For some people, the only backup they have for their important pictures of family and friends is the fact that they have uploaded them to Facebook. Not the best backup plan, but better than nothing. However, if your computer dies, you will be faced with the task of downloading all of those pictures from Facebook back to your computer. Recently I discovered a cool service that will make that process very easy. And this works not only to download all of your photos, but the photos of anyone with whom you are friends on Facebook.
Facebook 2 Zip is available, appropriately, at www.facebook2zip.com. When you go there, you just log in as if you were logging in to Facebook directly:
When you log in, it will tell you exactly what Facebook permissions it needs. What it asks for is minimal, and is no more than what is needed to perform its needed function (downloading pictures):
After you’re logged in, the process is pretty straightforward. First, you choose if you want to download all of your own pictures, or you can pick a friend’s pictures (it has to be someone you are friends with – you can’t just randomly pick someone on Facebook and get all their pics):
After you have chosen whose pictures you want, you just need to choose which pictures you want. This is based on albums – you can get one album or all of them:
With the album(s) chosen, the program does its work. After a short time, you are presented with a download button so that you can bring the photos to your computer:
When you click download you will be getting a single folder in .ZIP format. That means the images will be compressed and the download won’t take as long as it might otherwise. When the download is done, just double click the .zip folder and then move the images to wherever you want to save them on your computer.
I like this program because it is a good example of using the strength of the computer to perform a task like this. Anyone could go into each individual picture, right click and “Save” to get it to your computer. But the computer is able to do this so much more quickly and efficiently – it’s a no brainer.