Reviewer, 2008-10-14 08:59:00

A “zero-click” web image downloader.

Pros: PictureImp is a tool to enable easy downloading of images from the web. Once the application is started it hovers over the web browser window as a basket and one need only drag-and-drop desired images into. These images are automatically saved (without requiring user input) into a predefined folder. To save into different folders you can customize it to have more than one saving location and more than one basket (each for a different directory) will appear. One can setup a naming template for how files that are being saved will be named. It will work for almost any website that allows saving of images (that is one that has an “save image as” option). Note that images which actually link to other web-pages will not be saved – essentially the program works by directly saving from the link that the image is pointing at, if that is a hyperlink, then it cannot do so. The simple hovering basket makes it one of the easiest user interfaces around.

Cons: The Publisher’s description sells it as a “zero-click” solution to web image downloading needs, but in effect dragging-and-dropping also requires mouse-clicks. However, that said, it does improve the image downloading process greatly. However, it is for a particular kind of user who is an image enthusiast (say for a person interested in downloading a number of images from a particular nature image website), and who likes to store most images in one (or a few) directories. In practice, one often creates a separate folder for a particular image as and when the need arises. You can of course choose to save images into a directory and sort them later, but that is kind of counter-productive, given especially the tag-line.

Overall: 4 stars. Works well, does what it is designed to do. Easiest interface in the world. But limited use.