Batch Download Images using Wget

If you are comfortable with Access, SQL queries, or Excel, you can easily set up a batch file to download a large number of images from a website automatically with the wget.exe command line tool.

In your database or spreadsheet, just create a new field that generates output like this:

wget.exe -N -q -O widget-acme.jpg http://yimg.com/image11212
wget.exe -N -q -O foo-product.jpg http://yimg.com/image34324
wget.exe -N -q -O bar-product.jpg http://yimg.com/image56575

The above command downloads the URL and saves it with the specified file name in quiet mode. The -N switch tells it to skip the download if the file has already been downloaded and is up-to-date (based on time-stamping).

Next, copy and paste that column into notepad and save it with a .bat file extension.

Download wget.exe and put it in the same folder as the batch file.

Double-click the batch file to run it and wait for the images to download.

You can press Ctrl+C to cancel execution. Just double-click the batch file again to resume the downloads, and it will pick up where it left off.

If you run the batch file again after several weeks, only the images that have changed on the website since the last download will be re-downloaded, saving time.

See the following article for an example: Can I backup, download, or export all my Yahoo store images?.