Any chance of redoing this gaotd with all of the fixes?

I'm baaack!

After numerous attempts to use this software, I'm finally starting to get the hang of it. I found that it will indeed download photos galore, although it's pretty temperamental, often crashing (with popups to report the crash to the developers).

While this software allows you to add other file types to its search criteria(such as video and audio files), its internal interface appears to have difficulty with video files - namely not downloading any! However, since the developer made no claims that this software would download video, I certainly can't hold that against them (even though they do seem to imply that video files could be downloaded in the description of the software).

I greatly appreciate the positive feedback from those of you who responded to my original comment, and I'd like to respond to some who addressed me personally:

#14 - "Dorthy" - As some other commenters have already mentioned, you can simply conduct a search for "royalty-free images" in your search engine of choice and you'll discover quite a few online sources, Many offering royalty-free images at no cost, while others requiring that you become a paid subscriber in order to access and "re-use" the available images (with appropriate licensing, of course).

#32 - "Trucker" - First of all, may I ask what gives you the impression that I charge my clients "a fortune?" How do you even know how much I charge my clients? I (and apparently my clients too) believe that the prices I charge them for my work in creating websites for them are both reasonable and affordable, or I wouldn't have any clients! The websites I create for my clients consist of much more than simple images and videos, often including written sales copy and third-party script integration (autoresponders, video embedding, etc.). Am I not allowed to charge what I believe to be a fair price for my labor?

You appear to be accusing me of doing what I'm warning others not to do, namely stealing the product of someone else's labors - which I vehemently deny! (I'm not sure what you mean by "flares" unless you mean that I'm attempting to distract people with my comments in order to not be accused of doing what I'm warning others not to do. If so, I believe the preceding paragraph addresses that issue.)

You say that if you were one of my clients and you discovered how I "put the website together" that you would "find someone else to do the job." If you knew how I "put the website together," then why not simply "put it together" yourself instead of hiring someone else to do it for you? Most likely, whoever else you choose would also use some form of royalty-free or licensed content, unless you provide your own images (which is what I request from my clients whenever possible).

Would you hold such disdain for those people for using royalty-free content - which they (and I) are licensed to use?

As to your final paragraph, we users of "royalty-free" content are forced to rely on the providers of that content being forthright about the royalty-free status of the content we receive from them. If I'm confronted by someone who claims that a "royalty-free" image I've used isn't royalty-free, then I would gladly refer them to the source that I received the image from, and I would also co-operate in any ensuing investigation into the status of the image in question.

Yes, I do keep records of where and how I receive files that I use for commercial website content - whether it's for my own sites or for those I create for my clients. (In fact, I often "brand" image files that I use with hidden information regarding its source.)

My apologies for the overly long comment, but I'm a professional internet marketer, and when my integrity has publicly attacked I feel compelled to respond to said attacks - especially when they're totally baseless!

Added 3 JUL 11:
I tried Picture Downloader again this morning. Apparently AVG was contacted (see above) and resolved their false Trojan. (Impressed with AVG).

Picture Downloader ran this morning and I was able to register the key (thanks MetaProducts).

Dear Alex,

WOW! for showing up here and staying till the end. 12 out of 10 points for good style :)

Best wishes!

I think this programme has huge potential, However, it has too many flaws and bugs at the moment. Once these are sorted - such as its constant hanging, Stop and Pause button doing nothing, no matter how often they are pressed (programme just keeps downloading away quite gaily) and an added feature that allows one to select what is to be downloaded and to where on their hard drive they want the images stored, we may have a winner. Until then, I am skeptical.

Thank you for your comments.
We will have developers to look at your suggestions and fix found problems.

Best regards,
Alexander
MetaProducts Corporation

#37, Alexander, #42, Tony77, the keys changed/added are
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_MAXCONNECTIONSPER1_0SERVER
"PD.exe"=dword:0000000a (10)
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_MAXCONNECTIONSPERSERVER
"PD.exe"=dword:0000000a (10)
and
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings
"MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server"=dword:0000000a (10)
"MaxConnectionsPerServer"=dword:0000000a (10)

These settings apply to all Internet connections, not just IE, and can violate Internet protocol specifications. I'd rather just let Windows handle it, later versions handle these differently depending upon connection bandwidth, etc.

I don't understand why people aren't more positive about Picture Downloader, these types of utilities have all sorts of legitimate uses, such as downloading wallpapers, various types of freely downloadable templates and add-ons for applications, etc.

This is a joke of a program. On first run, searched web for "wallpaper" and only got 4 images. THEN, crashed when trying to view even one of them.

Ploink.

Unable to run this program win7 x64. AVG picks up pd.exe as a virus, even on the download from the publishers own webpage. After install, and ignoring this warning windows would not run this program at all. I was interested in this software, but alas it was not to be.

Has anyone been able to get the exe file PD to pass through AVG yet? The comments this morning indicated this was being looked at and should be resolved. AVG flags it as the SHeur3.CHKN Trojan horse and removes the PD.exe file to quarantine. Two hours left and all I can do is uninstall. To bad, was hoping to at least check this one out.

Could be useful if it weren't for the frequent crashes. To the development team: Do you have someone in QA? Do they test this product "in the wild"? Or are you relying on giveawayoftheday to beta test the software?

Also had AVG issue, thus Uninstalled! maybe next time

As I read thru this list 1 thing keeps popping into my head, specifically #3

Please note that the software you download and install
during the Giveaway period comes with the following important limitations:
1) No free technical support
2) No free upgrades to future versions
3) Strictly non-commercial usage

Sound like several may not be following the third rule. Just my 2 cents!

Does the software download videos too? Form its description, it seem like so but then is it only images? This is confusing so please clarify.

this is a super time saving program, installed no probs, only crashed when i got too keen lol, trying to collect too many thumbnail images at once.

Like others, I too got from AVG that this program .exe has the "SHeur3.CHKN" various. I am curious if after the problem is resolved, will we be able to re-download?

I also downloaded the program from Metaproducts web page and attempted the install and got the same results.

I also did a search on AVG site to get more information on the aboved listed virus and they could not find it in their database. Now this is really strange!

A quick tale re using images from the internet. The biggest Sunday newspaper in South Africa did a travel article about two years ago. The image they used to depict the building under discussion was obviously obtained illegally from the internet. How can I be so certain? The photo belonged to my sister and her husband and two children can clearly be seen posing in front of the building. As luck would have it she is a subscriber to the newspaper and they had to apologize and recompense.

Always be sure of the copyright. I use images on my website which do not belong to me but each one is properly attributed and all rules regarding the publishing of these images are religiously followed.

Thank You GAoTD for the chance to try another cool application .
All Your Hard Work is Appreciated :D

Has most of these bugs been fix all ready. if not i'll just pass on this one for now....

I am interested in downloading the images from Google Maps. I zoom into the area I want in Google Maps and then grab the URL of that location. When I paste that into PD and start the download it goes crazy downloading thousands of files. After downloading over 1000 PD crashes. But I only wanted the files represented in the image I viewed not the whole state of Ohio.

Yep, same story as the others. crashed during usage on win 7 64x. Worked real nice, like a newsgroup downloader, and fast. However it misinterpreted the URL I had to MANUALLY paste in, since right click doesn't work there. Oh, and only works with IE or Firefox, NOT with Chrome. Sorry. Sent crash report and uninstalled.

Forgot to mention, it would be nice if it actually enumerated the anticipated downloads first, allowing you the option to review.

As it is, things start happening so quickly, you have no time to react, to adjust, to make changes.

XP SP3.

Install & key entry, straight forward.
Registered, shows registered to GAOTD.

On startup, automatically creates /my documents/my downloads/ & adds a few files.

Can automatically open IE/FF "favorites".
(Not sure how it determines "what" FF to use - i have 6 or so versions, & actually USE SeaMonkey rather then FF.)

Tools | Options, but since the only option for Tools is Options, why not just call it Options instead & save a click ;-).

Included CHM help file. Resizable window.

Uses the IE rendering engine, so suppose you're vulnerable to anything that IE may be vulnerable to?

Don't know, but thinking this program has not been updated in quite a while (only rehashed for GAOTD usage)?

Populates a number of files in %TMP%.
At the least it should do so in a subdirectory, IMO. Like %TMP%\PD\.

No explanation of Options | Default Settings?

Video (*.avi, *.mpg, *.mpeg ...), but what are the others that it looks for, what are the ... ?
How do I know whether I need to add them manually or if they are already included in "..."? What about .flv, included or not?

And, Other files? What format do I list other files? "flv,mp4" or "*.flv, *.mp4" or ?

Options | File locations.
I specifically set Download to c:\downloads\ & Projects to c:\projects\. Close & restart & Projects reverts to, C:\Documents and Settings\RUBEN\My Documents\My Projects\?

---

#1 project: http://www.seamonkey-project.org/
Told it to download images. Captured four or so.
Captures, thumb index, images display.
All is well.

Change the View mode to Table & the program crashes.

#2 project: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xnsk9R-G2pg
Tell it to download video.
And it downloads #1 again?

Try again ...

Same results?

Close down, restart, give it a URL of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xnsk9R-G2pg, tell it to download Video, & Quick (start or whatever it said).
And it downloads ... I don't know. ALL kinds of stuff scroll by & scroll & scroll, & after a number of minutes (& seemingly not capturing the video?) & stop its progress ... and I don't what it actually downloaded or saved, cause I don't see it?

---

Metaproducts has been around for a long time. I really expected this program to work. To work seamlessly. To not run into issues. Disappointed.

Instead I find illogical, confusing interface. Options not explained or do not work. And a program that is crash happy.

Really disappointed.

Enough.

#31: "How can you know for sure that your images and videos is 100% royalty-free ? There could/would come a day where you meet a person, who is the owner at one of the images/videos that you use and he/she tells you that the image/video is not royalty-free and someone stole it and uploaded the image/video as royalty-free."

Actually that is a sort of specialty in & of itself, not unlike tracking down pre-existing patents. It's so easy however to post & re-post duplicate media content on-line, often with rights not stated or mis-stated, that it can become almost impossible to track ownership down with 100% certainty. Adding more confusion, people have won in court, reinforcing their rights to a work that was derivative of someone else's -- they stole/borrowed someone's work without permission & based their work on that.

At any rate, what you've described can & does happen -- one example that comes to mind was a girl who had an image she posted to Facebook used by a large company in another country on its billboards. Pulling them all down was costly -- at least with a web site you don't incur that sort of expense -- but it's one of those situations where: "What are you gonna do -- what can ya do?". Getting a signed statement from whomever giving you rights to use an image is preferred obviously, but if someone's going to sue, they'll still go after you if you're the one that can pay. I think that may be why many companies only buy from the bigger stock houses -- they're as big or better targets in court.

Other than that it's messy. What if someone takes a copy of an original image of yours, claims ownership, then goes after you for royalties? It's harder to prove knowledge or intent, so *at least currently*, companies like YouTube just yank whatever when they receive a complaint, & they don't suffer any penalties. If you pulled your own picture off your site, I'm no lawyer but I think you'd probably be OK, as long as you hadn't made a bunch of cash selling posters or anything, but should you fight for your rights, in cases I've read about it could get pretty expensive. If you register your (c) it helps [copyright.gov - see their FAQ].

#35 Mike - AFAIK you´re using internet-slang FWIW too much IMHO. BTW is "TMZ" a Soviet motorcycle manufacturere. It sound like robot-talk with limited RAM.
You do post very long comments in this GOTD forum and I do wonder, why do you use all those words to make your statement when you can express yourself with only 50% of the words used !?!

I can´t use todays software as I produce my own photos/flash and watermark them.
For some ppl can it be usefull as not all ppl have a broadband connection.
The free alternative method (Right-Click & Save picture as) increases the price of today's software enormously.

This program will wear out my ‘Ctrl’, ‘Alt’ and ‘Del’ keys! Always crashing! This software would be bad value if it was free, but at $29 it is nothing but a con! Look around and you will find freeware picture downloaders that are not only free, but work also. I use 'Bulk Image Downloader' and It is by far the best one yet!
0/10 for this one -FAIL!

MetaProducts Picture Downloader does what their product page says, using your installed Internet Explorer to parse web sites, & save the kinds of files you specify in separate folders rather than in just ie's cache. If whatever files are protected [like some on-line video] & not saved to an accessible cache, Picture Downloader won't save it either, so if that's what anyone was hoping for, sorry. Like similar apps [or the similar functions Windows has built-in] you set how far links should be followed, & that might be the trickiest part of the whole thing -- cast your net too narrow & you might not get even the content displayed on a web page, but cast too wide & it can seem like you're downloading a good portion of the Internet. You can create/save projects, which is cool if you want to keep you local copy of content from 1 or more sites up to date, or you can browse or search for what you want, & save it then, with a wizard to make it easier. There are setting/filters to save several different file types, or add your own.

Today's GOTD is basically a one file app, though by the time you add a help file, a couple of links etc. the "Metaproducts Picture Downloader" program folder holds 9 files at ~4 MB... 2 new folders are also added to My Documents, & I recorded ~250 new registry entries, made up of an uninstall, program, & several shell & file type keys. You should be able to make it work in the portableapps.com format, but using Internet Explorer it'll probably leave tracks if that matters to you. You might classify MetaProducts Picture Downloader as ad-ware, with ads shown in the program window from the included (My) Documents\ My Downloads\ News\ A4581855-F917-4FCE-A372-5274C1D87772.zip. The program's key is in the User section of Windows registry, & this is where program settings & registration are stored -- the User section is different for the separate Windows profiles you have installed, & may be restricted access depending on your Windows version & settings... you may need to run as admin at least once to enter the license key, but regardless the version, in testing that license key was always stored & seemed to work. And FWIW, MetaProducts Picture Downloader worked with both ie8 & 9.

IMHO Google Images is more efficient for folks looking for something that they can use when they don't/can't bother paying for it, just like using one of the various video downloading tools is more efficient at saving an on-line video. IOW saying these sorts of site downloading apps are only good for (C) infringement is, again IMHO & with all due respect, pretty inaccurate. That said, saving a complete copy of a site can be useful if you're after the info it includes, if you're interested in learning how they coded the pages making up a site, or particularly with apps like MetaProducts Picture Downloader, if you want to quickly collect available images from a wallpaper site for example -- there this GOTD's filters limiting the minimum size could make it even more a help.

OK, another program for free and actually this one could be useful in a surfer's life...

MEEEP! Nope, interface is overly simplyfied, your only input is a single URL from where it starts crawling. That is what I think it'll do because a more prominent feature than leeching pictures is crashing.

An impportant thing is missing: You cannot derive picture URLs from a given pattern.

Funny, they ask for 29$ (!) with programs existing that do a much better job for free (and without crashing).

Verdict: LOL, WTF, GAJ!

Better free alternative:

HTTrack
http://www.httrack.com/

Useless software that keeps on crashing and never works. I am running Windows7 (32bit) I will stick with Bulk Image Downloader myself!

I am the chap who reported the AVG alert on install (comment 6).

I have tried again and I still receive the error (what would now appear to be a false positive).

Anyway. I took 2 screen shot of the error and uploaded to ImageShack.
I thought the developer would be interested.

URLs:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/830/capture2pd.jpg
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/638/captureojn.jpg

Ow man, i can't wait to download this app. Thanks alot Gaotd!

# 3. Harrym


Could you pls be so kind to list some of the free add-ons you mentioned in your message?

Ths in advance.

@moderation

Come on, what is this, even people after me in time, like Fubar get their comment posted. Don't censor, but moderate.

Do you have a meeting about my comment??? Anything wrong with it?
I only ask to prove the claim, that comes right out of the blue, right with some url's

@Harrym, #3: “..so many browser extensions or add-ons that do the same, but for free..it is very hard to see what is the market”

It is very hard to see what you’re talking about, unless you would provide some url’s to stress your statement. Thank you!

Comment by Speex — July 1st, 2011 at 7:47 am

@#26,
May I ask, what specifically number of IE connection settings it change ?
Thanks

right-click save picture as mean anything to anyone?
also can print screen or with windows vista/7 you can use the snipping tool.

Just a note to Ebola (#9 above) - you are a little short sighted about the use of this type of software. I use similar software to today's offering which I originally got from this site that I use to download pictures taken from meetup events that I have attended. These pictures are posted to the site by other attendees to share with everyone else who attended. I prefer to keep copies on my own HD because the owner of the group could at any time decide not to continue the group and then all pictures would disappear.
There are many software offerings here and elsewhere that could be misused but that does not mean there are no legitimate uses as well.

I add this small correction - I do not think it is legal in America, or most other places to possess child pornography, in any form. This I agree with completely, and would even like to see the laws expanded to include other extreme/depraved instances/subjects. There are limits to everything.

Download and install win 7 64bit, tested and worked fine for me. thanks

#26, Fubar - I will check with the developer. As I know, program should not change your existing IE settings. However, if it does, I'll ask the developer to fix this.

Thanks,
Alexander
MetaProducts Corporation

Downloadthemall is an add-on to FF5 (and previous versions) that does all this in one click. It's free at their add-on site. I don't see the sense in using a program outside of your browser anyway.
As far as images/files/etc. go ANYONE CAN DOWNLOAD ANYTHING they can, period. Downloading and looking at any image breaks no laws at all. It's what you do with it afterwards that matters. I have all of the world's best art on my PC, and no one can do anything about it, as long as I keep them to myself, view them myself, write on them myself, deface them myself, improve them myself, as long as I just keep them, there's nothing anyone can do, short of physically attacking my PC. Take everything, only use what's legally yours somewhere else.

#20, Mack Bolan - please check the Help | About dialog. It should state "Registered to: Giveawayoftheday." This means it is registered.

Regarding popups - program shouldn't popup any dialogs to you. It has several announces embedded to the start page, no any popup.

Alexander
MetaProducts Corporation

#12: "If you use someone else’s original image without their express (and not just implied) permission, you could find yourself in some very unpleasant legal trouble, which could end up costing you very dearly – including (but not limited to) civil and criminal penalties, shutdown of your website, and even a few other nasty things that most sane and rational people would usually make every effort to avoid, if at all possible."

In theory, maybe, but FWIW if you use Google/Bing you'll find more than enough instances where the content owner has quite a fight on their hands which may not only be expensive [in time, effort, &/or money], but have zero results -- in reports I've come across when the owner was successful, all they got for their efforts was the image pulled from the (C) violator's site, especially if the people running that site have their own lawyer(s). AFAIK most all the serious (C) consequences are with software, music, & movies, where org like the MPAA have serious clout.

That IS NOT to say feel free to grab whatever images you can & use them however you want, but rather pointing out that in general, when you post content on-line, for most practical purposes you've given it away. You may get partial results if you belong to one of those org like the MPAA, but putting the genie back in the bottle has always been quite hard -- most of the time it's impossible -- & IMHO maybe the only thing you can do about it is heavily watermark like TMZ, so when images show up all over the web it's at least advertising.

Note that FWIW, a notable exception seems to be Facebook, where many reports are that *Any* claims of (C) infringement by *Anyone* can result in your being shut down/banned -- people using bogus ID & info have maliciously shut down the Facebook presence of several legit companies/sites, so Facebook seems the opposite extreme.

11 - Weii said, Don!
Just to clarify one thing - Every image is still copyrighted by the creator of it, but that creator has licensed others to use it under specific conditions without paying any additional fees (royalties)

Royalty-Free images are licensed to the original purchaser (even if they were "purchased" for free from a stock image site's freebie page) The term simply means that no further royalties need to be paid for their use by the licensee. Licenses are not transferrable to a third party. The stock sites know who downloaded what.


14 - Do a search for "royalty-free stock images" and 1000 sites will come up, many of them have freebie sections, and also very reasonable prices for those that require purchase.

I use a lot of free clips and images for my videos on YouTube, and I provide links to those sites as a thank you - but I am licensed to use every single one of them, and I insist that my clients prove ownership of any imsge they want me to use in a video they have commissioned me to create.

This will be a handy program for those free sections of the sites, though, one of them requires a captcha to be entered before downloading a freebir image, to prevent "scraping" programs like this from being used. Other sites limit your daily download to 25 free images per day.

Installed and registered fine on Win 7 Pro 64bit. No virus/trojan alert. I have NIS 2011.

Why cant I just right click and get the photo? Why make it so complicated using this?

#12 Don Hill - You use royalty-free images & videos and let your clients pay you a fortune ? You put out warnings about all kinds of things there´s related to images and videos, but you do use the method yourself ? Is it some kind of flares that you use to confuse ppl with, so they don´t dare to discuss with you ?

If I was one of your clients and I did find out how you´re put the website together then would I find someone else to do the job.

How can you know for sure that your images and videos is 100% royalty-free ? There could/would come a day where you meet a person, who is the owner at one of the images/videos that you use and he/she tells you that the image/video is not royalty-free and someone stole it and uploaded the image/video as royalty-free.

Removed it doesn't provide anything more useful then firefox addon SaveImages which has far more fatures is relatively fast and comes free so IMO not quite worth the price btw der other products mass downloader , offline explorer are good & worth a try.

The program installed and registered on my laptop Win7 (x64) without a problem. Unlike some of the above, I received no warning about malware. LIKE many of the above, the program crashed repeatedly when trying various websites. I normally use Firefox for surfing the internet; this program uses WinIE. I can deal with it. Many of the websites I tested the program on use popups to show particular photo galleries; it seems Picture Downloader can NOT deal with that. I tried with and without the wizard with dismal results. Typically the program downloaded the advertising photos before crashing without ANY of the gallery photos -- every time. The program is a great idea but apparently not equipped to deal with any but the simplest websites. I uninstalled it.

Picture Downloader had a clean install. Not fully Vista+ compliant, no Aero support and some virtualization (attempt to write to Program Files). I don't like that it changes IE's number of connection settings. I find it to be cumbersome compared to some picture downloaders, but it handles more than pictures and it has very sophisticated script/media processing.

Using the internal browser, which will be IE, you can enter a normal full URL into the address box. However, if you use New Project, you have to leave off the http:// or you'll get an error, which is just stupid.

VirusTotal has a clean listing for this. A couple of false positives on low-rated scanners is meaningless.

Clearly, many people don't understand how extensively these types of downloaders search. Blogspot doesn't have "20 pages", it's Google. I never had any problem with stopping searches.

I may delete the IE connection limits which this adds, but otherwise I'll keep it for its parsing abilities.

@14 (Dorothy) - 2 good friendly Sites I would recommend (not necessarily for the "purpose" of Today's Giveaway) are: "Desktop Nexus Wallpapers" and "wallpaperswide.com" - have Fun!:) -- We are often paid Members of other Professional Photos Sites because of great Communities there and first hand Tutorials from Pro Artists.