FlickrExport adds ninja-level precision to your Flickr uploads, from within iPhoto.

Photography nuts love photo-sharing site Flickr.com. And for years, third parties have provided iPhoto plug-ins that let you export your images directly to your Flickr account. For ease-of-use, these plug-ins beat standalone apps--and Flickr’s Web-based uploader--for getting images from your Mac into your photo stream. And since most photo geeks frequent Flickr anyway, it’s always made the most sense to us to be able to post your stuff there from within iPhoto itself. In iPhoto ’09, Apple introduced support for uploading to Flickr. But in our tests, the power and flexibility of Connected Flow’s FlickrExport makes Apple’s efforts look like amateur hour.

iPhoto’s native support for Flickr is the essence of Apple simplicity. Select some images, and choose Share > Flickr. The first time you do this, iPhoto will prompt you for your Flickr log-in info, and iPhoto will ask you to set a privacy level for the uploads as well as relative sizes. Nice, but this doesn’t give you much control--even for Flickr newbies. FlickrExport, by comparison, offers tons of options for customizing and controlling your Flickr uploads.

FlickrExport installs as a plug-in, and in our tests, worked more reliably than iPhoto’s Flickr support. FlickrExport adds a Flickr tab to iPhoto’s Export pane (File > Export). From there, you can edit Titles, Descriptions, Tags, and Privacy settings for your photos--as a group, as well as individually. FlickrExport also allows you to add photos directly to Flickr group photo pools and add to your own existing photosets or create a new photoset as you upload images. And for users with free accounts, a handy status gauge shows how much of your upload quota has been used for the month. If space gets tight, FlickrExport can automatically resize your images to conserve bandwidth. Users of previous versions of FlickrExport will be interested in new features, including presets for uploads to Flickr groups and the ability to incorporate location data into your photos manually or via GPS track logs, perfect for documenting your travels visually.

We were able to easily import large and small groups of images to our Flickr account, and in all cases Tags, Titles, and other metadata were correctly applied, even when we supplied a complicated mishmash of data to certain images and not to others. Our exports were reasonably quick, and we didn’t notice FlickrExport bogging down our iMac while we zapped large groups of photos up to Flickr’s cloud. And for Aperture users, Connected Flow offers a version of FlickrExport tweaked to take advantage of Aperture’s features as well. For active participants in Flickr groups, the ability to save sets of groups within FlickrExport is a huge timesaver--although we had a few problems with presets selecting incorrect groups. And the only options for managing presets are deleting or renaming them--an editing interface to tweak presets would have been nice.

Except for the most casual users, FlickrExport for iPhoto is an essential Flickr tool, with many more options than iPhoto ’09’s new native Flickr integration. Here’s hoping Connected Flow will turn its attention to iPhoto ’09’s limited Facebook integration next.

FlickrExport 3 for iPhoto
COMPANY: Connected Flow
CONTACT: www.connectedflow.com
PRICE: $20, $10 upgrade
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.4 or later; iPhoto 4or later, Flickr account (free at www.flickr.com)
Blows iPhoto ‘09’s Flickr support out of the water. Default privacy settings help avoid Flickr overexposure. Quick uploads of even the most complicated image/metadata combos. Universal binary.
Groups presets are interesting for avid Flickr users, but the results can be unreliable. Plethora of options would benefit from thorough documentation, especially for those new to Flickr.