Photography: ario_j

Flickr lets you choose any background color you want for your images, as long as it’s white. That means the images are always more important than the design,and that photographers who know how to shoot stand out more than photographers who know HTML.

And it means you can’t get to show off your photos in exactly the way you want. Unless, of course, you use one of the APIs created by the host of Flick-friendly programmers.

Here are some of the tools we like best:

Warholizer

Photography: Pesky Library

Probably the most active API-maker is John Watson, who goes by the name fd, and has a long list of Flickr tools (http://bighugelabs.com/) . Some of those tools, such as Favorite Finder, help users search for photos, while others such as this very neat program, let you tile your image, play with the colors, and pose as Andy Warhol himself.

Mosaic Maker

Photography: clickykbd

Warholizer is fun, but it only works with one photo and does something very specific with them. Mosaic Maker (http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/mosaic.php), on the other hand, (also by John Watson) lets you arrange different photos within one image, and create beautiful mosaics.

Flickr Shades

Screenshot from Flickr

Steeev, another over-achieving Flickr improver with a long list of
Greasemonkey scripts is the man to thank for Flickr Shades (flickr.shades.user.js). Flickr Shades lets you view Flickr pages on a black background… or with a bit of tweaking against any color you want, but rather than affecting the page, it affects the viewing instead.

Flickr Multi Group Sender

Image: pequena lulein

Being active in groups is one of the best ways to network, chat with other Flickr members and get your photos seen. Many people join hundreds of them, but sending the same image to multiple groups can take forever… unless you use the Multi Group Sender (http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/1543) script by Steeev.

Museumr

Photography: wetwebwork

Getting your photos on the walls of an art museum would be the ultimate accolade. Dumpr’s Museumr overlays your photo with an image of people admiring your work in a gallery, and gets you one step closer to that experience. It might not be as fun as the real thing, but who knows, maybe it will give a viewer with influence an idea.

Improve Your Text

Image: jrhyley

Okay, this isn’t strictly speaking a way to pimp up your own site but networking on Flickr is such an important way of getting your photos seen — and sold — and being able to jazz up your text when commenting on other photos can be a huge help. Created by Jason Rhyley and available here. Just install, then bold and italicize away.