)

    ReplyDelete
  18. I did all the steps but not sure where the pictures were saved after the download.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Thank you for these useful instructions!

    ReplyDelete