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Download Pictures From The Internet With Open Image

Martin Brinkmann — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 13:05:27 +0000

Internet users have quite a selection of tools at hand to download pictures from Internet websites. All modern web browsers come with options to save single pictures and most offer add-ons and plugins to download multiple pictures in batch mode from Internet sites. Open Image is a software program for the Windows operating system that is offering a solution that is independent from installed web browsers.

Open Image is a portable software program that requires barely any configuration. Pictures can be downloaded by creating a new download task in the program’s interface.

Picture downloads can be instantly started by adding a website url in the Page field. It is furthermore possible to change the download folder and set minimum and maximum file sizes as well as allowed file types to only download pictures that are not filtered out by the rules.

A few additional options are available in the Settings menu like renaming images with sequence numbers, emptying the download folder before starting the picture download or opening the download page in the default web browser

Open Image is a good alternative for downloading pictures from single web pages that contain many pictures. A good alternative for download pictures from multiple pages is the website ripper HTTrack.

Private Galleries can be accessed at Smugmug

Martin Brinkmann — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 12:32:25 +0000

If you would use an image host, put up some of your images and set them to private, would you expect them to be still accessible by anyone ? This is apparently the case over at Smugmug where a private setting simply means that the pictures and image galleries are not directly linked from the homepage anymore but can still be accessed by simply entering the url directly in the browser address bar or download manager.

The real problem arises because files are named sequentially at Smugmug which means that anyone with just a little bit of technical knowledge will be able to download all images from all galleries set to public and private. The only galleries that are not accessible are the password protected ones obviously.

The urls for the galleries can be accessed by opening a url starting with http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/*, for example http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/1000, http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/1001 in your browser. Pictures can be accessed directly by loading http://www.smugmug.com/photos/*-M.jpg in your browser where * is a number between 1 and x. So, everyone can access pictures like http://www.smugmug.com/photos/1000-M.jpg, http://www.smugmug.com/photos/10001-M.jpg and so on.

Google Blogoscope who discovered this loophole contacted Smugmug and received a reply that was not that satisfactory. According to CEO Don MacAskill this is the intended way it should work:

First of all, we view security and privacy as two separate, but related, issues. Security is like locking your front door (no-one can get in with out a key) and privacy is like closing your window drapes (no-one can look in from the outside, but you can tell people where you live and they can visit without a key).
At SmugMug, the feature you’re talking about, private galleries, falls under the privacy umbrella, not security. It’s intentionally designed so that you can “tell other people” about your photos (share a URL in an email, embed or hyperlink on your blog or message forum, etc) without having to share something like a password. Only people you’ve shared this URL with can find the gallery and/or photos in question.

Download pictures from webshots without logging in

Martin Brinkmann — Mon, 08 May 2006 15:04:20 +0000

Don´t you love those little tricks and tweaks that make life so much easier ? I love to download videos from google video for instance and save them as avi. A little trick does that. I also love to visit sites that let me download content without having to login or purchase a premium account. The site webshots.com has a database of more than 300 million pictures that you can browse and view as a thumbnail.

If you want to view some images in real size or download them you will have to log in. If you don´t you won´t see a picture. This is were the webshots photo catcher comes into play. It´s a website that has a form field that process webshots urls. You copy a url like this one, paste it into the form and hit get it. A download prompt for the full image appears and you are free to download it.