Disclaimer: I received compensation for translating Flickit and Flickit Pro into Japanese. I did my best to review Flickit Pro without bias. In fact, I take a shot or two at it.
They say that the best camera is the one you have on you, so by that logic, the iPhone 3GS is the best camera I own. And I take a lot of pictures. But for every photo of my dinner, beer glass, or a passed out girl I take, I gotta share it somewhere, right? And while it may just be a byproduct of a “gotta do/have it right now” culture, I need to get these photos out before my consciousness and sense of decency stop me. And what better place to share my collection of visual depravity than Flickr? (I know, it should really be tumblr. The grossest stuff in the world ends up there, but they haven’t come up with a batch photo upload system that works on phones.) And my old friend Flickit is back, and this time it’s taking a more professional approach. The first version of Flickit was the be-all, end-all app for batch uploads of photos, but with Flickr itself giving away an official app, this for-pay app from Green Volcano Software better be good. Flickit 2.0 is still free, and contains all the upgrades for photo uploading that Flickit Pro has, but if you want the browsing stuff, you’ll need to pony up some cash. Capiche?
Now, as much as I’d like to review Flickit Pro on its own merits, you have to look it in comparison to the official Flickr app. I mean, Flickr’s own app is a pretty good app. And it’s free. Green Volcano Software is asking you for money. But Flickit Pro has a few tricks up its sleeve that even Flickr forgot to include. The very first one you’ll see is that Flickit Pro has a contacts page that lets you set favorite contacts. Even cooler is that if any of your favorite contacts have updated their photostreams, a little blue light next to their name is illuminated; denoting that there are new photos and/or videos for you to watch. And let’s be honest with ourselves, we become “friends” with more people on Flickr than we really need to be. Most of my contacts are porn posters, and even the people I call friends and family contacts post crap I have zero interest in seeing. Flickit Pro lets me see only the stuff from my contacts that I actually care about. I mean, I love our fearless editor here at Smoking Apples, but the less I see of his cat and daytrips into nature, the better.
When you choose a contact, you get a grid view of their photos and the bar at the top includes buttons for photos, sets, tags, and favorites. If you’d prefer not to see those buttons, there’s a button to hide them. Tap on one of the photos, and the first thing you’ll see is a Coverflow-style view of that photostream. This Coverflow photostream can be navigated two ways: one is swiping, and the second is tilt. Aside from the Coverflow view, you can switch to grid view, and page with info about the photo. You can see title, uploader, how many views its had, when it was uploaded, and when it was taken. It’s got a list of tags and comments, and you can add your own comment there as well. It’s got pretty much all the info you’d expect to find. There’s no tagging people, but I haven’t seen that in any Flickr iPhone app yet. One thing I wish Flickit Pro would borrow from the official Flickr app is being able to tap on tags associated with a photo, and letting you see other photos with the same tag.
The UI is lickable throughout
Back out to the main screen, and you can hit up your Recent Activity tab. There you’ll see what’s new from the past week. Unfortunately, no one seems to like my photos, and I hardly ever see anything in my Recent Activity. So after you’ve done a vanity check to see if your Internet friends still like you, you can tap on the Explore tab and you can search Flickr, check out Flickr Interestingness, see photos taken nearby, and even look through your groups. Unlike the official Flickr app, Flickit Pro lets you interact with groups. Not only can you view them, you can add photos to groups when uploading them. The upload features of Flickit Pro are pretty much the same as before, so if you’ve ever used Flickit, you can expect more of the same: title, description, sets, tags, groups, geotag data, and send to blog/Twitter. The only thing I have issues with is the tagging interface. When you want to tag a photo, you get a long list of tags that seems to take forever to load (especially over 3G), you can’t search them, and waste tons of screen real estate. The official Flickr app does a beautiful job with tagging. Your tags seem to load faster, are searchable, and appear as a tag-cloud, so that more of them fit on the screen, and you don’t have to scroll down forever to find the tag you’re looking for. As it stands now, the tags menu is the ugliest part of Flickit. Other than that, there are two things that are missing from Flickit Pro that keep me from deleting the official Flickr app. Those would be deleting photos and editing photo details of previously uploaded photos. Sometimes I forget that I already posted a pic, and with Flickit Pro, I can’t get rid of the mistaken duplicate. And editing photos is a necessity because I screw up titles and descriptions more often than not because of the iPhone’s tendency to take the things I want to type and double the t’s and ignore the o’s. I had concerns that maybe Flickr didn’t let third-parties delete and edit photos, but Mike at Green Volcano Software said it was possible, and that he hadn’t included the feature yet. I’m hoping that gets added soon, so I can make Flickit Pro the only Flickr app on my iPhone.
So the question you’ve probably been asking yourself the whole time you’ve been reading this is: do I need a paid app for Flickr when Flickr itself already has a good app that won’t cost me one red cent? Chances are, if you’re into Flickr enough to take the time to read about Flickr apps, you’re willing to pay for something extra. Creating your own list of favorite contacts, viewing Flickr Interestingness and nearby photos, and working with your photo groups make Flickit Pro worth owning. Not to mention, the UI is beautiful. The simplicity of its design and all the rounded corners painted in varying hues of gray and black are straight out of an industrial design lover’s wet-dream. If you’re going to stick with the free version of Flickit, the upgrade won’t cost you anything, but if you’re in the market for more options, Flickit Pro goes for $3.99 in the App Store.
