A:
Exporting product images can be tricky since CSV product exports do not include images in the file, and Shopify can only provide insight on this topic if you are moving your products from one Shopify store to another.
A popular recommendation that Gurus make is to download a Chrome extension called Tab Save, which allows you to download all the images for your product. Once installed, go to your Shopify admin and select all of your products and export them into a CSV file. Open the CSV file (in Excel or Numbers) and copy the list of URLs from the IMAGE SRC column. Paste this data into the “Enter your download links” section of the extension. From there it will download the images to your downloads directory.
Extensions are not exempt from limitations and issues, as reviews suggest that Tab Save is not able to download all of the image URLs users have requested.
If you are looking to download product images for a local copy, just like this merchant:
We suggest ditching the frustration of trying different extensions and install a backup solution like Rewind to ensure that your images are secure and accessible at any time. Julie raised some concern about having a local copy of her store data, but did you know that CSV files could also result in your product images being lost? Unfortunately, this was the case for one of our Rewind customers, Andrew Saunders:
“ Do yourself a favour and download this plugin. Even though I have not used it – I wish I had downloaded it on my other store when 60% of my product images were deleted after importing a CSV file and costing me weeks of work locating and uploading the images again. Don’t take the risk.”
Related article: CSV Files and Your Ecommerce Store: Everything You Need to Know
To ensure that a CSV file mishap or any other error does not result in a data disaster in your store, we recommend that you backup your store data with Rewind.
Rewind runs automatic backups of your entire store daily, but you can also run a backup yourself right before importing your CSV file, to make sure that your site stays undamaged. If something were to go wrong with your site after importing your CSV file or image downloading process, you could simply go into your Rewind Vault, and restore your store to the state it was in the moment before you made the CSV import or started to download images.