"Has anyone found a fast and ethical image scraper?"
Alright, so I’ve been digging around for a decent image scraper (lol, typo but leaving it) that doesn’t feel sketchy or slow as molasses.
Most free ones either bomb halfway through or get you blocked. And the "ethical" ones? Some are just glorified downloaders with a fancy label.
Anyone got a rec for something that’s actually fast *and* respects robots.txt? Or am I dreaming too big here?
Bonus points if it doesn’t require a PhD to set up. 😅
(Also, pls no "just google it" replies—already been there, done that.)
I've had good luck with Fatkun Batch Downloader (Chrome extension). It's pretty fast and lets you filter by size/format.
Not sure if it checks robots.txt automatically, but you can manually respect it by avoiding forbidden sites.
Plus, it's free and doesn't require coding. Might be worth a shot for your image scraper needs!
Ugh, I feel you. Most image scrapers either crawl at a snail's pace or ignore ethics entirely.
Try Scrapy with a custom middleware for robots.txt compliance. It’s not *super* simple, but there are tutorials to make it less PhD-ish.
If you want pre-built, maybe check out ParseHub? It’s more visual and decent for ethical scraping.
Honestly, "fast and ethical image scraper" is like finding a unicorn.
But Octoparse has a free tier that’s surprisingly good. It respects robots.txt and is faster than most. Downside? The UI is a bit clunky.
If you’re tech-savvy, BeautifulSoup + requests lib (Python) is lightweight and you can tweak speed vs. politeness.
Have you tried ImageAssistant? It’s a browser add-on that’s stupid simple.
Not sure about robots.txt, but it’s fast and doesn’t feel shady. Works great for batch downloads.
For more control, maybe look into Apify’s scraping tools—they’ve got ethical defaults but cost $$$.
Lol @ "glorified downloaders with a fancy label." So true.
For a no-code option, try OutWit Hub. It’s not perfect, but it’s decent for quick image scraping and has a robots.txt checker.
If you’re okay with Python, grab the ‘scrapy-respect-robots’ plugin. Makes life easier.
Yo, check out Gallery-DL (command-line tool). It’s *blazing* fast and respects site rules.
Steep learning curve if you hate terminals, but once you get it, it’s a game-changer for ethical image scraping.
Bonus: supports like 500+ sites outta the box.
"PhD to set up" killed me 😂.
Try SiteBulb’s crawler—it’s meant for SEO but works for images too. Not free, but they have a trial.
Otherwise, maybe just hire a freelancer to whip up a custom scraper? Sometimes it’s worth the $ to avoid headaches.
OP here—thanks for all the recs!
Tried Fatkun and it’s *almost* perfect, but hit a few blocks with bigger sites.
Gonna test Octoparse next. Anyone know if it plays nice with dynamic content (e.g., lazy-loaded images)?
Also, big shoutout to the Python suggestions—might finally bite the bullet and learn it. 😅
PicPick isn’t a scraper per se, but it’s great for quick bulk downloads if you’re manually selecting sources.
For automation, I’d second Scrapy + middleware. It’s the closest to "fast and ethical" I’ve found.
Avoid those sketchy "one-click" scrapers—they’re usually just spam traps.
