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Photophlow: Flickr’s Live Community

Around Christmas time I received an invite to Photophlow and had such a fun time chatting with other Flickr users there that I really wanted to blog about it. I was swamped back then and am finally getting around to it. Terrible, I know.

So what is Photophlow? The short version is that it is a way to connect with other Flickr users in real time and chat, but Photophlow has some amazing features that are pretty impressive. When you log in you’re taken to the anteroom - a place where you can configure your account and access rooms.

Group Rooms: Aside from the Main Room and a private room connected to your user, you also have access to rooms for each Flickr group you belong to (created automatically), active rooms that belong to your Flickr contacts, and the most active rooms on the server.

Inside a group room

Browse Flickr Photos: In each room you can browse the photos of each Flickr user in the room with you.Clicking a photo posts it to the room for everyone to see. You can also browse manually if the room is busy and you don’t want to disturb others, or browse privately which is like a “covert” mode.

Inside the Main Room

Send Comments, Tweets, and Tumbls: While viewing a photo in a room you can send a comment on it back to Flickr, Send a link and blurb to Twitter, send it to your Tumblr blog or do all three at the same time - very slick. Definitely something to check out if you love photos, have a photography class, or like chatting it up.

Viewing photo details with links to comment, and tweet

Spelling With Flickr

Spell with Flickr lets you spell anything using photos of text found on Flickr. Man, my name is long.

Picnik Online Photo Editor

Picnik is another handy online photo editor for those times there’s no Photoshop, Gimp, XnView, or Picassa around. Picnik allows you to rotate, crop, resize, edit color and contrast and save as JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, PDF, and TIFF. There are also a few quick filters available and some tabs labled “Coming Soon” so I guess there will be more filters soon. You can also send your image directly to Flickr or email it to your website.

The only thing it can’t do that I really wish it could is add text to an image. That seems to be something lacking in all online image editors.