Instagram’s new terms and conditions have prompted more than a few people to start looking at alternative photo sharing services; it’s fairly safe to say. If you’re heading away from Instagram to pastures new, no doubt you’ll want to download and keep your photos.
There are a few ways to pack your Instagram bags, so to speak. The best method we’ve found so far is to use Instaport.me, which is a website designed specifically for exporting your entire account into a downloadable zip file – it’s as if they knew it was coming.
If you want to start downloading, visit instaport.me on a PC or Mac and log in with your Instagram credentials. You’ll be prompted to authorise the app to access your account, and once you’ve done that you have the option to download everything in a zip file. In the future the website will be adding the option to export to Facebook, RSS and Flickr, so you’ll be able to switch photo sharing services in seconds.
An advanced option allows you to select whether you want all photos downloaded, a range of the last photos you took, photos taken between a certain date range, or even photos taken with a certain hash tag.
A straightforward click of the Start Export button will download the file, although you’ll need to be patient while the service collects all the data from your Instagram account, and at the moment this can take a while because of the number of people using the service.
At the moment the site is running quite slowly and you may encounter a crash during the export process – a restart of the export usually does the trick.
Alternatively you can create an account with Recollect which allows you to archive content from Flickr, Instagram, Twitter and Foursquare. This method will download all uploads, comments and likes in a zip file. The service is usually charged on a monthly basis but for now you can get a free month, do your export and then cancel. Check it out if you’re looking for something more extensive – Recollect.com.