Grönbeck

Flickr is Great! I’ve recently started using Flickr more than before. Sure, Flickr was always there when you wanted to find a good photo of a bird or someone dancing or simply just wanted to spend a couple of boring hours at the office browsing through photos of only-god-knows-what. These last few weeks however, I’ve actually started using Flickr in a more active fashion, even uploaded a couple of photos myself.

As such, I have been looking around for useful tools and hacks to enhance both the usefulness and effectiveness of Flickr. I found there are two different aspects when it comes to enhancing Flickr.

One aspect is for The Viewer – when you are watching a photo or browsing through a photographers photos, you want to make it as pleasant and effective as possible – or if you are searching for a specific photo (Flickr has over 2 billion photos uploaded!) any help to overcome the shortcomings of Flickr’s built-in search capabilities would be not only welcomed but also very appreciated.
The other aspect is for The Active User – a photographer who uploads photos and takes part in the community that is Flickr, with favorites and comments and groups and discussions. So what I did was simply divide this list of Flickr Hacks in to the two categories: For Viewing and For Active Users.

6 Flickr Hacks: For Viewing

1. fd’s Flickr Toys: On Black
   http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/onblack.php
   fd’s Flickr Toys have so many awesome tools that it’s almost ridiculous. The one that I wanted to bring to your attention in this list, is “On Black”. Simply copy-and-paste the address to the photo and you get to see it on a gorgeous plain all-black or all-white background (sort of like a framed matte). A black background helps viewers find detail in black and white photos and other photos with dark areas and makes colors really pop. An uncluttered white background is the perfect clean slate to complement the right photo.
2. blackr
   http://blackr.net/
   blackr is similar to On black above. blackr is a bookmarklet you can put in your browser’s bookmarks bar. Later, when you are on a photo page or one of the “All sizes” pages on Flickr, you can click the bookmarklet and it will hide everything on the page behind a soothing black canvas except for the photo. All that remains is the picture.
3. Compfight: Flickr search tool
   http://www.compfight.com/
   Compfight is a search-page for Flickr photos. While there are many different ways to search for a photo on Flickr, Compfight stands out by having a function to search only among Creative Commons licensed photos.
4. findr
   http://www.forestandthetrees.com/findr/findr.html
   findr lets you start searching by entering one initial tag. From that tag you can browse the resulting photos or continue to narrow down your search by clicking on any of the related tags. A search for “tuktuk + bangkok + traffic” would give you a result of only 348 photos to browse through, instead of 7.477 photos if you only searched for tuktuk. Flickr search returns over 10.000 results when searching for tuktuk.
   photo credit: StarvingFox
5. Flickriver
   http://www.flickriver.com/
   flickriver is a new way to explore and view Flickr photos. Larger images on a black background in one continuous stream. See Flickr Explore or other peoples most interesting photos in one infinite scroll, thousands of photos without ever hitting “next” and waiting for the next page to load.
6. flickrleech
   http://www.flickrleech.net/
   flickrleech have many similarities with Flickriver. Black background showing many photos at the same time, although flickrleech uses smaller thumbnails providing for a better overview instead. I regularly use flickrleech to explore Explore and get a nice overview over my contacts and my favorites.

12 Flickr Hacks: For Active Users

These are all GreaseMonkey scripts to enchance/change the way Flickr functions, looks and feels. Since GreaseMonkey is a scriptengine for Firefox, obviously you would need to get Firefox first, if you’re not already using it. Next step is to install GreaseMonkey as a Firefox Add-on (there are some problems with the latest version of GreaseMonkey and some of the Flickr-scripts, use the version 0.7.20070607.0 and everything should work fine).

1. Add referrer into comments
   http://6v8.gamboni.org/Flickr-Add-referer-into-comments.html
   Adds a very nifty little end-tag to comments that you make on other peoples photos, such as:
   - -
   Seen on your photo stream.
   Very handy for the photographer to get an idea where people have come from, where they have seen the photo.
2. Flickr – Multi Group Sender
   http://www.flickr.com/groups/flickrhacks/discuss/72462/
   Allows you to send your already uploaded Flickr image to multiple groups, all at once. With Flickr’s built in tool, you can only send to one group at a time, and it is also waaay slower than Steeev’s Greasmonkey script.
3. FlickrPM
   http://www.flickr.com/groups/flickrhacks/discuss/38788/
   Adds icons next to the username for mail, profile, favourites, flickr scout, flickr dna, interestingness and photo archive next to usernames in forums and on individual photo pages.
4. Flickr Groups Organiser
   http://www.flickr.com/groups/flickrhacks/discuss/72057594139485596/
   A script that lets you tag/categorise your groups and also easily quit groups from your groups list page.
5. Flickr Contacts Organiser
   http://www.flickr.com/groups/flickrhacks/discuss/72157594223205825/
   GreaseMonkey (GM) script that lets you tag your contacts so you can keep up with their photostreams and contact them more easily.
6. Flickr Show All in Group Pool by User
   http://www.flickr.com/groups/flickrhacks/discuss/72157594144967671/
   A GM script that adds a link to let you see all the images in a group pool by a particular user.
7. Flickr Photo Page Enhancer
   http://www.flickr.com/photos/jrhyley/13673365/
   Adds links to a photos different sizes and it also adds html-code for linking to the photo in different sizes (thumbnail, small, square).
8. Flickr Rich Edit
   http://www.flickr.com/photos/jrhyley/16108343/
   Add limited rich editing capabilities to Flickr, in comments and groups.
9. Flickr Group Display
   http://www.flickr.com/groups/flickrhacks/discuss/72157600038266976/
   Calculates favourite-to-view ratios. Easier management for the photos you have in view and favorite groups such as topv-111.
10. Flickr Buddy Icon Reply
    http://www.flickr.com/groups/flickrhacks/discuss/72157594482547285/
    It adds name_reply and icon_reply links at each of the comments under your photo.
11. Flickr – Photo Rank
    http://www.flickr.com/groups/flickrhacks/discuss/72157594472124927/
    Display photo rank (if the photo can be found in 1000 most interesting photos of the day).
12. Flickr Buddy Interestingness
    http://www.flickr.com/groups/flickrhacks/discuss/72157600004580188/
    This script will add a new item to the buddy menu that gives you a quick access to the 25 most interesting photos of the given user.

1 bonus: WordPress plug-in

And last but not least, a nice little bonus for those of you who run your own blog on the WordPress-platform and would like to use photos shared under a Creative Commons (CC) license to juice up your blog-posts. Nothing says “juicy” like a photo…

photo credit: miss_rogue

Know what I mean? Photodropper in action above.

1. Photodropper
   http://www.photodropper.com/wordpress-plugin/
   Photo Dropper is a WordPress plugin that lets you add Flickr photos to your posts. It searches for Creative Commons licensed photos – images that are licensed for shared use – and lets you drop them into your posts – right from your dashboard with just 1 click.

So, there you have it! My 18 (+1) Top Flickr Hacks. I’m sure you have your own favorites though. Did I miss anything? Drop a comment to let me know!