I have been using Bulk Image Downloader for more than a year and have to say that It is the best batch image downloader on the Internet. Yes I know; This is a review and it sounds like I’m overstating here. But I actually bought the software from the company a year ago and never looked back since. One of the best aspects is that the developers are very responsive to user queries to improve their program.
Bulk Image Downloader is ideal for users who want to download pictures from the Internet, lots of pictures. Best of all? The program follows links to grab the original pictures right away and not the thumbnails. But more about that later.
Bulk Image Downloader Review
The main program window looks clean and it takes little configuration to start downloading images from the Internet. There are two things that users need to check first. The configuration should be the first visit. A lot of settings can be changed in here, from proxy settings to resuming downloads, downloading from multiple forum pages and web browser integration.
The config leads to an advanced configuration window as well which users should pay a visit to at least once. Here it is possible to define a minimum image size that should be downloaded, configure video download types on supported sites, maintain an ignore and include list or use regular expressions to make custom sites or image hosting services compatible with the program. Most users on the other hand do not need to do this. The developers are shipping the software with support for dozens of popular image hosting sites and gallery formats. Plus, they maintain the list and update it regularly. Still, experienced users may use it to add unsupported websites to the program.
Here is a selection of websites and services that are currently supported by BID.
- Picasa
- MySpace
- Flickr
- Image hosting websites like imagehost, share-image, twitpic, deviantart and hundreds more
Users have two options to download images in bulk with the help of Bulk Image Download. They can copy a web address manually and paste it into the site, or use the browser context menu to send it to the program. Bulk Image Download supports Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Opera currently. All users need to do to download all images from a page is to right-click on that page to send the page to the program.
The image downloader scans the page, and if available additional numbered pages (usually the first 20 pages, for instance of a Flickr search or forum thread).
Pictures that have been identified are listed in thumbnail form in the program interface.
The view-mode can be changed, as can be the selection of which images will be downloaded by the downloader. Four additional view modes are available, from a plain listing, to a mixed listing with thumbnails and information to medium and large thumbnails.
The default selection will only download full sized images of thumbnails. This can be changed to downloading embedded images only or to download all images on the pages. The default option is usually the one that works best on all pages.
All images are automatically added to a queue, and users can either start downloading them directly by clicking on the download icon, or add other pages from the same or new websites to it. It is important in this case to check the “append to existing links” box to add the new pages to the existing queue.
Bulk Image Downloader will skip images that already exist in the save folder by default. This can be changed to overwriting or renaming instead. The software uses ten download threads to download images. Users with slow Internet connections may want to reduce the number of threads, especially if they download from sites where large images are posted.
Those features alone are excellent. But what if I told you that there is more to the program than meets the eye? You may encounter websites that use numbers in their web address to distinguish galleries or pages on their site.
Lets assume a site uses the http://example.com/index.php?page=1 format to display its pages. page=2 would load the second page and so on. All pages can host galleries or direct images, that does not matter for Bulk Image Downloader as it can handle both well.
Instead of adding http://example.com/index.php?page=1, and then page=2, page=3 and so on to the program manually users could instead use following syntax: http://example.com/index.php?page=[1-20]. This tells Bulk Image Downloader to scan the pages 1 to 20 for images and add those found to the program queue. Heavy image downloaders can save lots of time this way.
BID supports pages that require basic HTTP authentication or cookie authentication. The help explains how this needs to be configured properly.
Bulk Image Downloader features
- Image Host Support – BID works with almost all popular image hosting sites, such as flickr, imagevenue, imagefap, imageshack, imagebam, etc.
- Social Networking Sites – BID supports album downloading from sites such as facebook, myspace, and twitter related hosts like tweetphoto.com, twitpic.com, yfrog.com
- Full Sized Images – BID uses an advanced heuristic scoring method to locate full sized images. This means BID can work on most galleries automatically, with no user configuration necessary.
- Batch Downloading – Automatically download from huge lists of gallery URLs via the integrated Queue Manager.
- Web Browser Integration – BID integrates with IE, Opera, FireFox and Chrome. Just right click inside your browser window and select “Open current page with BID”
- Web Forum Support – BID can scan multi page forum threads and quickly extract all image links
Multi Page Gallery Downloads – BID can detect and download from most popular multi page web galleries out of the box. - Password Protected Websites – BID will prompt for user names and passwords if the web site requires them.
- Video Downloading – It’s not just for images – BID also supports VIDEO downloading from YouTube, Google Video, DailyMotion, MetaCafe, MegaVideo, as well as directly linked video files (.avi, .wmv, .mpeg, .mov, .flv, etc)
- Embedded images – Apart from locating and downloading full sized imaged, BID can also download images embedded on a page
- Sequenced image filenames (fusker) – BID supports ‘ranged’ URLs for sequenced image downloading. e.g. http://mysite/pics/image[001-100].jpg
- Image Validation – BID checks every image to make sure it’s been downloaded correctly. Invalid images are retried automatically.
- Resume Downloads – BID will resume downloads from the point at which the connection was broken.
- Multi Threaded Downloading – BID can download up to 50 images at once. Download those galleries quickly!
- Redirection Resolution -Some sites use image redirection “services” like imagecash, urlcash etc. to display adverts before redirecting to the imagehost. BID automatically resolves these types of links.
- File name unmangling – BID will retrieve the correct file name from image hosts that scramble filenames (where possible), such as imagevenue, imagefap.
- Generate File names – Optionally create your own sequenced file names for image hosts that scramble the file names,
- Export Galleries to HTML or BB Code – Quickly generate gallery code suitable for pasting into web forums.
- Advanced Configuration – BID has many advanced settings for things like Javascript processing, redirection handling, and more for those tricky galleries that thwart BID’s download attempts. We’re happy to help out with these settings if you get stuck – just contact us
Bulk Image Downloader Verdict
Bulk Image Downloader is an excellent image downloader for the Windows operating system. It is comfortable to use, offers intelligent features that make life easier, a configuration with lots of extras and settings and a dedicate development team that responds quickly and enthusiastically. I have not looked back since I installed BID on my system.
Bulk Image Downloader Giveaway
Antibody Software, the developers of Bulk Image Downloader, donated 15 one-year licenses of the program. Just comment below for a chance to win one of the licenses in this giveaway. Good luck everyone.
A fully functional trial version is available for download at the developer website, I suggest you give it a try.
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Hi! Excellent, I’m in, thanks.
Looks like a good piece of software. Would like to have a full version of it.
Holy sh…, count me in please!!!
Sounds like a useful program for an artist like me, I’m in.
Hi,
Count me in for this giveaway.
Thanks:)
Read about the possibilities, handy with its browser extensions. Thank you
Great software indeed. Thank you…
Great software indeed. Thank you…
The best image downloading software i have used……………………
I’m in!
Neat idea for a program. I’d love to have a license.
thanks for the giveaway. Hope to win it.
Thanks Martin, A nice giveaway indeed.
Hi,
Seems like a lovely piece of software. Since I work on lot of presentations, it mite help me when I need pictures from the net.
Thanks for the giveaway gHacks.
BID is the only software for downloading images easily from forums where generally users have to browse each page. I hope I can win a license here..
BID giveaway? Very generous on the dev’s part. Thank you! I’d appreciate this software because I am a photographer and put a lot of effort into Flickr as a backup and hosting solution. Yahoo has chosen not to put a lot of effort into Flickr. I recently decided to transfer to SmugMug. However, the migration is tedious and doesn’t fully do what I need it to do (tags, geotags, notes, meta, etc)
Again, I’d appreciate a license to help my business.
Thanks, gang!
Sound interesting! Please count me in.
Great software!
Really Great Software!! Already using its trial version but will cherish a licensed version :-)
Missed your last year promo, So hoping to have one this year.
Count me in.
This would be sweet. Download a bunch of wallpapers, then sort threw at leasure instead sorting to download individually. Please count me in for this much desired piece of software.
Hi Martin, thanks a lot for this opportunity. It’s an excellent program, does what it claims, it’s easy to use. Please count me in. Thanks in advance. Best regards.
There’s many free open source applications out there that do the same thing, but I will try my chances for the free license.
This program is intelligently designed. It would make a great Christmas present for me.
I would love to try this one!
Good review, i want to win :)
I would to win a BID Licence.
I want a licence please.
Sounds good for those 400 pages long topics ;)
This program would really help get my business of the ground.
Thanks for the opportunity to win a great program!
Looks nice.
Rolls the dice.