Downloading Instagram Photos

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Instagram offers a large number of usually unique cancan photos each day.  Some are very nice; others are just garden variety; and, if you choose a search term like "cancan", there are a lot of irrelevant ones.   The problem is in how to save the ones you would like to keep and do it efficiently.  Instagram does not support direct downloading of the photos.

You can do what I mentioned in a prior post and, one by one, do screen shots, paste into Paint, save the result and crop it.  Flatline also suggested a picture-by-picture method of getting them.

There is a more efficient way to download a large number of selected photos from Instagram with Internet Explorer, as, for example, all the relevant posts for a day or two.   (I haven't tried this with Google Chrome or other browsers.)

The following appears complicated, but, after you have done it a few times, it is easy and pretty quick.

Opening Instagram

1.  First, open Instagram with Internet Explorer and search a tag like "cancan".
2.  Keep scrolling down the page as far as you like to maximize the choices.

Clearing the deck:

3.  Click on the Internet Explorer gear icon and select Internet Options from the drop-down list.
4.  Click on Settings.
5.  Click on View Files, and you will get a window with all the temporary internet files.
6.  Click on the Type column heading to sort the files by type.
7.  Select all the jpeg files and delete them - this gives you a clean slate to work with.
8.  Close the temporary internet files folder and the dialog boxes you used to get there.

Downloading the photos:

9.  RIGHT CLICK on a desired photo on the Instagram search results page and select Open in a New Window  (leave the Instagram search results page open and don't scroll down past the point at which you initially stopped until you are through downloading).
10.  Close the  individual photos window just opened (first save it as a Favorite if desired).

Repeat the process

11.  Go to the next desired photo on the Instagram search results page and repeat steps 9-10.
12   Keep repeating until all desired photos have been opened and closed in new windows.

Getting the photos

13. Repeat steps 3-6 on the open Instagram search results page.
14. Scroll down to the jpeg files.
15. Select/highlight each jpeg that is larger than 10 megs in size and drag all of them to a new or existing folder where you wish to save them.

You now have them.

You can close the temporary files folder and the dialog boxes.  For more photos scroll down further on the Instagram search page and repeat the above process, or close the the page if you are through.

The process also works for other sites that don't always provide for direct downloading, like Flickr.