Wayback Machine Wizardry (DA Preservation)

UnderwoodART
Shimmering Smile - Celebrated the 10th anniversary of Equestria Girls!
Lunar Supporter - Helped forge New Lunar Republic's freedom in the face of the Solar Empire's oppressive tyrannical regime (April Fools 2023).
Crystal Roseluck - Had their OC in the 2023 Derpibooru Collab.
Princess of Love - Extra special version for those who participated in the Canterlot Wedding 10th anniversary event by contributing art.
Elements of Harmony - Had an OC in the 2022 Community Collab
Non-Fungible Trixie -
Magical Inkwell - Wrote MLP fanfiction consisting of at least around 1.5k words, and has a verified link to the platform of their choice
Kinship Through Differences - Celebrated the 11th anniversary of MLP:FIM!
Twinkling Balloon - Took part in the 2021 community collab.
An Artist Who Rocks - 100+ images under their artist tag

Just Another Pink Pony
I’ve found a little magic that could greatly help art conservation for images and accounts already deleted from DeviantART.
Step 1: Go to the Wayback Machine and put in the deviation’s address if you know it, or try to navigate there via the deviant’s page or gallery (gallery offset probably won’t work, ‘solid’ links only). I was shocked to find that a no-name artist’s work had been archived in 2015, so it may well have been a site-wide backup; mileage may vary.
Step 2: Once the page with the image is loading, tap Ctrl+I to open Page Info (in Firefox), and navigate to the Media tab. Sort by file type and scroll down to the Images. Once you find what you believe to be the main image (it will share the name of the deviation’s link, and probably be the largest one), copy that link from the list (it will end in .JPG, .PNG, etc.). Don’t worry if the image isn’t loading in Wayback.
Step 3: Open Derpibooru’s reverse image search (or go directly to upload if you’re sure it’s not here already) and paste the link into the “fetch” bar. Remove Wayback Machine from the link so it begins with “http˸//img05․deviantart․net”, and fetch. As if cast by Star Swirl himself, the image should magically load in the preview! You can also put this link into your browser, to check the image at full size.
I have done this with two images now (albeit from the same artist), and for some reason it just works. Despite Wayback not being able to load the images, Derpibooru can somewhow yank them straight out of DA’s ancient cache. Give it a try and let me know if it works for you! As a staunch advocate for preserving all works of fan art (regardless of the artist’s wishes), I find this extremely exciting, and I hope others will make use of this method to preserve as much as they can!
Bonus Step: Thanks to the Wayback Machine loading the deviation’s page if not the image, you can also preserve the original description, which I highly recommend quoting in your upload!
stsyn
Lunar Supporter - Helped forge New Lunar Republic's freedom in the face of the Solar Empire's oppressive tyrannical regime (April Fools 2023).
Elements of Harmony - Had an OC in the 2022 Community Collab
Non-Fungible Trixie -
Twinkling Balloon - Took part in the 2021 community collab.
Notoriously Divine Tagger - Consistently uploads images above and beyond the minimum tag requirements. And/or additionally, bringing over the original description from the source if the image has one. Does NOT apply to the uploader adding several to a dozen tags after originally uploading with minimum to bare tagging.
Best Artist - Providing quality, Derpibooru-exclusive artwork
Fine Arts - Two hundred uploads with a score of over a hundred (Safe/Suggestive)
Economist -
Cool Crow - "Caw!" An awesome tagger
The Power of Love - Given to a publicly verified artist with an image under their artist’s tag that has reached 1000 upvotes

Moderator
It seems like it works only when image was not deleted completely — DA still has link conversion data (for example, fav.me links in these cases redirects you to the image url with deviation name, not just numeric id. I made 2 example links, but it decided just to die in my hands, ugh. Maybe it’s because image was actually hidden but not deleted?), so it’s able to give you image if you find a way to ask.
Good news — token exploit works on these images, so after following wix redirect by just pasting retrieved url into address bar and performing some manipulations you can obtain original image in original quality. But it’s not like you can do it easily by hand…
stsyn
Lunar Supporter - Helped forge New Lunar Republic's freedom in the face of the Solar Empire's oppressive tyrannical regime (April Fools 2023).
Elements of Harmony - Had an OC in the 2022 Community Collab
Non-Fungible Trixie -
Twinkling Balloon - Took part in the 2021 community collab.
Notoriously Divine Tagger - Consistently uploads images above and beyond the minimum tag requirements. And/or additionally, bringing over the original description from the source if the image has one. Does NOT apply to the uploader adding several to a dozen tags after originally uploading with minimum to bare tagging.
Best Artist - Providing quality, Derpibooru-exclusive artwork
Fine Arts - Two hundred uploads with a score of over a hundred (Safe/Suggestive)
Economist -
Cool Crow - "Caw!" An awesome tagger
The Power of Love - Given to a publicly verified artist with an image under their artist’s tag that has reached 1000 upvotes

Moderator
@SazerLite
Some images were deleted completely, so we would never know, how new image url will look like.
For example, your linked image has thumb http://pre12.deviantart.net/c671/th/pre/i/2015/117/9/c/tf2_trolling_by_duragan-d8rah6e.jpg — it won’t load, as you can se. And here is thumb of a random derpi upload http://pre12.deviantart.net/a55e/th/pre/i/2015/233/b/1/lannie_as_a_merpony_by_pilot231-d96mn5m.png — and it loads just fine.
SazerLite
Lunar Supporter - Helped forge New Lunar Republic's freedom in the face of the Solar Empire's oppressive tyrannical regime (April Fools 2023).
Roseluck - Had their OC in the 2023 Derpibooru Collab.
Artist -
Princess of Love - Extra special version for those who participated in the Canterlot Wedding 10th anniversary event
Elements of Harmony - Had an OC in the 2022 Community Collab
Non-Fungible Trixie -

A Mellow Fellow
@stsyn
So there’s no way to retrieve it?
What exactly is that gallery_dl link you showed?
And as far as I remember, Duragan simply deleted his DA account. Not sure if he deleted any specific uploads.
stsyn
Lunar Supporter - Helped forge New Lunar Republic's freedom in the face of the Solar Empire's oppressive tyrannical regime (April Fools 2023).
Elements of Harmony - Had an OC in the 2022 Community Collab
Non-Fungible Trixie -
Twinkling Balloon - Took part in the 2021 community collab.
Notoriously Divine Tagger - Consistently uploads images above and beyond the minimum tag requirements. And/or additionally, bringing over the original description from the source if the image has one. Does NOT apply to the uploader adding several to a dozen tags after originally uploading with minimum to bare tagging.
Best Artist - Providing quality, Derpibooru-exclusive artwork
Fine Arts - Two hundred uploads with a score of over a hundred (Safe/Suggestive)
Economist -
Cool Crow - "Caw!" An awesome tagger
The Power of Love - Given to a publicly verified artist with an image under their artist’s tag that has reached 1000 upvotes

Moderator
@stsyn
So there’s no way to retrieve it?
No known way.
And as far as I remember, Duragan simply deleted his DA account. Not sure if he deleted any specific uploads.
No idea, how exactly this works, but maybe you can hide works without deleting them completely.
What exactly is that gallery_dl link you showed?
One is a thumbnail link from a page you linked, second is a source from >>963208
stsyn
Lunar Supporter - Helped forge New Lunar Republic's freedom in the face of the Solar Empire's oppressive tyrannical regime (April Fools 2023).
Elements of Harmony - Had an OC in the 2022 Community Collab
Non-Fungible Trixie -
Twinkling Balloon - Took part in the 2021 community collab.
Notoriously Divine Tagger - Consistently uploads images above and beyond the minimum tag requirements. And/or additionally, bringing over the original description from the source if the image has one. Does NOT apply to the uploader adding several to a dozen tags after originally uploading with minimum to bare tagging.
Best Artist - Providing quality, Derpibooru-exclusive artwork
Fine Arts - Two hundred uploads with a score of over a hundred (Safe/Suggestive)
Economist -
Cool Crow - "Caw!" An awesome tagger
The Power of Love - Given to a publicly verified artist with an image under their artist’s tag that has reached 1000 upvotes

Moderator
@SazerLite
Okay, one more attempt: there is a short version for all deviations — fav.me. For your example it will be https://fav.me/d8rah6e and for example in OP — https://fav.me/d8q6i2q . Despite both are “not found” links, see how different they looks. And one of them even tells you in final url what name it had.
I don’t exactly know, why it behaves in such a different way, I just expect it to be some kind of a “hiding” artworks, not complete “deletion”.
gallery_dl
I don’t know what do you want to hear from me. I don’t use gallery_dl at all and do everything by hands, and I’ll be very surprised, if they still support pre-Wix layout.
SazerLite
Lunar Supporter - Helped forge New Lunar Republic's freedom in the face of the Solar Empire's oppressive tyrannical regime (April Fools 2023).
Roseluck - Had their OC in the 2023 Derpibooru Collab.
Artist -
Princess of Love - Extra special version for those who participated in the Canterlot Wedding 10th anniversary event
Elements of Harmony - Had an OC in the 2022 Community Collab
Non-Fungible Trixie -

A Mellow Fellow
I see.
Thanks for trying.
I guess my only hope at this point is maybe someone here or else where has local backups saved.
I may start a topic in Art Chat, if that’s the right place to post it.
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