flickcurl, a command line utility for interacting with Flickr, is awesome. I use it to download friends’ photos. Here’s a bash script I use to automate the process of downloading all of the photos in a set:

#!/bin/bash
ids=`flickcurl -q photosets.getPhotos "$@" |& \
       grep -E -o 'ID [0-9]+' | cut -c4-`
for id in $ids; do
  wget `flickcurl -q photos.getSizes $id |& \
          grep -E -o 'http://.+_o.jpg'`
done

Save this as flickcurl_download_set.sh. Get the id of the photo set you want to download. (Hint: it’s the last number in the photo set URL, e.g. http://www.flickr.com/photos/user/sets/12345678901234/.) Then pass the photo set id to this script:

$ ./flickcurl_download_set.sh 12345678901234

If you want to download a private photo set, just authenticate your Yahoo account with flickcurl first.