Bulk Image Downloader 33% off until April 30

[sajman99]

Antibody Software's Bulk Image Downloader (BID) is normally priced at USD $29.95. Currently it's offered for USD $19.95--a savings of 33%.

http://antibody-software.com/web/index.php

If I weren't already a satisfied customer, I would definitely jump at this opportunity because BID is one of my most frequently used programs.

If anybody is curious about BID customer support, I can tell you it's excellent. I have emailed the author on numerous occasions to ask questions and/or make requests, and he has never failed to respond in a professional manner.

[sajman99]

Bulk Image Downloader version 3.9.0.2 has been released.

The developer is constantly adding image hosts and altering rule sets to keep up with hosting changes.

Despite its name, the newest versions of BID now handle video as well.

In a nutshell, BID is a specialized download tool which can download images and video found anywhere on the internet.

For $20 it's a no-brainer to get this app if you download images and/or video. It streamlines the process and saves a ton of time.

Disclaimer- I'm not affiliated with BID, just a satisfied customer trying to get the word out on a solid app.

[Curt]

... BID is one of my most frequently used programs.

- ditto here. Fine program, fine service.  

Disclaimer- I'm not affiliated with BID, just a satisfied customer

- ditto here. 

[J-Mac]

Hi guys!

Does Bulk Image Downloader get the full-size images from galleries where only thumbnails are shown and you have to click on each to see the full image?

I ask because Snagit also has the ability to grab all images on a page but if the page shows only thumbnails that is all it gets. You hav3e to click on each to open it before Snagit can grab the full images.

Thanks!

Jim

[sajman99]

...Does Bulk Image Downloader get the full-size images from galleries where only thumbnails are shown and you have to click on each to see the full image?

Yes indeed, that's the beauty of the program.  BID will decipher the URL and parse the data to uncover the full-sized images.

btw if you should want the thumbnails (for whatever reason), BID can do that as well via its "Embedded images" filter.

[Curt]

at Flickr's it will even differ between "Large" and "Original" sized pictures! 

[J-Mac]

Cool! I never knew about this! I knew of BID but I didn't know it could do that or I would have had it long before this.

Thanks!

Jim

[cthorpe]

Can you give a few examples of where/how you are using this program?

[J-Mac]

Can you give a few examples of where/how you are using this program?

I can tell you where I would have loved to use it: a cousin posted a gallery of some very old photos of his parents - a favorite aunt and uncle of mine - and as I am the anointed family historian I collect photos of close and extended family members and add it to my voluminous family tree. I believe that it took all of his tech skills just to scan them and get them up on Facebook; I had wanted him to post all somewhere I could download them and this was all he could do. However I had to click on a total of upwards of 350 thumbnails to download them. I tried Snagit but it can only grab the thumbnails - not the full size images they link to.

One example, anyway. 

Thanks!

Jim

[Curt]

Can you give a few examples of where/how you are using this program?

If you ever go to Flickr's you'll know that it is really boring to click your way to the large "original" version of each photo, and then to click your way back again before you can click your (new) way to download the next photo. Instead, go to the relevant Photostream or "Set" or "Collection", right-click the page, chose "Open page in B.I.D.", wait a few seconds, but not more than that, click the blue "down" arrow, sit back and watch the largest version only of each photo being mass-downloaded. It saves bunches of time and clicks!

Edited:
Oh, I forgot another totally important feature. If you go yourself and download photos from Flickr's, they will be named like "4462087835_dbcfe775b5_o.jpg". But with BID they will all be auto-named with their proper "photo title" by "photographer's name" names! 


as seen in Explorer:
[attachimg=#]

[sajman99]

If you go yourself and download photos from Flickr's, they will be named like "4462087835_dbcfe775b5_o.jpg". But with BID they will all be auto-named with their proper "photo title" by "photographer's name" names! 

Nice, and if the user encounters a site which scrambles file names with alpha-numeric gibberish, the user can enable the "Generate Filenames" (GF) option to both rename and ensure the correct image sequence is preserved. The GF option alone has saved me many hours of aggravation.

So BID allows you to download images and keep them in the correct/preferred sequence.

[sajman99]

To follow up on my positive comments about BID customer support, I remain very impressed with its developer Dominic Dumée. 

I contacted him last week about a minor issue I had with BID's "Download Selected" behavior, and I just noticed he has addressed my concerns by adding a new Advanced Config. option to the latest beta v3.10. Also, "improved flickr support" is noted on that beta page.

Over the years I have received many "Thank you for your email" auto-generated stock responses, so I can really appreciate solid customer support like Dominic provides.

[sajman99]

Today is the last day of this sale on Bulk Image Downloader--USD $19.95 for a license.

BID v3.10.0.1 was released yesterday.

[J-Mac]

Already got it a few days ago. 

Thank you.

Jim

[sajman99]

The offer of Bulk Image Downloader for $19.95 has been extended. For how long I cannot say--the Antibody Software site doesn't currently indicate how long the offer will last.

If anyone missed out last month, now you get another chance.

[y0himba]

I have used this for over a year, and it is more than worth the price. 

[Curt]

I am still using B.I.D every day. Unfortunately, Flickr has changed their setup (in order to protect against easy downloading, I think). One of the new but bad features on Flickr is, that the photographers now can "protect" their photos from being downloaded. This on a site that has the motto, "share your photos"!!

When I come across such a page but want the photo anyway, I go to the neighbouring photo, and right-click > "Open in B.I.D." , and B.I.D. will find the largest version available, all correctly pre-named (together with the four neighbouring photos). Of course, B.I.D can also find the picture when B.I.D is being loaded from the original photo's page, but then the photo will not be pre-named properly.

I think this feature is quite smart, considering that the purpose of Flickr's new setup apparently is not to share your photos!

---
Edited:
haha, I forgot what I came to tell:  
The "$20 today only, normal price $30" has been there for so long that I feel safe to say the normal price now really is $20.

http://bulkimagedownloader.com/

[J-Mac]

People DO share their photos on Flickr. Sharing doesn’t necessarily mean offering them for download though. I think that a lot of folks have many or most of their photos freely available for viewing and downloading; but nearly everyone has some that they would prefer to not be downloaded.

Of course that last comment refers to idiots who don’t realize that ANY photo that they upload and display there is exposed to downloading by anyone else who isn't an idiot!! 

I would hope that anyone who wants their photos to be online but out of view of the general browsing public wouldn’t put them on a site like Flickr. There are some sites that allow you to hide your photos pretty good out there. 

Jim

[J-Mac]

BTW, more on topic - I find that I don’t use BID nearly as much as I had hoped when I purchased it earlier this year. I have had only about a 50% success rate in downloading photo galleries that I wanted.    I expected that when I came across a site that had a number of thumbnails that required clicking to see each full-size photo that BID could grab all the full-size pics, but unfortunately it hasn’t been able to get many of them.

Thank you.

Jim

[Curt]

-from http://bulkimagedownloader.com/bid-user%27s-guide/bid-user-guide/7.-bid-advanced-configuration/

Note that some web sites go to extreme lengths to block the use of automated image downloaders such as BID. Because of this it may not always be possible to configure BID to download from such sites. However, if you come across such a problem site please contact us and send us the details. If there's enough demand we can investigate supporting the site as a “special case” in a future release of BID.

Include List


If BID finds no images when scanning a web gallery page, you can force it to detect the images by adding regular expressions that match the full sized image links.

Suppose all the full sized image links look like this:
http://trickywebsite.com/pics/largesize/<random nunber>/

To force BID to detect these as valid full sized image links you would add the following regular expression to the “Include list”:
<trickywebsite.com/pics/largesize/>

This would match any link that contains “trickywebsite.com/pics/largesize”.

Some full sized image pages only display “medium sized” images and have links to pages containing larger or original sized images. To force BID to follow such links add a regular expression matching this link to the include list prefixed with an asterisk (*). This also works for cases where BID does not find the the correct full sized image on the page.

For example, suppose our “full page” link contains a link to the original sized image that looks like:
http://example.com/images/fullsized/(imagename).jpg

We would add the following line to the include list:
*<example.com/images/fullsized/>

Some web sites use non standard methods to generate thumbnails. To help find these thumbnails on a web page add a matching regular expressions prefixed by 2 asterisks (**). For example:
**<thumbnailgenerator.php?id=>

1. When logging into the web site from your browser, always enable the "remember me" (or equivalent) option. This causes the login information to be written to a cookie.

2. Always launch BID from your browser's right click context menu (right click inside the web page to access it). This allows BID to receive the current cookie information directly from the browser.

3) For best results with such sites we recommend FireFox 3.5 or better with the BID FireFox extension installed. The reason for recommending FireFox is that when combined with the BID FireFox extension, it's possible for BID to load all current cookie information. Depending on the way a web site is set up, other browsers may not make all of the relevant cookie information available, causing BID to fail to download correctly.

[J-Mac]

I haven't tried the RegEx trick admittedly, though I did report the first few sites where BID couldn't get the linked images for galleries. After that I stopped; about five or six sites in a row where BID didn't work and I started to feel like I would be reporting sites to them all day long. I just kinda threw up my hands and threw in the towel.

If I have the time next time I'll work on the RegEx coding. I guess I became sort of numb regarding reporting sites, issues, etc. after sending data to Microsoft for years and then finding out that much of that is discarded. Jaded I guess is what you would call me...   

Thanks!

Jim

[sajman99]

J-Mac, sorry to hear of your troubles with BID--a 50% success rate seems inordinately low!

Unfortunately, some URLs can be difficult to decipher. I've contacted the author at least three times with request for help with a specific URL. On each occasion the "fix" was added to the next version's "include list". Not at all like dealing with Microsoft.