Flickr has changed as of 20th May 2013

[DaveF]

There have been some big changes to flickr this evening without any warning.

 

If you use flickr for your photos I suggest you have a look at what you now get on the various pages.

 

Whether the changes are good or bad will probably only become apparent over a period of time when we see how many people look at and comment on images.

 

The subscription system is also having big changes new Pro accounts are no longer available.

 

To me it is not totally clear what a "free" account now gives, except it is apparently not Ad free.

 

David

[ForestPines]

If you already have a Pro account, you will probably be seriously pissed off.  I know I was.

 

They have given out no information other than "Pro is no longer available, current Pro uses can switch to Free before August 20th".  What happens after August 20th has been left unsaid.

 

Their replacement for the Pro account costs twice as much - $50pa instead of $25 - for no benefits over the new free account other than no advertising.  They have also introduced another new account type that costs literally twenty times as much as the old pro account, and its only benefit is that you get twice as much storage space.

 

Some features of the old Pro account are no longer available at all for new accounts - old accounts have unlimited storage, but more importantly, the viewing statistics feature seems to be gone for good on the new account types.

 

 

So ... time for another "what good photo-hosting sites are there?" discussion then!

[Horsetan]

I was pleasantly surprised to find I now have unlimited hosting on Flickr.... Anyone who forked out for a Pro account must be a little annoyed.

[Dagworth]

When I log in this is the message I get.
 
"Spectaculr things are happening at Flickr!

Dear Ravensclyffe, as a Pro member continue to enjoy the benefits of unlimited space, an ad free experience and stats."

 

I didn't pay for my pro account, it is part of my BT package

 

Andi

[Peter Kazmierczak]

Well, the new site doesn't seem to want to open on my computer.

[Gwiwer]

Image hosting has become huge business.  I've never had a Flickr acount having used Photobucket until recently.  I became dissatisfied with that site after their recent makeover (nothing to do with fees or facility - it's become clunky and slow to respond in my case) and have switched to SmugMug

[Katier]

Interestingly the current pro users can extend their sub for 2 years (for $44.95) which doesn't actually seem bad - I hate adverts although I'm currently on the cheap option - might change to 1 or 2 year just before.

 

Not sure about the new main page but I'll probably get used to it.

[Pyewipe Jct]

IMHO, it's bloody awful now! Over the past two years I've uploaded thousands of photos & painstakingly arranged them into Collections so navigation was simple. Overnight, however, Flickr have 'improved' everything to the extent where things are either hidden completely, or take several more steps to drill down to where you need to be... Progress, eh?!

I already have Farcebook for sharing inconsequential snaps with my friends & acquaintances, I don't need another version of it, thank you very much!

[pH]

I hope this doesn't turn into a rerun of Fotopic!

[CovDriver]

I'm also a little annoyed at the changes they have made on the Flickr site and when I looked at my profile/membership page it's still saying that my membership will renew next month well I don't think so I'll be looking for something else.

This now appears to be going down the fotopic route I hope not as I've only got about 3000 photos to backup now.

[CovDriver]

Jus having a look at the differences between the free accounts and the pro accounts and it clearly states on one page that there will be no ads even if your on a free account but when you delve a little deeper it's complete rubbish.

 

Pro benefits = unlimited storage,Ad free and detailed stats 

Free benefits = 1 Terabyte of storage, with ads and no stats

[bubbles2]

I really hate the changes, as most people do here http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/72157633547442506

 

The old Flickr was easy and simple to use, the new one difficult to follow and I can't get it to do what I want, extremely frustrating.

 

How do you now view your favourites as a slide show?  Something which I really enjoyed doing while making models on the bench, just leaving the 4000+ pictures scrolling away in the background.

 

Lets hope they change it back.

[Blandford1969]

How exactly do you edit photos now, it used to be simple, with the changes I can't find out how to open aviary to reverse a photo. - Not impressed so far on either the cost or user friendlyness.

[DaveF]

How exactly do you edit photos now, it used to be simple, with the changes I can't find out how to open aviary to reverse a photo. - Not impressed so far on either the cost or user friendlyness.

 

Go to your photostream, click on the photo to enlarge it.

 

Then click on the three white dots at bottom right and all the options come up, slideshow, edit, rotate, delete etc etc.

 

By the way the same three dots menu also gives you the option for a slideshow

 

When you go to sets you can have a slideshow if you click on the first photo in the set and then click on the three dots and select slideshow.

 

It may not be intuitive but at least it is there when you find it - but it has taken me  a lot of the morning to get there.

 

David

[ForestPines]

Jus having a look at the differences between the free accounts and the pro accounts and it clearly states on one page that there will be no ads even if your on a free account but when you delve a little deeper it's complete rubbish.

 

Pro benefits = unlimited storage,Ad free and detailed stats 

Free benefits = 1 Terabyte of storage, with ads and no stats

 

It's more complicated than that, but they left some old help information on show for a while.

 

The account types they have now are:

 

Free - 1Tb, ads, no stats

(Pro - $25/year, unlimited, no ads, stats)

Ad-free - $50/year, 1Tb, no ads, no stats

"Doublr" - $500/year (no, really), 2Tb, no ads, no stats

 

Pro accounts are no longer available to new subscribers, and if a Pro customer lets their subscription expire they won't be able to get it back again.

[Peter Kazmierczak]

Still all I get are the blue and pink circles going back and forth, back and forth, back and...........

Managed to get onto it at work and it's horrid. Can't figure it out at all.

[Norm81]

I don't like it, when you used to search you got one screen's worth and could hit the number on the bottom to move on, it was easy to scan through the photos with whitespace between. Now it looks like you have to scroll down and as all the photo's are larger rather than thumbnails with no whitespace and they take longer to load (at least on my pc they do).

 

I'm not against change so long as it's for the better, it just looks like a messy collage now imo.

[brian daniels]

I have over 26,000 pictures on my site and this makeover is a bl**dy mess. All I get are the two twiddling dots a lot of the time. For my pro account do I get given a new computer so that I can actually use Flickr now? Looks like it's been designed by a chimp.

[A_S]

I dont think its too bad - its just different...

 

I let my pro account lapse a few years ago so I don't think I can get it back now then? (which is a shame as I was considering it)

 

Its like anything, once people get used to it, it will be fine.

[John M Upton]

Just been on my Flickr photostream for the first time in over a week and quite frankly I am horrified!!  Yet another perfectly usable online resource that has been bought up by those incompetent idiots at Yahoo and subsequently mucked up beyond all recognition.  I am still mightily peeved off with Yahoo for buggering up the EGroups a few years ago.

 

There must be some way to at least get the Photostream back to something resembling the old format?  This format was in use for group archives and was incredibly slow to load even at the best of times so this is going to be an utter disaster.

 

Oh and I paid for a Pro account!!  Also I shall be most unhappy if I see advertising coming up, it was one of the reasons I choose Flickr in the first place.

[A_S]

I really dont understand the negativity towards the photostream - I think its fantastic - you see far more images  on one page (no pages) you can get a great overview of someones photostream without going through pages and pages and its just more interesting and makes the original pages and pages of photos look uninspiring and repetitive. I think its more creative solution for a creative art. The purpose of flickr is to provide a shop window for aspiring photographers and this does it much better imho - if looking through someones photostream you can quickly scan 10x as many images to find the ones you want to look at so its not only more creative but quicker and i think just as easy to use.

 

my photostream btw:

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrew_s84/

[The Stationmaster]

I really dont understand the negativity towards the photostream - I think its fantastic - you see far more images  on one page (no pages) you can get a great overview of someones photostream without going through pages and pages and its just more interesting and makes the original pages and pages of photos look uninspiring and repetitive. I think its more creative solution for a creative art. The purpose of flickr is to provide a shop window for aspiring photographers and this does it much better imho - if looking through someones photostream you can quickly scan 10x as many images to find the ones you want to look at so its not only more creative but quicker and i think just as easy to use.

 

my photostream btw:

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrew_s84/

I'm sorry but it just seems to be a jumble - for example some folk who regularly post links to their collections or parts of them on here had their pics organised in folders so you could look at what interested you or search easily for images of particular subjects.  Now all you get is a jumbled mess -i I've just clicked on one excellent photographer's page which I had established as a favourite, now I get a mixture of old & new British steam (standard and narrow gauge), continental, African, and various'buses  all jumbled up together - the value of the site as a place of reference has been reduced because although you can gradually get there, provided you can find a suitable pic to link you to a set, you no longer have teh advatage of folders listed (hopefully and on the well organised sits) on the first page.

 

Yes you now get the previous group facility of having lots of images on a page but unless you can get to the right page it's not accessible for you so overall navigation becomes far more difficult.  Sorry but I don't like it and thank goodness I've never put any of my pics on there.  Maybe Flickr is a shop window for aspiring photographers but it is also an important online storage and reference source and it appears that that particular part of it has been ignored in this change.

[A_S]

I'm not sure about folders or groups as i've never used them but sets are still there:

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrew_s84/sets/

 

care to post a link to said page? I'm sure there ways round it.

 

 

I agree about using it as a source of reference - and it has always been useful as that for me previously but i really don't think that is the purpose of the site - as a reference library - if its become one as a side effect of its success and simplicity then that is something that should have been considered perhaps. Perhaps it was, who knows.

 

Andrew

[Pyewipe Jct]

I'm not sure about folders or groups as i've never used them but sets are still there:

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrew_s84/sets/

 

care to post a link to said page? I'm sure there ways round it.

 

 

I agree about using it as a source of reference - and it has always been useful as that for me previously but i really don't think that is the purpose of the site - as a reference library - if its become one as a side effect of its success and simplicity then that is something that should have been considered perhaps. Perhaps it was, who knows.

 

Andrew

 

Surely the 'purpose' of a site is ultimately determined by the use it's put to by its users, though? You may well start out intending the site to be a daily celebration of the 'art' of photography, but if a large proportion of the users (who after all create the site - without them, you simply have a blank webpage) choose to upload catalogues of photos purely for reference purposes, then that becomes (at least part of) its purpose.

 

It may not be a surprise to learn that I fall firmly into the latter camp - I use (or used) Flickr to present reference collections across a wide range of subjects of interest to me from railways (real and model), military vehicles and militaria, road vehicles, traction engines, music, historic monuments and archaeology, through to butterflies and wildlife. Many, many hours have been spent arranging and labelling these images into coherent sets and collections that (hopefully) allow even the most casual of observers to find what they are interested in. Key to this was the presentation of a list of Collections on the Photostream, which effectively gave a front to door into the different subjects. Overnight, however, the Flickr redesign has made all of that considerably more difficult than it was, to the point that many of my friends have echoed my thoughts that the site is now vitually unusable - if nothing else, the time it now takes to load the continuously-scrolling, justified images is ridiculous, never mind the fact that 'Collections' are effectively hidden, and captions truncated. All of which is personally very sad, especially in view of the time I now feel I've wasted. There are alternative sites of course - ipernity, is my favourite, at the moment - but none are a perfect fit for what I feel has been lost, and the thought of effectively starting again from scratch (even with transfer scripts, etc.) makes me feel like jacking the whole thing in and keeping my photos to myself.

 

Finally, just a personal observation, but one thing I have noticed is that the majority of those who applaud the new look and changes seem to have relatively few photos and even fewer 'Sets' (let alone 'Collections'), which obviously must make navigating their site relatively easy, even with the changes. In contrast, however, I have over 13,000 photos grouped into over 1,000 sets (and beyond that 13 or so Collections), so the experience for me is considerably less pleasant...

[Norm81]

I still stand by the fact I think they've put form over function.

 

With regards the photostream, those of us who don't have superfast broadband or the latest zillion core processor end up stuck with a page that won't continue to load and a blue and pink circle just sat there as they won't even move side to side! I think I might've even had to crash firefox out the last time.