Hitomi Downloader

Download utilities occupy quite an interesting niche on the software market: web-based downloaders exist to make things more convenient, but dedicated software should offer more functions and control, at least in theory. While there's no shortage of video and photo downloaders alike, picking something that works both ways isn't as easy as it might look.

Hitomi Downloader is such a utility, and it can download both photos and videos from a large variety of sites, all while delegating a lot of control to the end user. It can download all the images from a given link, compress and resize them, as well as save videos from many websites at the highest possible resolution, all free-of-charge.

The program is portable, which means that no installation is required. Launch the executable, and start pasting the links you want to download stuff from. Interface-wise, it's all very intuitive, and pasting your URLs will automatically add them to the queue. Whether it is a video or a photo you want to download, the tool has got you covered.

If you input a URL where there are multiple photos and videos, the program will download all of them to your drive. You can preview and cycle through the downloaded content from the interface. It's not just YouTube and Instagram that the program supports: a generously-sized list of supported websites can be found in the General menu, under Preferences.

The Advanced menu is also generous with regard to the freedom it affords the user: you can resize, exclude certain file types, as well as change the format for your image files before they're even downloaded. You can have the program compress your photos and archive them for easier storing, and associating the utility with torrent files is also possible.

What's more, users can set a program password to lock out prying eyes, and the Duplicate Image Finder functionality ensures that each photo they download is unique.

Hitomi Downloader is a trusty and surprisingly versatile utility, capable of saving images and videos from a medley of websites to your drive, free-of-charge.