Mourao Image Grabber, Mass Image Host Downloader

My program of choice to download lots of images from image hosts like Imagebam is Bulk Image Downloader, an excellent program to download images from hundreds of image hosting sites. Windows users looking for a free alternative could take a closer look at Mourao Image Grabber which offers the same basic functionality.

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.

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