The Firefox add-on Context Menu Image Saver is different, as it speeds up the downloading of individual images instead of all images on a web page. It does so by adding direct download locations to the Firefox right-click image context menu. A selection of those, saves the image directly without the save as dialog.

The configured download locations appear at the top of the context menu, which makes it an extremely comfortable option to save images quickly to the desired location.

The extension ships with no download directories configured, which means that you need to access the options first to add one or multiple download locations.

This is a very straightforward process. Open the Firefox add-ons manager first by entering about:addons in the address bar, or via the Tools > Add-Ons menu. Locate Context Menu Image Saver in the add-ons listing and select Options.

A click on New can be used to add a new download location for images. All you need to specify is a folder on the local system. I was not able to figure out what the prefix parameter was for. It is not needed to save images directly via the context menu. The prefix is added to the image file name on the local systek. You can add multiple download locations, which is handy if you regularly save different kinds of images to different folders. You can furthermore edit or deleted images, or add a separator which then becomes visible in the context menu as well.

Once you have added at least one download location you can utilize it with a right-click. Context Menu Image Saver remembers the last download directory. You can speed up the saving of additional images further by holding down the Ctrl key before pressing the right mouse button. This saves the image directly without displaying the right click context menu first.

Context Menu Image Saver is helpful for users who download images regularly and selectively. It is compatible with all versions of Firefox from Firefox 3 on. Firefox Aurora and Nightly users need to force compatibility, for instance with the Add-on Compatibility Reporter extension.

The Firefox extension has been designed to save all images that are currently open in tabs in the browser. A single-click, and sometimes even less than that, is needed to save them all to a selected folder on the local hard drive.

The add-on needs to be configured after installation which should take less than 30 seconds. The extension basically asks the user to pick a default download directory for the pictures, photos and images. All images will be saved to that download directory in the future if the user does not select a different location. The second and final choice is about images with identical file names. Options are to rename them automatically, or ignore them so that they are not downloaded at all.

Bazzacuda Image Saver Plus places as an icon in the main Firefox toolbar after installation. The position can be changed by selecting View > Toolbars > Customize from the Firefox menu. Users can drag and drop the icon to another location in the browser. The image downloading options are added to the context menu as well which means that it is theoretically possible to remove the toolbar icon completely.

A click on the icon saves all open images to the selected download folder. The add-on furthermore closes the tabs afterwards. The following options are available to customize the selection of images to download:

• Holding down Shift: Only images in tabs to the right of the active tab are saved. Images on the left side of the active tab are ignored.
• Holding down Ctrl: Only images in tabs to the left of the active tab are saved. Images on the right side of the active tab are ignored.
• Holding down Alt: Option to save the images to another folder on the hard drive.

Bazzacuda Image Saver Plus can be configured extensively in the options. It is possible to configure multiple save locations for images that can then be selected by clicking on the small arrow next to the toolbar icon, or by direct selection if the context menu is used to save images.

Users who do not want to click a button whenever they save images can configure the extension to auto save images that are opened in tabs.

Bazzacuda Image Saver Plus is a handy extension for Firefox users who often work with images that they want to save on their PC. It is more of an add-on for users who want to look at the images before saving them. Computer users who prefer image grabbers can take a look at the excellent Windows application Bulk Image Downloader .

Bazzacuda Image Saver Plus is compatible with Firefox 3 and Firefox 4. Firefox users can install the extension directly at the official Mozilla Firefox extensions gallery.

The software Downloadr is more than just a tool to backup Flickr accounts. It can perform a search for photos on Flickr using fulltext, users, tags, places, sets, dates, groups and favorites. It can display a maximum of 250 photos per page and download all selected photos at once.

Only Creative Commons photos are searched by default but that option can be disabled in the search form. The easiest way to backup Flickr accounts would be to enter the username and download all photos that are found. This is obviously only working if the user has made all photos publicly available. Private photos cannot be downloaded this way.

There is however another option to download all photos of a Flickr account. Downloadr comes with the means to authenticate a user. Once a user has been authenticated by providing his login details the function Complete Backup can be selected.

This option will download all photos from the authenticated Flickr account to the local computer. The pictures will be downloaded in one go and the program handles even large amounts of photos fine.

The download of the software program will download a file called updatr which has to be executed to download the rest of the program files. Downloadr itself is a portable software program requiring the Microsoft .net Framework.

You enter a search term, define the size of the images that will be displayed and the amount of images and hit enter. All images appear in the size that you selected. The site offers a bookmarklet for this type of search.

Google Image Ripper: Full Size Image Search

Google Image search is fantastic and highly useful to say the least, but the chaotic thumbnail presentation is less than satisfactory in terms of image size. You have to search through a sea of thumbnails and then click the appropriate one to get the full image size. Not that this is terribly difficult to do, but there is another option. Google presents an interesting new script with Google Image Ripper which quickly displays full size images. You enter a search term in the search field and then select the size of the images you would like to see and escape the land of tiny thumbnails. The images will all appear in the selected size. A website called “Dear Computer” uses the massive Google Images index and displays images only.

http://dearcomputer.nl/gir/ This link will lead you to Google Image Ripper.

Enter the search term, choose the desired size and type and click the “Rip Google!” button and off you go to the images. The example below is a search for clipart for an interesting symbol that a music artist uses as his logo. The usual Google image search proved to be frustrating in finding the isolated image, but Google Image Ripper yielded exactly what was being searched for.

Once the search was initiated at xxlarge size, it was a matter of scrolling down to find the image from a friendly interface. You can save the image with a right-click straight from the screen. This is the image that was needed. It came up in a 6×5” image size, but has been reduced in size for this article, as it would take up entirely too much space. This image is the property of Juno Reactor, to give due credit. After submitting a search, the interface provides many images, if fact more than you would get with the typical Google image search.

This is the appearance of the interface, yielding exactly what was specified in the search. As with Google Image search, there is still a good bit of scrolling to do in order to pinpoint the right image, but they are much easier to see.

You can take the search any direction you like. In addition to the optional sizes selection, you have an “icon” option. To get usable icons, choose “any” in the “type” box. The other Type options will generally yield much larger images than would be suitable for an icon. Links are included with every image so that you can go directly to the site for the image if you wish to learn more from an interesting discovery.

The “type” options available are: any, news, face, clipart, lineart and photo. The sizes range from icon to “huge” so you can get any size of the image being searched.
There is little else to this useful web app, but it is worth bookmarking if you find that you regularly use image searches. Google presently provides the best free image search app and this just takes it a step further. Give it a try even if you are not going to use it often.