The Image Collector is divided into three sections. There is the Services list, the Categories list, and the Items list. These sections are described below.

Services List

The Services list contains the services that were found when TIC started. The services are contained within Service plugins; because they are plugins, adding new services is as simple as installing new plugins.

Left-click on a service to make it the active one, and either double-click on it with the left mouse button (the initial click-to-activate click isn't required in this case), press the Space key, or click on the red download button to begin fetching images. Note that the fetched images are a snapshop of the service's currently available images, so fetching again is likely to result in different (newer) images being downloaded.

The toolbar above the Services list contains various functions relating to the currently active service. Hovering the mouse cursor over a button will give you a small description on its purpose.

Some services provide a menu (appearing in the toolbar as the service's icon, with a small downwards arrow to its right) that allows access to further sets of images from that particular service. If available, clicking on the button will display a menu; select a sub-area and then perform another download and the Items list will be populated with those new images.

Items List

The Items list contains the list of available images that were fetched from the currently active service. They are thumbnailed versions of the full-sized images, to save bandwidth and increase the fetching speed.

Previewing An Item

To download the fullsize version of an item, either left-click on it (by default; this can be changed within the Settings window, via the Tools menu) or select it using the cursor keys and press Enter on the keyboard. TIC will then show a progress bar at the bottom of the main window, showing how long it will take to fully download. Once downloaded, the Viewer window will appear showing you the fullsized version of the image.

Downloading An Item

To permanently download the fullsize version of an item to disk, a category should be selected from within the Categories list. Once selected, right-clicking (by default; this can be changed within the Settings window, via the Tools menu) on an item will begin the downloading process. Like previewing, TIC will display a progress bar during the download; once downloaded, TIC will update its statusbar at the bottom of its window to alert you that your download has completed.

Queuing

TIC supports the queuing of downloads. If you would like to download multiple images in succession, you can just left-click on them in order and they will be placed within the queue for downloading. There is no need to wait for the current download to finish before selecting additional items.

Categories List

The Categories list allows the quick and easy categorisation of items. The list of categories can be modified by either selecting the Categories item from the Tools menu or by pressing the F2 key.

A category points to a location on disk (or elsewhere) that an item will be placed if downloaded. To download an item to a specific category, left-click on the category within the Categories list to make it active, and then download an item as normal; that item will be downloaded into that category - you will see confirmation of this when within the status bar at the bottom of the main TIC window.

Not specifying a location for a Category is perfectly valid as it can be used to force the selection of another category before an item can be downloaded. eg. Have a category that has no location and is set as default, optionally labeling it [no category]. If that category is active when trying to download an item, TIC will prompt to select another category.