How to Bulk Download Images for Midjourney References

Every serious AI artist eventually hits the same wall: you have a clear vision for a piece, you know the style you want to reference, and then you spend forty minutes right-clicking images one at a time on Pinterest. By the time you have a folder worth using, the creative momentum is gone and the filenames are a disaster. There is a faster way, and it starts with treating reference collection as a repeatable workflow instead of a manual chore.

The Problem with Manual Reference Collection

Right-clicking images one at a time is the default approach because it is obvious and requires no setup. It is also a trap. A useful Midjourney reference pack typically needs at least twenty to forty images to give the model enough signal to work with, and right-clicking that many images across two or three different sources turns into a half-hour task before you have even opened Midjourney.

The hidden costs go beyond time. When you save images manually, you get whatever filename the browser assigns, which is usually a hash or a generic sequence number that tells you nothing about the image content, the source site, or the dimensions. Mix images from Pinterest, ArtStation, and a random design blog and you end up with a folder where img_4892.jpg sits next to 1234567890abcdef.webp and you have no idea which is which.

Duplicates compound the problem. Platforms like Pinterest and Behance frequently surface the same popular image across multiple boards and searches. If you collect manually over several sessions, you will almost certainly end up with the same image saved three times under three different filenames, taking up space and adding noise to your reference set without adding new information.

The result is a reference folder that is technically full but practically hard to use. You spend extra time before every generation pass just sorting out what you actually have.

What a Good Reference Set Actually Needs

Before building a collection workflow, it helps to think clearly about what makes a reference pack actually useful for AI art generation. Four things matter most.

• Consistent resolution. Midjourney and similar models can read style and composition from relatively small images, but feeding in a mix of 80-pixel thumbnails alongside 2000-pixel full images creates an uneven reference signal. As a working minimum, aim for images that are at least 400 pixels on the shorter side, and prefer anything 800 pixels or wider for full compositional references.
• Coherent aspect ratio. If you are generating landscape scenes, a reference pack full of portrait-format images will pull the model in a direction you do not want. Keeping aspect ratios roughly consistent within a pack, or at least within a sub-folder, makes the reference signal much cleaner.
• Sensible filenames. A filename like atmospheric-lighting-artstation-1200x900.jpg tells you the subject, source, and dimensions at a glance. A filename like image (47).jpg tells you nothing. Good naming pays dividends when you return to a pack weeks later or share it with a collaborator.
• No duplicates. Duplicate images do not add reference diversity, they just make the pack larger and make it harder to see how many truly distinct references you have. Deduplication should happen at collection time, not as a cleanup task afterward.

These four requirements point directly at the limitations of manual right-click saving, and they are exactly what a proper bulk download workflow addresses.

The Workflow with Bulk Image Downloader

Bulk Image Downloader (BID) is a free Manifest V3 Chrome extension that scans any open page for every image it can find, including images loaded as CSS backgrounds, images specified in srcset and picture elements, data URIs, and modern formats like WebP and AVIF. That breadth matters on platforms like ArtStation and Behance, which often serve full-resolution images through non-standard markup that a simple right-click menu will miss entirely.

The core workflow for building a reference pack is straightforward.

• Open the source page. A Pinterest board, an ArtStation profile, a Behance project, or any gallery page works. Scroll down far enough to load all the images you want to capture.
• Click the BID icon to open the preview gallery. You will see every image the scanner found on the page, with dimensions shown under each thumbnail.
• Set a minimum width and minimum height filter to drop thumbnails and icons. For Midjourney reference work, a minimum of 400 pixels on each side is a reasonable starting point. If you are collecting for detailed style references, push that to 800 pixels.
• Apply any file-type filters you need. If you want only JPEG and PNG files and want to skip WebP conversions for now, you can filter to those formats specifically.
• Set a filename pattern. BID supports tokens including the page hostname, page title, image dimensions, and a sequential index. A pattern like {hostname}-{width}x{height}-{index} produces files you can sort and identify without opening them.
• Click download. BID packages everything into a ZIP file, so the download arrives as a single organized archive rather than a browser-managed pile of individual files.

For source-specific tips, there are dedicated guides covering downloading from Behance and downloading from Dribbble that walk through platform-specific quirks in detail. The general principle of bulk downloading images from any page applies across virtually any gallery or portfolio site.

The free tier of BID allows 25 downloads per day, which covers a focused single-session reference pull comfortably. If you are building packs across multiple platforms in a single session, the Pro bundle removes the daily cap and adds deduplication.

Organizing Your Downloads for Midjourney

Once the ZIP lands, a few minutes of organization before you start generating saves a lot of confusion later. The structure that works best for most workflows separates references by their intended function.

A simple top-level folder layout looks like this:

• refs/
  • style/ - Images you intend to use for overall aesthetic direction (lighting mood, color palette, brushstroke quality, rendering style)
  • character/ - Images of specific people, creatures, or character designs you want to maintain visual consistency for
  • composition/ - Images chosen specifically for their framing, perspective, or spatial arrangement

This separation maps directly onto how Midjourney uses reference images. When you include an image URL in a prompt, Midjourney uses it to influence the generation broadly, blending elements of style and composition from the reference. The --sref parameter (style reference) is more targeted: it directs the model to pull stylistic qualities from the referenced image while following your text prompt for subject matter. The --cref parameter (character reference) focuses the influence on maintaining a consistent character appearance across generations.

Keeping your style references and character references in separate sub-folders means you always know which images to reach for when you are setting up a --sref chain versus a --cref chain. It also makes it easier to swap in alternative style references without accidentally pulling in character images that would muddy the result.

For naming within those folders, the BID filename tokens already do most of the work if you set them up before downloading. A name like artstation-1920x1080-042.jpg tells you the source, the resolution, and the sequence position within that batch. If you are pulling from multiple sources in one session, add a short source tag to the pattern: behance-{width}x{height}-{index}, pinterest-{width}x{height}-{index}, and so on.

Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

Even with a solid workflow, a few recurring mistakes trip up otherwise careful reference collectors.

Grabbing thumbnails instead of full images. Pinterest and similar platforms load small preview thumbnails first, then swap in larger images as you interact with a pin. If you run BID before those larger images have loaded, the scanner may catch only the thumbnails. The fix is to scroll slowly through the page, giving each image a moment to load its higher-resolution version, before triggering the scan. The minimum-dimension filter in BID acts as a second safety net: setting a minimum width of 600 pixels will automatically exclude anything that is still at thumbnail resolution.

Mixing aspect ratios with no plan. A reference pack where half the images are 1:1 square crops and half are 16:9 widescreen shots sends a mixed compositional signal to the model. This is not always bad, but if you have a specific output ratio in mind, filtering to images that roughly match that ratio before downloading saves you from manually curating the pack afterward. BID includes an aspect ratio filter for exactly this reason.

Accumulating duplicates across sessions. The first time you pull from a source, duplicates are rarely a problem. But if you return to the same Pinterest board two weeks later after it has been updated, or if you pull from two different boards that share popular pins, you will start collecting the same images under different filenames. The Pro deduplication feature in Bulk Image Downloader checks image content rather than filename, so it catches duplicates even when the source site serves the same image from a different URL or with a different filename each time. Without deduplication, a 200-image pack can easily contain thirty or forty true duplicates that add nothing to the reference diversity.

The Pro Workflow: Filters, Dedupe, and ZIP

The individual features in BID are useful on their own. Combined in a single pass, they compound into something that changes how quickly you can build reference packs from scratch.

A typical Pro session for a new reference pack looks like this: open three or four sources in separate tabs (an ArtStation profile, a Behance project, a curated Pinterest board), set consistent filter parameters across all four scans (minimum 800px wide, target file types, a matching filename token pattern), let deduplication run across the combined set, and download everything as a single ZIP. What would have taken forty-five minutes of right-clicking and manual renaming takes under five minutes.

The compounding benefit shows up when you build many reference packs over time. A one-off pack is a one-off time savings. But if you work across multiple projects, multiple clients, or multiple generative styles, and you are building a new reference pack for each major creative direction, the workflow difference adds up to hours per week. Packs that you would have skipped building because the effort did not feel worth it for a short project become trivial to produce.

There is also a quality compounding effect. Because filtering and deduplication happen at collection time rather than as a post-processing step, you start every generation session with a cleaner set. Cleaner sets produce more consistent generation results, which means fewer regeneration passes, which means more output in less time.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where are the best sources for Midjourney reference images?

ArtStation and Behance are the strongest sources for high-quality, full-resolution images from professional illustrators, concept artists, and designers. Pinterest is useful for aggregating references across many styles quickly, though you need to watch out for thumbnail traps (see the pitfalls section above). Dribbble works well for UI and graphic design references. For photography references, Unsplash and Pexels provide high-resolution images that are openly licensed, so you can share reference packs without worrying about rights. For very specific styles, directly visiting the portfolio sites of artists whose work you admire often gives you cleaner, higher-resolution images than any aggregator platform.

What resolution do reference images actually need to be?

There is no hard minimum published by Midjourney, but the practical floor for useful style and composition references is around 512 pixels on the shorter side. Below that, the model has limited compositional information to work with. For character references where you need accurate facial feature or costume detail, aim for 800 pixels or wider. Full high-resolution images (1500 pixels and above) do not hurt, and for detailed texture or lighting studies they genuinely help, so if you have the storage, favor quality over compression.

How do image prompts and --sref work at a high level?

In Midjourney, you can include an image URL directly in your prompt alongside your text description. When you do this, the model blends the visual qualities of that reference image with the direction from your text, treating both as inputs. The --sref parameter gives you a more targeted way to apply style references: it tells the model to pull the aesthetic qualities (color palette, lighting approach, rendering style, textural feel) from the referenced image while staying focused on your text description for subject matter and composition. The --cref parameter works similarly but focuses specifically on maintaining consistent character appearance across multiple generations, which is especially useful for character design work where you want the same face or costume to appear across different poses and scenes. Both parameters accept image URLs, which is why having your reference images hosted somewhere accessible (or uploaded directly through the Midjourney interface) is part of the workflow.

How do I avoid ending up with duplicate images in my reference packs?

The most reliable approach is to use content-based deduplication at download time rather than trying to sort through duplicates manually afterward. Bulk Image Downloader Pro includes a dedupe feature that compares image content rather than filenames, so it catches the same image served from different URLs or with different filenames. If you are using the free tier, one manual approach is to sort downloaded files by file size after downloading: true duplicates will have identical file sizes, which makes them easy to spot and remove in bulk using File Explorer's grouping tools.

Can I download a whole Pinterest board at once?

Yes, with some preparation. Pinterest loads images lazily as you scroll, so you need to scroll through the entire board before running a BID scan to make sure all images are loaded into the page. For very large boards (hundreds of pins), this can take a few minutes of slow scrolling. Once the board is fully loaded, BID will scan and capture every image it finds on the page. Apply a minimum-dimension filter to exclude the small decorative thumbnails Pinterest uses in its UI, and you will get a clean set of the actual pin images. The resulting ZIP will be organized by your chosen filename pattern rather than the board's original ordering, so set a meaningful pattern before you download.