Flickr is an useful place where you can upload and share your photos with your friends, and also a source to find interesting and attractive photos. Being an active Flickr user, I used Flickr frequently to store my photos and also to find relevant pictures for my blog post. Despite the great interface, there are still several features that are lacking or less than desirable (such as photos uploading and searching).
At here, we will do what we do best, by recommending 7 different applications—some web based and some desktop— that make Flickr even better.
Searching
1. Flickr Hive Mind
My biggest complaint about going through lots of pictures on any site is the predetermined number of photos shown. Searching pictures for blog posts is easier when I use Flickr Hive Mind.
Not only does Flickr Hive Mind let you search up to 500 pictures anytime you search, you also can search by license. Being able to search this many pictures without having to click next page repeatedly saves a ton of time.
2. Flickr Color Selectr
There are a couple sites out there like this, However this is the fastest one I have tried. What it does is pull up photos with specific colors licensed to be used under the Creative Commons use.
This isn’t the best search if you need a picture for something specific because you cannot search with a keyword. However, there are times when you need something that really stands out in the beginning of your project. For example, if you are looking for an underwater picture, you can look through different blues.
3. Flickriver
A really smooth way to search for pictures by tag, location, group or user. What I like about this site is how it loads all of the pictures of any given search, then displays them in one stream.
Some of the tools Flickriver gives you make viewing the photo streams you find really easy. The bookmarklet, browser extension, browser plugin and Greasemonkey script all let you switch to Flickriver to view a set or a stream of pictures in a less distracting environment.
Upload and download
4. Gratepic
Gratepic is a super easy way to keep track of all of your friends on Flickr. Once you download the desktop application and log in, you can see all of their sets, search by keywords and do other general things.
If you are a member of any of the photography groups on Flickr, this is a great place to look at what others in the group are uploading and comment on their work. It is easy to get distracted and venture off to look at really cool photography, Gratepic helps keep you a little more focused on the task at hand.
5. Gupr
How many of you dislike uploading pictures one at a time? If you are one of those people who take pictures of everything they do in life, this uploader will save you tons of time. All you need to drag your new photos into the window and click upload. pretty easy huh?
You can choose the privacy settings, set they upload to and a couple other basic settings. Gupr is a pretty basic application made to upload a smaller number of pictures fast.
6. Flickrsync
If you are looking for a way to sync your Flickr account with your desktop, this is what you have been looking for. It can be a huge pain in the butt to upload new pictures to your account after an event or vacation; here is your savior.
All you need to do is make sure the pictures are labeled and in folders. Having things organized on your computer will make it easier to upload all the pictures as “sets”.
You can select the folder you want to keep in sync or upload. Now all you need to do is add pictures to vacation or event folder, when you want to upload them, click sync then view all and sync. Your new set will be added and kept up to date with anything new you add to that folder.
All-in-one
7. Flickroom
Like most apps that run via Adobe Air, you can expect Flickroom to be pretty smooth in both looks and operation. If you have read any of my previous posts on Make Tech Easier, you know I am not a big fan of desktop apps. This one is an exception.
You can switch between multiple accounts by simply selecting which account you want to view in the drop down, see your contacts, their uploads, make comments and even take part in the discussions.
If you like how smooth Flickroom operates, here is a previous post talking about 10 of the best free Adobe Air apps.
Do you have any tips to manage your Flickr photos?
Intro image vantazy
Trevor is a freelance writer covering topics ranging from the Android OS to free web and desktop applications. When he is not writing about mobile productivity, He is coaching and playing the world’s greatest game… Soccer.
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