While individual photo downloads are less restricted on Picasa, it is still not comfortable to download multiple photos or even a gallery of photos from the photo service.

The free Windows software Photo Grabber has been designed to make the downloading of Picasa photo galleries as comfortable as possible.

All you need is a gallery’s RSS feed link to download all of its photos to your local Windows PC. RSS links are displayed on gallery pages and search pages on Picasa. The RSS links are either displayed on the right in a sidebar on photo album pages or at the bottom right on search pages.

You can start Picasa Grabber right away after you have downloaded the program from the developer website. The application has a size of 20 Kilobytes. Its interface is as minimalistic as possible. It consists of two form fields. Paste the Picasa album RSS feed url into the first, and select a local directory with a click on destination folder in the second.

A click on go parses the RSS feed and begins the photo download.

A download progress bar is shown on the screen. You can use Picasa Grabber to download all photos of a public Picasa photo album or search results page at a time. A queue to download multiple albums one after the other would have been handy.

Still, Picasa Grabber is a lightweight portable program for Windows users who like to download photo albums from Picasa. The program worked fine on a PC running a 64-bit version of Windows 7 Professional, it should run fine on other Windows systems as well. Download of the program is offered at Google Code.

While that is very comfortable to get the photos loaded on the local PC, it often means that the user has to work with the photos afterwards. Missing are for instance options to rename the photos directly or to transfer photos into different photos depending on the digital camera or memory card they are stored on. That’s for instance an excellent option for professional photographers who sometimes work with multiple cameras.

WIA-Loader is a free portable application for the Windows operating system that adds options to the photo download from digital cameras and memory cards. The software does not only work with Microsoft’s WIA (Windows Image Acquisition) but with other sources as well. Still, it should work best with digital cameras that support WIA drivers. The two options available if the camera does not support the drivers is to either set the digital camera to mass storage mode (if available), or use a card reader to transfer the photos from camera to computer.

WIA-Loader uses photo profiles of which at least one has to be created before the software can be used. A profile creation wizard guides the user through the process.

It begins with the selection of a root folder for all pictures and the subfolder configuration. Photos are by default copied to CameraName\Keyword\day\month\year with options to change that folder structure in the wizard.

Additional tasks can be configured that the photo software will perform before, during or after transfers of the photos to the computer system.

Available options include rotating upright pictures automatically, setting the pictures to be read only, geocoding images with GPS information or tagging images with keywords.

The program options offer extensive configuration settings, including abilities to configure and modify profiles.

There is a lot to explore here. Options include to register WIA-Loader as the handler for removable media and as a scanner and camera program, to configure external programs like Adobe’s DNG Converter or ExifTool, to import or export profiles, configure dozens of preview options and more. Folder and file names can be configured via variables in the options. The user manual lists all available options which includes using EXIF information to name the photos.

To import photos simply select your camera in the main menu, then an import profile and finally the import button. The photos are now imported and displayed in the program interface. It is possible to delete the images from the source device, or configure the program to automatically import new photos.

WIA-Loader is an excellent program for the Windows operating system. The photo importers biggest strength is its flexibility and vast number of options to customize the transfer of photos from digital cameras and memory cards to the PC. The program requires the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 or better. (via)

Image Ripper is a standalone application that supports batch photo downloads from several Chinese photo hosting sites. It currently supports downloading images from the following image hosting sites:

• duide.com
• heels.cn
• pics100.cn
• tu11.cc
• meituiji.com
• pal.ath.cx
• tuku.keaibbs.com

The photo downloader’s interface is simplistic and easy to understand. It consists of an url field at the top which accepts urls from the sites listed above. The user needs to select a local directory as well which will be used to store the images on the local computer system. Tapping the green button to the right will initiate a page scan. Image Ripper will let the user know if it found any images on the page. The photos that are found will automatically be downloaded to the local computer system.

The program lists all downloaded photos and the current photo in the interface. Thumbnails of the photos that have already been downloaded are also available. Tapping the space bar will display only the current photo in the program window.

Downloaded photos can be uploaded right from the program to Gdrive or Picasa. The first release of Image Ripper is promising, at least for users of those Chinese photo hosting sites. Alternatives are our favorite program Bulk Image Downloader (commercial), the Firefox batch image downloader or the Java application Bilder Herunterlader.

Image Ripper can be downloaded from the project’s website at Codeplex.

Downloadr is a top of its class application as it provides all the functionality one would expect from a downloader with ease of use that makes it possible to start downloading photos from Flickr in just a few clicks.

It supports authentication when needed but can also be run by users who do not have a Flickr account. A search can be conducted by entering tags, a username, fulltext or places with additional filters like dates or creative common photos available.

50 Flickr photos are displayed per page by default which can be changed in the options. All it actually takes to download the photos is to select some or all that have been returned by the software followed by clicking on the Download selected button. Downloadr will always download the largest available photo size from Flickr.

Photos can be previewed in a larger size in the application. Information about the photographer, tags, exif data and photo are retrieved and displayed in the preview window as well.

A right-click on any search result displays various additional options including related tags that can be searched for, loading the photo page on Flickr or searching for additional photos taken by the user who took the photo.

Authentication is required before private photos can be downloaded. A handy backup option is provided to backup all photos in just a few clicks.

Exif and IPTC data is automatically written so that the information are preserved in the photo downloads. The developer of the Flickr photo downloader has created a screencast that demonstrates the functionality.

Downloadr is compatible with most Microsoft Windows operating systems including 64-bit editions. It requires the Microsoft .net Framework 3.5.

The software program itself has not changed a lot though. The software developer has improved the algorithms in the background but not the user interface. The program displays the three buttons Search, User and Group to the user upon startup. All can be used to download photos from specific Flickr sections.

The first option (Search) performs a Flickr search for either a keyword or tag, the second (user) will display photos uploaded by a specific Flickr user while the third (group) will do the same for a Flickr group.

The photo preview page will display thumbnails of the photos that have been found in the Flickr search. Only five thumbnails will be displayed by default. This figure can be increased to a maximum of 500 thumbnails per page. Copyrighted images are displayed with a huge copyright watermark. These photos will not be downloaded by the program. A Creative Commons checkbox is available to only display photos that have been tagged with it.

Flickr Downloadr will then download all photos (even if the count exceed 100K) that are not copyright protected. The software program works fine and seems to be more reliable in this version.

As of now it is only possible to download photos from one specific user. Only photos that are not licensed with all rights reserved will be downloaded while the rest will be skipped. The Flickr tool only works under Windows Vista or Windows 7. It is on the other hand a small portable application that works great if you regularly download files from the photo hosting website.

The application will display the option to download photos by user, group or everyone with only the user option enabled. The next page will display a simple form that accepts a name as input. It will search Flickr for that username and display the photos as thumbnails on the next page of the software program. There are two additional options that only search the favorites or contacts of a person.

Options are provided on that page to change the number of thumbnails that are displayed at the same time. It is furthermore possible to navigate the photo collection. Copyrighted images are displayed with a C on the thumbnail. A click on the Next button will initiate the download of the photos to the local computer.

We have covered similar tools in the past that provide additional options. Those are Backup Flickr Accounts which is offering to pretty much download anything that is available on Flickr, the Firefox extension Flickr Download which gets rid of the dreaded spaceball.gif image, Flickr Down which also allows to download photos or Flickr AutoDownloadr which offers the same functionality.