Due to the sheer number of potential sites and sources that artists tend to post to, it becomes particularly difficult to locate & extract the highest quality version out there to post here on e621.
The purpose of this thread is (hopefully) for the community to share any useful userscripts, browser extensions, online tools, or external applications that they know which can help improve the sourcing process, including:
- Anything that helps the user to navigate through the various websites smoothly or efficiently,
- Downloading the desired content in the highest available quality,
- Any tools that help to modify or convert the file in order to meet filetype or filesize demands.
(P.S. I understand that there is already a tools section on the Sites and Sources page, but it is quite limited and may be outdated/outperformed by other tools.)
(P.P.S. If you suspect any of the listed tools to be malicious/untrustworthy, do voice your concern so that they may be removed from the list.)
Userscripts
Tarrgon's Bluesky Redirect Script (Bluesky)
- For getting the highest-quality version from Bluesky. See topic #56919.
Twitter View Original Images (Twitter/X)
- For getting the highest-quality version from Twitter/X. Forked from the popular but abandoned script by furyutei.
- Note: Allows you to download images at a click or to view all images in one screen, as opposed to the X's atrocious built-in viewer. Personally, I tweak the script's "Default action on click" setting to "Display one image per page", so clicking on the image itself would instantly give you the original image in a new tab.
Browser Extensions
Display Reddit images natively in browser (Reddit) (Chrome, Edge)
- Note: Simple extension that opens the proper direct-image link (i.e., i.redd.it) when you open the image on a new tab, rather than showing Reddit's image previewer. Does not automatically change the direct-image link for gallery posts (i.e., still shows it as preview.redd.it), requiring you to manually change it to i.redd.it to be whitelisted.
- Note: Alternative extension for Firefox users, Load Reddit Images Directly.
Online Tools
External Applications
Avidemux (Video Editor/Converter)
- Avidemux is a free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding tasks.
- Note: Helpful for trimming and/or converting videos.
YT-DLP (Video Downloader)
- YT-DLP is a feature-rich command-line audio/video downloader with support for thousands of sites. The project is a fork of youtube-dl based on the now inactive youtube-dlc.
- Note: Basically a better version of youtube-dl and is still being actively developed. Supports downloading from Youtube and many other sites.