Downscale Images to Save Space
A thousand full-resolution product photos can consume gigabytes you never needed. If the images are headed for a newsletter, thumbnail grid, or slide deck, storing 4000-pixel originals is wasted disk. To downscale images to save space, enable resize during download so only the smaller versions are saved.
Bulk Image Downloader From URL List resizes in the browser with Canvas processing in Web Workers. Nothing is uploaded to a cloud resize service.
Step 1: decide the target size for the job
Match output to use case before you touch settings. A blog inline might need 1200 px max width; a thumbnail catalog might cap at 400 px. Newsletter and social assets rarely need full camera resolution. Write down the max dimension first so you do not over-shrink or under-shrink the batch.
Step 2: enable Resize on the task
Turn on Resize on the task card. Set max width and/or max height, then choose a fit mode:
- Fit Inside — scales down proportionally within the box; nothing stretches
- Cover — fills the box and crops overflow
- Fill — stretches to exact width and height
Pick an output format (JPEG, WebP, or PNG) and set quality from 1–100%. Lower quality saves more space on JPEG and WebP output. Per-task resize concurrency runs 1–15 images at once in Web Workers.
Step 3: clean the URL list first
Resizing dead links wastes CPU. Run the 404 checker and URL deduplication before download. Copy reachable URLs into the task manually—the checker does not auto re-import.
Step 4: know what cannot combine with resize
Resize and Convert are mutually exclusive on the same task. You cannot downscale and change format in one pass—run two tasks if you need both. Strip EXIF applies when neither resize nor convert is enabled. Format conversion to JPG for legacy apps belongs in a separate convert-only task after resize, or vice versa.
Step 5: download and package the smaller set
Start the task. Enable per-task ZIP for large batches so hundreds of resized files arrive as one archive. Use Auto Folders and the Filename Constructor to keep output sorted. The savings compound: shrinking a thousand web-bound photos from multi-megapixel originals to sensible max dimensions can turn a multi-gigabyte folder into hundreds of megabytes.
When to keep originals instead
Skip downscaling when you need maximum detail for print, archival masters, or re-cropping later. Resize-on-download is for deliverables with a known display size, not for preserving every pixel forever.
Install the Chrome extension when disk space matters and web-sized files are all you need.
If you want the downscale to run unattended
Resize work can be put on a timer rather than started by hand. Set a time waits until a future minute on this computer, and the time you pick has to be at least two minutes ahead. Chrome must stay open for it to run. A timed download is not an AI job, so an AI batch will not run on that schedule.
The trade-off is that a schedule is a promise about your machine, not the server. If Chrome closes or the computer sleeps before the minute arrives, the downscale does not start, and the source list is unchanged. For a batch you want done before a deadline, confirm the timer actually fired rather than assuming it did.
Continue reading: Perceptual Image Hashing.