Have you ever been looking at a low-quality image online, and wished you could find the original high-quality version? Embiggener can solve this problem; in just one click, it will take you to the highest quality version of any image hosted on a supported website. When Embiggener sees an image it supports, the icon will light up, letting you know you can click it for a better image.
For now, this extension only supports Chromium-based browsers (e.g. Google Chrome, Vivaldi, etc). I'll probably add support for other browsers soon. You can find it here on the Chrome Web Store: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/embiggener/acmhbchjmkgmkoghdcdhhdaehkfpkpjc. You can also download it as a .crx file from the releases page. (Note: Google Chrome for Windows/Mac no longer allows you to install .crx files. You can only use this .crx file on Chrome for Linux or on other Chromium-based browsers.)
It's also possible to install the latest version of the code in developer mode. Download this repository to your computer (either by clicking the "Download ZIP" button and unzipping, or by using git clone). Go to chrome://extensions/ in your web browser and turn on developer mode with the toggle switch. Click "Load unpacked" and select the directory where you downloaded this repository.
How does Embiggener work?
Embiggener has a knowledge base of the rules and patterns that dictate the URLs of images on many popular websites, and uses this information to generate the URL of the highest-quality version of an image. Unlike Google Images reverse search, Embiggener does not rely on web crawling, so it can often find URLs that had never appeared on any public site before.
Depending on the website, the rules can be very simple or very complex. For images from Discord, for example, Embiggener simply removes the width and height parameters from the URL, causing it to fall back to the maximum width and height. Other sites can be more complex, such as Amazon, which uses several different file organization systems in tandem.
What sites does Embiggener support?
Some popular supported sites include Twitter, Amazon, CNN, eBay, Tumblr, YouTube (for video thumbnails), New York Times, Washington Post, and ESPN. There are many many more, and new sites are being added regularly, so please check the modules/parsers directory for a complete listing. Note that some parsers in that directoryactually represent a collection of sites:
- Amazon.js supports Amazon.com and IMDb (and possibly other Amazon properties).
- Gannett.js supports all newspapers in the USA Today Network.
- SportsEngine.js supports all teams and leagues using the SportsEngine system (for example, the United Soccer League).
- VoxMedia.js supports all Vox Media properties (The Verge, Vox, SBNation, Eater, Polygon, etc).
- Wikimedia.js supports all Wikimedia Foundation projects, including Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikisource, Wikidata, etc.
Why don't you support [my favorite site]?
There are two possibilities: A) I simply haven't gotten to that site yet, or B) there is some technical obstacle with that site. This project is very young, so it's probably A; feel free to create a new issue and request it (please search to see if an issue for that site already exists).
However, it might be that your site is difficult or impossible to support. Some sites use completely random URLs that lack any usable information; some sites use signed URLs which prevent manipulation; and some sites simply don't store their images in high quality. There are a few sites that I know to be resistant to embiggening, including:
- Reddit. Reddit's "thumbs" server only stores one size of images, and their "external preview" server uses signed URLs that cannot be edited. Nothing in any of the URLs has any relation to the original Reddit post, so there's not much we can do.
- Instagram. Instagram's URLs look like they might be signed; I wasn't getting anywhere with them (though I didn't try for very long).
- Wall Street Journal. WSJ's URL format is very odd, and it seems like different resolutions can have different names (which is not automatable). Further research needed.
All code in this repository is available under the MIT License.
MIT License
Copyright (c) 2018 Hayden Schiff (oxguy3)
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
The extension's icon is the 'action-insert-image' icon from Oxygen Icons, and is free to use under the GNU Lesser General Public License.