5 Little Mac Apps That Flickr Will Thank You For

When it comes to photo-sharing, Flickr is definitely leading the game. It’s interface is simple and easy to use but for those of us who need more from it than just uploading and sharing photos, I’ve got these applications that will pull Flickr out of its ordinary shell into a more extraordinary light. Get ready!

1001

1001 is a desktop client for Flickr. It’s been around for quite some time. Basically, it allows you to browse through your own Flickr photostream, as well as view the most recent photos from any user. You can create any number of ’streams’ — by groups, tags or interestingness. When you create a stream according to a tag and new photos are found, you will notified by a little unobtrusive pop-up displaying the images. That feature is pretty neat when you’re anticipating new photos to be added to your friend’s photostream, you won’t need to spam the ‘Refresh’ button endlessly now.

Besides that, 1001 is a batch uploader for Flickr, giving you the regular options such as adding to sets, tagging and setting privacy levels to your photos. 1001 also works very well with ecto, a blogging application for Mac, and it makes it even easier to add photos to your blog with a click of a button.

You will notice that 1001 also has the option of setting images as your desktop background. I found this feature to be quite half-hearted. It does the job but it doesn’t set the image properly as “Stretch to fit” or centered. There is no option to control this, so be advised.

DeskLickr

Tina once wrote an article about a Windows application which changes the background to Flickr images. I found a Mac application which does about the same thing. DeskLickr is a pretty small program that sits quietly on the menu bar. Depending on the interval (which you set yourself), it switches your desktop background to any Flickr image. You have the option to choose from your own photostream, the DeskLickr flickr group, by interestingness, groups, by tags, or your favourites. But these images appear at random, so you can’t really select the photos you want. However, if you come across a photo which you don’t like, you can choose not to have it set as your background again by clicking on “Never show this desktop again” in the DeskLickr menu bar icon.

DeskLickr is a “fun” application to show off to your friends, if you’re into that sort of thing. It’s nothing more than a fancy background switcher. But somehow, we’re still attracted to these sorta things, aren’t we?

ShuffleSaver

As DeskLickr is for desktop backgrounds, ShuffleSaver is for, you guessed it — your screen saver.

Just like all the aforementioned applications, ShuffleSaver provides you with the option of selecting the source of your Flickr images: be it your own photostream, by interestingness or just the newest images added to Flickr…..you know the drill by now. When activated, photos from the criteria you chose will appear as your screen saver. During this time, you may press the right and left arrows to navigate through the photos and press ’s’ to save the ones you like, hence the name of this application.

FlickrBooth

Another “fun” application, or plugin actually. This is definitely for those of you who frequently use Mac’s built-in camera application Photo Booth to take random images. FlickrBooth integrates itself into Photo Booth and now you can just as easily add the photos to your photostream as you snapped them.

FlickrBooth lets you choose whether you want the photo to be uploaded automatically or prompted to add extra info, tags and titles. Plus since Photo Booth allows you to record videos, FlickrBooth can also automatically upload those videos to YouTube!

Photo Grabbr

Have you ever browsed through a friend’s photostream and wanted almost every photo he/she had in a set? I have. It’s a misery to click each photo, then choosing the size I want and saving the image, repeated EVERY time for a different photo. This is where Photo Grabbr steps in. This nifty application searches photos by user name and group ID and displays the results in sets for your to download. If no sets are found, then you are given the option of downloading all the images from that user/group.

You can even select the resolution of the photos you want, and “Original” is one of them. Of course, this resolution is only available if it is allowed by the owner.

Mark wrote about FlickrDown, a Windows program that does about the same thing, except it’s for Windows.

Honorable mention

At this point, it is worth mentioning two more applications that does Flickr proud. Flickr Uploadr, which is a stand-alone uploader client for Flickr and is available for both Mac and Windows. And Visigami, a pretty interesting application, a desktop browser for Flickr, Picasa and Google Images; and it’s also a screen saver program akin to ShuffleSaver.

So there you go. Five simple little applications that could just bring a smile to your face the next time you use Flickr. It’s not just photo-sharing if it is this much fun.

(By) Jackson Chung is a full-time med student attempting to perform a juggling act with relationship, studies and his future. He also manages a Mac news site, Macnifying.

Filed Under: Cool Software Apps ¦ Lists of tools ¦ Mac
Tags: desktop enhancements, Flickr, Mac, photo sharing, photos, screensaver, uploader, wallpaper, webcam tips, Youtube