ViewFinder

CNET Editors' review

by: Jason Parker on January 12, 2010

Viewfinder is a desktop app that makes finding and downloading photos from Flickr much faster and easier. The app's well-designed, streamlined interface is centered, fittingly, around Flickr search results: you just type your terms into a search bar (specify text or tags in a drop-down menu), and the main window is quickly populated by results that you can preview, download, or open in Flickr using your browser. What makes this app so helpful is its ability to apply filters to your results; so, for example, you can look only at photos licensed under Creative Commons (more likely to be legal for noncommercial use), or you can sort by minimum size (up to 1,500 pixels) or by Flickr's "most interesting" property.

Viewfinder also makes it easy to set your desktop to a particular photo, or to download and export to Keynote, with a single click. Unfortunately, the demo version only allows two downloads per launch, and it priggishly penalizes you by delaying even those two downloads by 30 seconds. Viewfinder is an effective and attractive app, but given its price (set to increase even further with 1.1) and that much of the functionality is available via other Flickr-enhancing Web sites, it's only going to be of interest to heavy Flickr users.

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Publisher's Description

From Connected Flow:

Viewfinder searches Flickr's four billion photos in a snap to bring you the images you need. You can search tags, titles and descriptions and sort by most interesting, most relevant or most recent.

Viewfinder also helps you find images with Creative Commons licenses and generates attribution text for you.

If you like to present in a style beyond yellow text on a blue background, Viewfinder is the application for you. With Keynote integration, Viewfinder turns the tedious search-download-hunt-drag-trash cycle into a painless one-click process.

Addicted to Desktop Pictures? Flickr has 4,000,000,000 and many are available to freely download and use. With Viewfinder, they're yours in one click.