Flickr, as we know, is the most popular site for uploading and sharing images. Since Flickr is so popular, there are lot of third party tools built around it which help in further enhancing the user experience.

Today, I decided to list out 7 such tools which are probably the best when it comes to browsing flickr photos.

1: Flickr Related Tag Browser

Flickr related tag browser is an awesome AJAX based flickr search tool which allows you to search flickr photos by typing a word or a tag. It also displays the related tags and is very fast. For example in the screenshot below, I searched for the word- ‘ nature ‘ and it immediately displayed the relevant images and tags.

2: Piclens

Piclens is another extraordinary 3D visual search tool which is available as an add-on for most of the browsers. It transforms your browser to a 3D graphic tool and lets you enter a different world of browsing images. Apart from supporting Flickr, it supports various other sites including You Tube. Use it to experience it.

3: Compfight

Compfight is another tag-based AJAX search tool for Flickr photos. Its quite fast and allows you to search for Creative Commons photos too. The best part about this tool is the quality of photos which it searches. They are really very good.

4: Flickr Storm

Flickr Storm is another nice tool which allows you to search Flickr photos quickly. It also provides some additional features like advanced search, a download tray and history. Another thing in flickrstorm is that if you click on its name, it randomly selects a tag to search for.

5: Retrievr

Retrievr is a different kind of a tool, which allows you to search flickr by drawing a sketch or by uploading an image and it will find similar photos from flickr. Although I am not sure if you will get accurate results but still worth trying.

6: Flickriver

Flickriver, as the name indicates, displays a river of flickr photos. It allows you to search through user, group or tags and also provides some additional tools like a bookmarklet, greasemonkey script etc.

7: Photoree

Photoree (remember its ‘ Photoree ‘ not ‘ Phototree ‘ ) is a service which first analyzes your searching habits and then recommends you the photos. Although it doesn’t say that its a flickr search tool but I have found that more than 90% of the photos it displays are from flickr.

So which is your favorite one out of the aforesaid tools ?