Flickr isn’t the first attempt at capturing the hearts of the amateur photographer in all of us, but it’scertainly the most successful. Started 2002, Yahoo’s acquisition of Flickr in March this year signified the importance of convenient storage and the ability to quickly publish you photo’s to whatever medium required.
For those who haven’t signed up, Flickr is an online photo management and sharing platform that offers an unparallel social experience should you choose to get involved with. At the most basic level Flickr offers free hosting and viewing of you photos to the people you choose. You’ve just been to that 21st birthday party, get all your digital photos up for viewing quickly and easily. Further the community or ‘Groups’ that have grown with the site are as varied as the internet itself. Much of the success of Flickr is the open system that is available to developers with API’s being free for non-commercial use.
Flickr has succeeded by making a simple concept easy to pick up and make available to as many as possible. It’s a flexible system with many features available but not all are necessarily immediately apparent.
Go Free?
Signing up to Flickr is free but with some limitations; firstly you have a 20MB bandwidth limit per calendar month. This isn’t the total space but the total amount you upload each month. For many when your photo’s are small, this limit is adequate but as you become hooked into Flickr it may be worth upgrading. Further with the free account you are limited to displaying the 200 most recently uploaded images; reaching this limit the older are not deleted, just unavailable to be viewed until you upgrade. Another feature of Flickr is the grouping of photos into sets much like into albums, with the free account you are limited to 3 sets.
Upgrading to a Pro Accountoffers the following benefits; 2GB monthly upload limit, unlimited storage, bandwidth and photosets and ad-free browsing.
Uploading
Regardless of your choice of account and how serious a photographer you are, uploading is a fundamental part of Flickr. When Uploading high quantitiesof images on a free account keep in mind the quality and size of the image – decide on a High quantity/ Low quality or vice versa. With a Pro account it’s less of a decision but there are a number of solutions available to upload your images.
When you first upload there is a form that can be used to list up to 6 images for upload. Repeating this just a couple of times makes you realise that this is inadequate for even up loading small numbers each month. Flickr has a solution of its own called the Flickr Uploadr which is available for download on the Flickr tools page. Available for both Macs and windows it offers a simple drag and drop interface that users of either system will be familiar with. Upon dragging the images into the program the choice is then available to insert into a set or create one and then a choice of who to make them available to, e.g. friends, family, public or private. An important factor is the privacy and the choice to make images public or private at any point.
One of the most valuable features of Flickr is the ability to upload via email. Initially not very exciting but having the ability to take that shot on a mobile phone with a built in camera and then send as an email attachment and be published on your page almost instantly, Flickr becomes an instantly more powerful and attractive platform!
Tagging
From an organisational point of view, tagging is essential. The tagging of images, a kind of labelling, is a massive benefit when retrieving images. While this may not seem important when you start uploading, when you are looking fora picture after uploading 1500 pictures – how well you tagged an image becomes vital to the online experience. It really doesn’t take long but enables you and other to locate what they are looking for much easier.
The general rule of thumb when first tagging is that tagging too much is better than not enough. Imagine you want that group photo from Grandma’s 80th, tagging with both tags would make it very easy to retrieve in the future but remember not toover do it. 12 different tags are probably on the high side; fewer than 6 is a fair marker.
Groups
Flickr isn’t just an online photo album, with the ability to join groups and add your photos for discussion if desired; it creates an online visual community from all corners of the globe. Groups are available on many subjects;Flickr Hacks, Black & White (photos),Macintosh and Classic Cars are just some of the many examples available.
The ability to keep track of the comments that you have left on photos or add to a favourites list photo’s that have interested you, all combine to build up relationships and encourage Flickr as a community.
Blogging
Flickr offers full integration for bloggers, simply set upyour blog and with the ‘Blog this’ option to the left of your published photos you can blog about them too. Further it is widely used by bloggers, me included, as a photo archive. With the new browser Flock, which has been created and designed with bloggers as a focal point, a Flickr top bar has been included – enabling dragand drop of Flickr pictures right into your blog post.
Extras
With the community and open technology that exists for Flickr, inevitably people attempt to improve on the already excellent featureset. Naturally the development group, Flickr API group that exists concentrating on using the API made available is a good place to start.
Some other tools or features that I like are;
Conclusion
Flickr is not just a great digital photo sharing platform but a maturing online community. The only real decision to make is not whether to share your photos online but if the free account will be enough!
How-to Flickr
Blogger Ben Bishop has written a nice little intro guide to using Flickr. Flickr has succeeded by making a simple concept easy to pick up and make available to as many as possible. Its a flexible system with many…
I love Flickr. The one thing that is unclear is how download the photos that i like of other members.
I have simply dragged the photo to my desktop, but the resolution is offensive. I am certainly willing to pay, if necesssary.
Wayne
Perfect timing. Just been to New York with my new camera. Time to start telling the world just how 1,600 images can be turned in to 13 decent pictures.
How to: Flickr Intro at BenBishop.me.uk
Ben Bishop has posted a very nice introduction to Flickr, the social networking photo sharing site. He very simply explains the different fee structures, and introduces concepts such as sets, tagging, groups and other aspects of the tool.
Email upload becomes even more interesting when used with Picasa software.
Just add your pictures into Picasa do whatever you want (resize, remove red eyes…) and send them via mail from Picasa ! It even supports GMail.
[...] to # // Used for showing and hiding user information in the comment form function ShowUtils() {document.getElementById(”authorinfo”).style.display = “”; document.getElementById(”showinfo”).style.display = “none”; document.getElementById(”hideinfo”).style.display = “”; } function HideUtils() { document.getElementById(”authorinfo”).style.display = “none”; document.getElementById(”showinfo”).style.display = “”; document.getElementById(”hideinfo”).style.display = “none”; } [...]
There’s also some great tools built using the Flickr API which are worth mentioning.
My favourite is…
http://www.flickrmap.com
Great Flickr intro..
Been using Flickr for sometime, and I love it.. Its pretty addictive though
For Wayne – Some users allow you to download the picture. You have to be a registered user.
You need to click on the “See different sizes” in the bottom right hand corner, to download different sizes. If the User does not want you to do this, then you are stuck with the original size only. Why not leave the photographer a comment, and ask? It really helps if you take an active part in Flickr community, and not just take peoples pictures.
By the way, Flickr is one of the only websites, where i actually paid!! This iste is WORTH IT!!!
Thanks for comments Jez, I totally agree Flickr is seriously addictive and well worth the subscription!
A pointer to these wonderful tools created by the flickr community at the Great Flickr Tools Collection.
[...] How to: Flickr Intro at BenBishop.me.uk (tags: howto flickr) [...]
[...] How to: Flickr Introduction A great guide for Flickr newbies! Keywords: blogs, flickr, howto, tips [...]
You need to improve your grammar. This copy is chock full of gramatical errors!
links for 2006-01-06
Installing and using MythTV Basic setup for myth box (tags: mythtv linux howto) Pamphlet of KnoppMyth Upcoming PVR project (tags: MythTV via epia Knoppimyth PVR Linux Knoppix) How to: Flickr Intro Great way to share pics, no login req’d….
[...] Tagging is the process of adding keywords or ‘tags’ to an object to benefit the retrieval in a search at a later date (you remember I talked about the social and directory like aspect to Delicious?). It is difficult to immediately understand the advantages of tagging objects whether they are photos in Flickr’s case (see my how to) or bookmarks where Delicious is concerned but hopefully it won’t take long for it to become apparent. [...]
[...] Check it out here. [...]
[...] This article to introduce to this stuff. [...]
[...] * Getting to Know flickr (Basic) screencast by Jeff Utecht for the K12 Online Conference * How to Flickr Intro by Ben Bishop * Tips for Flickr Beginners (Lifehacker) * Flickr Tutorial Series (Indezine) * Flickr Advanced User Guide (Lifehacker) * Flickr technique (flickr discussion group) [...]
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Thanks in advance for your input.