The program can parse urls that you paste into the software for image links that point to supported image hosting providers. The biggest drawback here in comparison is that Mourao Image Grabber supports only a handful of image hosts. Definitely supported by our test version are ShareNXS, ImageBam, ImageVenue and ImageHeaven. The developers have promised that future versions will support additional hosting sites including Flickr, Picasa and MegaPix.

Multiple links can be added to the programs processing and download queue either from the Windows Clipboard or a text document. The program will parse each link and display general information about each page in its interface. It furthermore lists all images that it found on a particular page including the image’s file name, status and link.

All images are currently detected by the program with no option to automatically filter out unrelated images from the download queue. Images that are downloaded can be automatically tagged and renamed. Both options need to be activated though as they are deactivated by default. Mourao Image Grabber uses Internet Explorer’s rendering engine to display the actual web page in the program interface. This is an optional feature which may speed up the process of adding additional links and website addresses to the download queue.

A click on the Download Images button tries to download all images of the currently selected job. A click on the little arrow icon next to the download images button displays the option to download images from all jobs.

The current version of the program tries to download all images. This has triggered error messages on my test system. The most likely explanation that I have for this is that every unsupported download link will trigger the error. The remaining images have been downloaded file on the other hand.

I’d suggest to delete all images that do not point to an existing image host manually before clicking on the download button. The developers should consider adding a filter to their program to automate that process.

Windows users can download Mourao Image Grabber from the developer website. The image host downloader is available in an early version that requires the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 to be installed on the system. The program shows some promise. The developers need to work on the number of supported image hosting sites and the download manager to make it more comfortable to work with.

ImageHost Grabber provides a solution for several image hosting websites. The Firefox add-on is compatible out of the box with many image hosting websites provided that the user updates the so called hosts file with the latest version that is available on the developer’s website. This host file is an xml file that contains information about the various image hosts. It basically consists of regular expressions that try to identify the location of the image from the information provided on the pages where the image thumbnails are shown.

A right-click on any page will display the Image Grabber menu entry which can be used to grab all images from that website. Image Grabber will check if a rule for the image host is configured and if it is it will start downloading the images.

Users who know they way around regular expressions can also add their own image hosting websites to the hosts definition file. Everyone else might have luck by posting a request at the developer’s forum.

Image Grabber is compatible with dozens of websites including Photobucket, Facebook, Picasa, Imagefap or Blogspot. It is currently only compatible with Firefox 3.5x and not Firefox 3.6x although it can be forced to be compatible. The latest version is not available at the Mozilla Firefox website but at the developer’s website.

Image Grabber can read most image formats including Apple Quicktime .mov, avi, mpeg, wmv and dat. The movie is then played like any other movie and the user has the option to create screenshots by pressing a button or to automatically grab a certain amount of frames from the movie.

The automated approach is definitely the faster one while the manual approach makes up for that with a better selection of images. Screenshots are placed in a timeline at the bottom of the movie and it is possible to remove some or all of them again. If the result is satisfactory it can be saved to the hard drive.

The dimensions of each thumbnail and other settings can be defined before saving the image. Additional details can be added to the image. Some variables or custom text can be added to the screenshot as well.

The authors homepage is regularly running out of bandwidth. If Imagegrabber II is not working for you look for Imagegrabber II .net which is also available on the authors homepage.