If you're like me, who is fond of dumping all my photos to Flickr after an event, chances are you have dozens of photo sets and collections on the site already. While this may be a good practice, you'll never know when Flickr's going to fail. Hence, it would be safe to have a back up of you Flickr photos in case something went wrong with Flickr. Enter Downloadr, a simple application that lets you back up your Flickr photos.
Downloadr is a free application/tool for Windows that lets you download photos from your Flickr account. It lets you download all your photos at the same time in one big download session or use filters to let you select photos by batch. What's so good about Downloadr is that it lets you download the best image quality of your photos while preserving the EXIF and IPTC data. Hence you are pretty sure that you are getting your original photos with all their characteristics and not getting a replication that were post-processed by Flickr.
Another great feature of Downloadr is that it also allows you to grab photos from other Flickr members. Just be cautious when using these photos though. Make sure that you are not breaking any Creative Commons Licenses.
Downloadr also lets you search photos from the Flickr sites using full text, username, tags, places, sets, date, interestingness, group and favorites.
Other features of Downloadr include Flickr authentication when downloading private photos, automatic downloading of the largest available size of the photos, automatic software updates and full integration with Linkr. In case you are not aware, Linkr is another tool from the creator of Downloadr which lets you create Flickr badges which you can display on your websites or blogs.
If you are to judge Downloadr for fulfilling what it is supposed to do, it is definitely a useful application. If you want a simple solution of getting back the photos you've uploaded to Flickr, Downloadr does the job pretty well. And it's a free app, so there's no harm in downloading it even just to try it.
Downloadr is a pretty sleek app. Just be patient during the first time you use it since you will have to authenticate your Flickr account first for the tool to access your photos. The tool requires Microsoft .NET framework, so be patient when you download and install the app on a machine without the said framework. It will take some time to set it up. But as soon as it is finish, you can immediately start using the app and begin getting back your Flickr photos.