How to integrate picurl into Windows Explorer

You indexed your photo collection with picurl, but now you need a convenient download method for retrieving certain source images? This tutorial shows how to add picurl download functionality to the Windows Explorer context menu - this makes downloading with picurl a breeze.

Prerequisites

We assume that you successfully installed picurl and that picurl.exe is on the Windows PATH.

Step 1: Create picurl-download.bat

Navigate to the directory where you installed picurl (likely c:\Program Files\picurl), right-click on the explorer pane and select New -> Text Document. Now copy these two lines to the editor window that opened up:

picurl-client download_images %*
PAUSE

and save the file as picurl-download.bat (make sure you set the file type to Any File).

Step 2: Add picurl to your Explorer Context Menu

Open Start -> Run, paste this into the text field and press <ENTER>:

%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%\SendTo

This command will take you to your Windows user directory, more precisely to the SendTo-Subfolder. In this directory the entries of the Send To... Explorer menu are saved.

To add picurl to this menu, simply create a new shortcut by clicking on the explorer pane and selecting New -> Shortcut.

Hit the Browse-Button and navigate to your picurl folder. Select the newly created picurl-download.bat.

Enter Download with picurl as name for the shortcut and finish the shortcut assistant.

Step 3: Right-click and download

Now for the fun part: select -> right click -> download.

Navigate to the folder you extracted the placeholder thumbnails when you indexed your photo store(s). You should change the directory listing to Miniature View so that you can preview all existing thumbnails.

Select one or more placeholder thumbnails.

• You can select a consecutive sequence (e.g. photo001.jpg - photo009.jpg) of thumbnails by clicking on the first item, holding down the Shift key and clicking on the last item.

• You can select an arbitrary sequence (e.g. photo001.jpg, photo999.jpg, photo172.jpg) by clicking on the first item and holding down the Ctrl key while clicking on all other items.

When you finished your selection, simply right-click and select Send to -> Download with picurl. A black window (aka DOS box) will pop up and inform you about the download progress or errors that occured. Simply hit <ENTER> and the window will disappear.

TADAAAA! You sucessfully simplified the picurl download process!