Wayback Machine Wizardry (DA Preservation)

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 I was shocked to find that a no-name artist’s work had been archived in 2015, so it may well have been a site-wide backup; mileage may vary.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!

Nice find!

Excellent :)

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
Cool!

@stsyn
Could you elaborate on this?
I tried Underwood’s tactic with this web archive, but to no luck. Not sure if I’m doing it wrong.
https://web.archive.org/web/20151001040442/http://duragan.deviantart.com/art/TF2-Trolling-529567862
I’ve searched multiple galleries and such for even a loaded thumbnail. It never loads.
Would love to preserve a lot of Duragan’s lost art.

@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.

@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.

No known way.

No idea, how exactly this works, but maybe you can hide works without deleting them completely.

One is a thumbnail link from a page you linked, second is a source from >>963208

Not sure what you mean.

No, no. I mean the ‘manipulations’ link.
https://github.com/mikf/gallery-dl/blob/master/gallery_dl/extractor/deviantart.py#L334

@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”.

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.

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.