I spent a fair amount of time yesterday trying to access the images in the Images list (also known as Publishing Images) of a SharePoint site using the SOAP-based Imaging web service. Every time it failed, usually with an uninformative error message.
Finally, I used cURL to send the SOAP requests so that I could see every last detail of the transaction. The SOAP response was pretty clear at that point:
The list PublishingImages is not found
or
The list Images is not found
I tried other Picture Libraries on the site, and that worked fine. That’s when it dawned on me: the SharePoint Images (or PublishingImages) list is a Document Library, not a Picture Library. That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, but fine, it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve run into something nonsensical in SharePoint.
I was hoping to use the download method of the Imaging web service. I don’t have an alternative solution at this time, but I hope to find one soon using one of the other SharePoint web services.