Using Flickr

Flickr was launched in 2004 by Ludicorp and subsequently acquired by Yahoo in 2005. Flickr says it has two main goals.

1) We want to help people make their photos available to the people who matter to them.
2) We want to enable new ways of organizing photos.

And thats it. Seemingly two very straight forward goals and the primary reasons why anyone would use any of the various photo sharing sites.

Before you can start sharing your pictures, you need to sign up. Yahoo acquired Flickr in 2005 so you if you already have a Yahoo account then sign up is as simple as logging into your account. However, if you don’t have one like me, then you will have to go through the sign up process which was a bit involved considering I just wanted to sign up for Flickr. At first, I was really bummed about having to get another email address but the good news is that once signed up you can make any email address your primary on the account. Thus the new address becomes something that you can just put out of mind.

Once you account is started you are given the option of two account types (basic and pro). You don’t have to stress about this decision now as you can always upgrade later with no problem.

Basic

• 100 MB monthly upload limit (5MB per photo)
• 3 sets
• Photostream views limited to the 200 most recent images
• Post any of your photos in up to 10 group pools
• Only smaller (resized) images accessible (though the originals are saved in case you upgrade later)

Pro ($24.95 annually) and gives you:

• Unlimited storage
• Unlimited uploads (10MB per photo
• Unlimited bandwidth
• Unlimited sets
• Ability to replace a photo
• Post any of your photos in up to 60 group pools
• Permanent archiving of high resolution original images
• Ad-free browsing and sharing
• Account and photo stats

Now that I have signed up, I needed to upload some photos. You can use a browser like Flock to upload photos or even send photos via email. The team at FLickr has even put together a nice easy to use application for PC or Mac (free) that allows you to upload a group of photos, name them, organize them (groups), tag them and decide if you want the public to see them or only friends and family. All of which is done very intuitively and made to be as simple as clicking a button.

That’s it, now I have photos uploaded and can browse and share them. I was very pleased with the ease of use fo the tools and the site itself. Browsing photos on the site is nothing new for me but seeing it in action from the posting side is a real treat. The team at Flickr really keeps to their core goals and truly focuses on the user experience. You wont be disappointed in the service. If you plan on using the service as a way to archive your photos as well then you will definitely want to upgrade to the pro service. One great feature is that Flickr foresees that you may want to upgrade your account so all your previous hires photos are still available on your account.

Go on now..Start Sharing Your Photos

Blogged with Flock

Tags: flickr, photo sharing