If your project requires collecting hundreds or thousands of product photos, a bulk image download extension can cut tedious clicking and file handling. I used Image Downloader Pro to gather 2,400 images for a seasonal catalog and finished the job on a single workstation. This article walks through the exact workflow I used, the extension controls that helped, and the manual steps you still need to do outside the extension.
Project brief and initial decisions
Project: collect high-resolution primary and variant images for 600 product identifier across three category pages and product galleries. Deliverables: a ZIP per category containing image files, and a CSV that lists each file with its source URL, original filename, dimensions, and file size. The site did not expose product identifier in filenames or page markup, so I planned a short manual product identifier mapping step after export.
Organize tabs and choose a scan approach
Start by opening the category pages and any product pages that require interaction. Image Downloader Pro provides a Mass Scan that can target all open tabs or an imported list of URLs. For mostly static pages, run a Mass Scan across all open tabs. For product pages with sliders or galleries, open the gallery, click each thumbnail to force the image to load, then run a scan on that active tab or use the extension popup while the gallery is visible.
My rule of thumb: split scans by logical groups such as category. For this project I ran three scans, one per category. Smaller scans produced cleaner results and made filtering faster than one giant scan across every open tab.
Apply filters to focus candidate images
Without filters, scans include thumbnails, icons, and UI images you do not want. The extension supports filtering by minimum and maximum width, height, file size, file type, and orientation. Use combinations that match your deliverable:
- Minimum width and height: I used 800 x 800 to exclude thumbnails and small gallery previews.
- File type: include only JPG and PNG for this catalog. Hide SVGs when they are decorative or vector icons.
- Minimum file size: 50 KB to exclude placeholders and tiny assets produced by lazy-loading.
- Orientation: keep both unless your catalog uses only landscape shots; mark portrait images for later review.
These filters reduce noise so you can preview and select faster. The extension also offers sorting by pixel count to surface larger files first.
Best-version toggle, preview, and favorites
When the same image appears in multiple sizes, enable the best-version toggle to show the largest detected copy for each image group. Use the popup preview to confirm resolution and crop. As you confirm items, add them to Favorites and create a folder per category within the extension Library. Organizing favorites before export prevents mixing categories into a single ZIP and keeps each export scoped to a deliverable.
Good to know: The extension hides exact byte-identical duplicates using SHA-256, but near-duplicate variants still appear; use the visual-similarity view to inspect groups before export.
Rename files using tokens and plan product identifier mapping
Decide your filename pattern before export. The extension supports tokens such as domain, original filename, dimensions, pixel count, index, date, and time. For this project I used a pattern like category_domain_originalfilename_widthxheight_index. That produced unique, sortable filenames while preserving the original name for traceability.
Important limit: the extension does not infer product identifier or create product identifier-to-file mappings automatically. If you need product identifier-level filenames, you must either have product identifier present in the original filenames or do a manual mapping step after export. For our 600 product identifier I exported the CSV and performed a quick spreadsheet match using page titles and original filenames as keys. That manual pass took about 45 minutes and included a few manual lookups for edge cases.
Download routing, ZIP export, and CSV specifics
Download rules can route matching files into subfolders inside your browser Downloads folder. Use that to keep category exports separated on your machine. Note that routing places files in the local Downloads tree and does not create nested folder hierarchies inside a ZIP. When you export a ZIP from the extension, it contains a source-site folder and the downloaded files.
Export the CSV alongside your ZIP. The CSV export has selectable columns such as image URL, original filename, optional renamed filename, type, dimensions, file size, page title, and alt text. The CSV does not include a product identifier column or an automatic product identifier-to-product mapping. It also is not attached automatically to the ZIP; download the CSV and ZIP separately if you want them together.
Handling images that do not appear in scans
Some images are loaded dynamically, protected behind authentication, or delivered by server-side APIs. The extension can only see what the browser can access. Practical tactics for these cases:
- Interact with the page first: open sliders, click thumbnails, or scroll to trigger lazy-loaded images, then re-run the scan on that tab.
- If images load via XHR calls after interaction, open DevTools, reproduce the action, inspect the Network tab for image URLs, copy those URLs into a text list, and import them into the extension using the Mass Scan import feature.
- For images behind login, run the scan from a browser session where you are already authenticated. The extension can only access resources the browser itself can fetch.
These methods often recover images the first scan missed, but they do not guarantee access to server-only originals or assets blocked by CORS or other protections.
Remove duplicates and choose primaries
Before final export, hide byte-identical duplicates using the SHA-256 option. Then inspect visual-similarity groups to find near-duplicates such as different crops, watermarked versions, or color variants. For a catalog, decide one primary image per product identifier and flag any acceptable variants. A practical QC step is to sort by pixel count and preview the top 10 largest images per category to confirm you selected true originals and not large decorative graphics.
Example timeline and effort estimate
For our 2,400-image project across 600 product identifier, the rough timeline on a single machine looked like this:
- Open tabs and run three Mass Scans: 30 minutes total, including interaction with galleries.
- Filtering and previewing with best-version toggle: 60 minutes.
- Organizing Favorites into category folders and final duplicate review: 30 minutes.
- Export ZIPs and CSVs and perform product identifier mapping in a spreadsheet: 45 minutes.
Times will vary by site complexity, the number of gated assets, and how cleanly product pages expose images.
Practical checklist before you export
- Open category tabs and any product pages that require interaction.
- Mass Scan open tabs or import a list of URLs.
- Apply filters for minimum width, height, file type, and file size.
- Enable best-version, preview images, and add selected items to Favorites.
- Hide byte-identical duplicates and review visual-similarity groups.
- Set filename tokens and download routing rules to your Downloads folder.
- Export ZIP per category and export the CSV with the columns you need.
- Perform manual product identifier mapping in your spreadsheet using the CSV as the starting point.
Legal and technical reminders
The extension does not determine usage rights. Downloading an image does not license it. Confirm rights with content owners before using images beyond internal review. Also keep in mind that not every original-resolution image will be discoverable; protected, server-only, or cross-domain assets may be unreachable from the browser.
For documentation on Mass Scan, renaming tokens, and CSV export, see Image Downloader Pro documentation: Image Downloader Pro documentation. To try the extension, visit the product page: Image Downloader Pro.
If you want to test this exact workflow, start with one category, export its ZIP and CSV, and run the product identifier mapping on that sample. That small test validates your filters, naming tokens, and mapping approach before you scale to the full catalog.