Just got an email announcing flickr’s exciting new plans.

This bit (the bit in the teeniest of tiny font) is important:

Now would be a good time to back up any content on a free flickr account.

Yeah got the email, the plan makes sense really going back to a more creative place rather than bulk storage. I’ll have to check what the pro pricing is though. My account got upgraded for about 3 or 4 free rears of pro when a friend who was there from the early days got booted out by yahoo. Conicrdence I’m sure

$49.99 for a year pro membership, not sure if that’s before or after the 30% discount.

if they give the option of a monthly payment plan then it’ll be no harder to swallow than other subscription services such as Spotify, Apple Music, DropBox etc

 it’ll be no harder to swallow than other subscription services such as Spotify, Apple Music, DropBox

All adds up though. And it’s not like you can EVER STOP PAYING…

Google photos is free & unlimited if you choose the compression option. Good as a sharing option.

And no more need for a ymail account.

I’ve been a Flickr Pro user since ’95, so seems like good news as us paying users will be getting some lovin at last….

$5.99 a month

Not a surprise.  New owners –

“Now you’ve got a gazillion TB for FREEEE! – go forth and use it!”

Some time passes…

“Now pay us money.”

glad I never got stuck into using it as an archive.

glad I never got stuck into using it as an archive.

And that is the point it was never meant to be an archive

Google photos is free & unlimited if you choose the compression option. Good as a sharing option.

Yep I use Google as an archive but Flickr to show the best ones

For only $50/year it’s a pretty cheap to use an an archive….

Google photos is free & unlimited if you choose the compression option. Good as a sharing option.

I’d use Google Photos more as a “sharing option” if it actually worked as such – try linking to it off a forum and it’s pants.

Not a surprise.  New owners –

Its more the new, new owners looked at what yahoo were doing and went “thats stupid”.

Seems like they are trying to go back to the preyahoo days. I vaguely remember a restriction on number of photos for free members then as well.

Google photos is free & unlimited if you choose the compression option. Good as a sharing option.

If you have Amazon prime then you get photos as part of that. So works out okay with the video/music as well.

Death of Flickr in my opinion. Plenty of other options for paid services for showing off photo collections and Flickr has been dying for a while in terms of creativity. Just bucket loads of HDR, professional promotion and group spamming. Viewers and comments of any use dropping off.

I don’t use it at an mass archive, just for stuff I want to share, but the albums I’ve got on there have built up to 2000+ photos. I used to be on a paid account but it didn’t give me much benefit and then they did the large free storage so I dropped it.

I get little from the critical review side of it now and I don’t have the time or desire to browse other’s photos due to many I’d follow giving up on the place. So it just becomes a place to have my photo albums to show off. I can already do that with OneDrive, create and share albums as I need (and similar price you get 1TB storage and Word, Excel etc with Office 365).

Will probably delete my account rather than have half the photos ripped out.

https://www.flickr.com/lookingahead/?utm_campaign=flickr-lookingahead&utm_source=Flickr&utm_medium=email

The full story from their point of view.

I’m on about 890 or so pictures but luckily there’s plenty I can trim that I don’t need. I use flickr as my photo hosting for anything that needs to sharing on forums or in general.

I wish google photos would implement a proper bbcode option.

I’m cool with the price…. it’s not that much that it will stop me.

Ah. I’ve used Pro since about 2013, although I think it’s only been $25 per yr.

Not sure I’m happy to pay $50. I only signed up to it for the photo a day challenge and am well under 1000 pics.

Need to check my emails!

Weird. I’ve not got any emails from Flickr…

Mmm, I can see a lot of old threads going dark. Photobucket doing that ruined a lot of forums.

On the other hand why should Flickr subsidise forums (like STW) by hosting the photos for them and not getting part of the income stream?

Is there a tool / easy way to back up a flickr account and save the pics locally? I don’t use it but I have heaps of photos on there that I wouldn’t want to lose.

Will back em up to Google pics…

I’ve been using Flickr to share photos with friends, family, mountain bike forums etc and a website (on smugmug coincidentally) to show what a serious (if untalented) photographer I am. Now I’m wondering if those functions can be combined. Or if there’s any point in the latter at all 🙁

There’s obviously a fair few users of online photo repositories on here then.

I don’t need the ‘community’ aspect, I just want somewhere to automatically backup photos online, and have hosting for pics to post on forums.

I’ve been using flickr mostly because photobucket went to shit, and because the google photos interface seems strangely unintuitive.

Flickr isn’t perfect, but if it’s the best option to keep on using it the way I use it I’ll likely stump up the cash. Before I do, are there any other options I should look at?

I use imgur for those photos that need to be public to share on forums. Currently free. I only upload a limited number of shots and those will have been edited/tarted up and reduced in image size – linking to the original images of several Mb in size is somewhat wasteful of people’s bandwidth.

I’m currently a pro user, with 27k photos uploaded. Most of them are of cycling events I’ve been asked to take photos at so I guess they’re more use for other people than me. Not sure I’ll be bothering to pay for online storage for them.

What’s the hive mind’s opinion on other online photo sharing sites? Ideally somewhere that is simple to link to and I can set sharing permissions?

G

I’m currently a pro user

Not sure I’ll be bothering to pay for online storage for them.

Pro Flickr users already pay, so just keep paying $50/year?

Seems like they are trying to go back to the preyahoo days. I vaguely remember a restriction on number of photos for free members then as well.

Yes, I’m pretty sure the ‘free’ limit was 200 back then, the reason I had to move to photobucket after a few months (didn’t bother reading the t&c when I signed up).

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I’m currently a pro user

Not sure I’ll be bothering to pay for online storage for them.

Pro Flickr users already pay, so just keep paying $50/year?

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I don’t pay, I got flickr pro for free with my BT broadband, still do.

G

Time to delete then. I only started using it for forum images, and I think there are better options now because you cannot actually post an image and share it on here using Android, which is annoying as hell.

So I might move to something else for forum images (any recommendations for simplest?) and then stick to Adobe for actual photo stuff, for which I already pay.

Test

Time to delete then. I only started using it for forum images, and I think there are better options now because you cannot actually post an image and share it on here using Android, which is annoying as hell.

The new forum actually copes better than the old one for this.

Inside the Flickr App, click the share logo and then copy URL, paste the short URL into the Text box as it and the pic comes up it’s about as simple as it gets

Ha. And I’ve been using the flickr2bbcode add on. No need now.

Mmm, I can see a lot of old threads going dark. Photobucket doing that ruined a lot of forums.

On the other hand why should Flickr subsidise forums (like STW) by hosting the photos for them and not getting part of the income stream?

Epicyclo wrote …..? I read thru the email (quickly) and couldn’t see anything about direct linking? Might have missed it and if someone could point me to that bit fine – if I read it correctly users with more than 1000 photos would have to subscribe – I guess if people pull their photos to go below the limit or in a huff then it is sort of comparable for forum threads to Photobucket’s no linking policy but wasn’t that a no linking at all policy?

Have Flickr pro cos’ i like to back up and like photos on forum threads

Question is what SmugMug will do about freebie Flickr accounts linking photos. They let their own users link photos directly, but then those users are paying a subscription.

Not sure Flickr will survive as a separate brand. I doesn’t really offer anything to SmugMug except a collection of photos and some subscriptions. For pro accounts it’s much the same service, which is why if I was going to move to a pro service dedicated to photography I’d more likely just move to SmugMug than go with a Flickr Pro account.

Not sure Flickr will survive as a separate brand. I doesn’t really offer anything to SmugMug except a collection of photos and some subscriptions

Well it does have the advantage for me that I’ve heard of it, never seen smugmug before 😉

Looking at the options, I reckon Flickr Pro is the most cost effective option. I could move all my photos to Google Drive (now I’ve learned how to hotlink from there), but to upgrade my storage there would cost more than the Flickr subscription.

Well, I’ve been going through my 2500ish collection. It’s taking way too long to cut it down to 1000 by filtering the stuff I want to keep.

Going to delete the lot I reckon.

There’s no way I’m paying another subscription for photo hosting as I get that with OneDrive that I pay for. The audience for critique has gone from Flickr and my enthusiasm for photos has gone a bit also. I know SmugMug want to restore the old Flickr audience and less about backup by doing this but I feel it’s too late. I don’t even use it as a backup, I’ve just amounted a large collection of albums over time. That’s natural progression for long term accounts. The brand will die and leaves their own plus a collection of photos they’ve effectively bought from Flickr.

Well I got the reminder today, I paid the £40 for a year, it’s the place to host my pics to share and show these days, never been a back up for me.
Have Google Drive for the bulk and RAWS still but nice to keep a clean and simple place to host and link to

Edit – if you are looking at a creative cloud sub you can get the cost of Pro back with a discount there at the moment

If you had a server could you host your own photos?

I could, but I’d have to pay for the connection, server and hosting for that. Flickr still does that for me without any real hassle.