7 ms·

Why? Flickr is one of last Yahoo products people I know sometimes still use. Facebook does a poor job at retaining high res pictures, few non-photographer frie

Why? Flickr is one of last Yahoo products people I know sometimes still use. Facebook does a poor job at retaining high res pictures, few non-photographer friends use 500px, G+ doesn't have as much control, and Instagram is only for specific mobile photos.

ja27 15y ago
It's the only Yahoo product I've spent a dime on. In fact, except for Netflix, I've spent more on Flickr than any other online service and I'm a cheap bastard. That said, I did downgrade and stop paying them last year.
- ja27 15y ago
  I guess I should say that the reason I gave up on them is because of their layoffs and stagnation. I lost faith in their ability to survive.
haunted 15y ago
You've summed up the alternatives pretty well. I wanted to move from Flickr to 500px, but I feel like my Hipstamatic snapshots simply don't belong there, considering the caliber of talent on display there. I ended up settling for Instagram, even though I'm not too big on it.
sp332 15y ago
I can strongly recommend Smugmug as a Flickr replacement. $40/year for unlimited photo storage and bandwidth. They handle high-res photos at full resolution, and their thumbnails are less fuzzy than Facebook. (Actually you can change the amount of sharpening on a per-gallery basis, and the default is a good start.)
- msbarnett 15y ago
  Smugmug is only a viable replacement for Flickr if your content stays within their absurdly strict and conservative acceptable content policy. I've photographed a lot of burlesque events, and although none of the photos contain overt nudity, the mere presence of a breast with nipple concealed is enough to get your photos summarily removed by Smugmug's staff.
  - sp332 15y ago
    Ah, interesting. I've never tried it, but that's good to know.
    - msbarnett 15y ago
      It's tragic in that they otherwise have a very nice service and I would very much welcome the ability to give them my money; they're taking themselves out of the running for rather a lot of photographers.
  - gatlin 15y ago
    Maybe that's true for public photos; I know of a photographer who frequently snaps shots of wild and crazy college-town happenings and from my inspection, by your rules she should have been canned a few hundred times now.
    - msbarnett 15y ago
      They'll allow that kind of content only in non-public galleries that are also password protected. It's possible to slip some things through the cracks, but if and when they're found they'll delist the photos. There's no value for me in paying money for a service which requires I lock up my photographs like Fort Knox merely because they contain skin. Your friend's mileage may vary. (this is the relevant section from their TOS: "By using any Interactive Areas, you agree not to post, upload to, transmit, distribute, store, create or otherwise publish through the Site any of the following: Any photograph, video, message, data, information, text, music, sound, graphics, code or other material ("Content") that is unlawful, libelous, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, indecent, lewd, suggestive, harassing, threatening, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, abusive, inflammatory, fraudulent or otherwise objectionable or harmful, including without limitation photographs or other Content containing nudity that would be unacceptable in a public museum where minors visit;") edit: It's also not hard to find them discussing their policy, like the customer reps on their public blog: http://don.blogs.smugmug.com/2007/01/31/the-dark-side-of-the-flickr-acquisition/ http://don.blogs.smugmug.com/2007/01/31/the-dark-side-of-the... "I’m afraid if you’re a nude photographer, SmugMug isn’t the place for you. We’re a family safe site, and we will ask you to take down any photos that violate our terms of use." "Our nudity policy is pretty simple and written in plain English. You can see it in our TOS. The summary line is as follows: “we prohibit the uploading and display of photographs or other Media portraying explicit nudity that would be unacceptable in a public museum where minors visit, for example. If your photos would only be suited for adult sites, adult magazines, or R-rated movies, they are not suitable for Smugmug.” We do enforce this rule to the best of our ability."
- mahyarm 15y ago
  Does it choke on uploading your entire photo collection at once? I bought a flickr pro subscription, but getting my photo collection up on there reliably was like pulling teeth. Smugmug also doesn't support RAW/DNG uploads, which makes using it as a photo backup and sharing service unattractive. Do smugmug staff also look at your private photographs?
  - jsavimbi 15y ago
    I've been using Uploadr for years, paired with direct individual uploads and I've never had an upload problem of note (>6000 uploads). Once the photos are uploaded, well, that's another story. Photo management was never at the top of the work queue, I guess.
  - brlewis 15y ago
    As someone who runs a photo sharing service that works great for uploading your entire JPEG photo collection at once (or at least in a few 2GB batches), it would be to my advantage to perpetuate the myth that Smugmug does not support RAW. But the truth is, their SmugVault service does.
    - mahyarm 15y ago
      Yes but it's not a fully integrated workflow, and you have to pay extra for SmugVault.
  - bad_user 15y ago
    If you know how to write Ruby scripts, checkout the "flickraw" gem. Myself I've written a script that behaves like rsync (i.e. uploads files from a directory that haven't been uploaded yet). And overnight I ended up uploading ~ 7000 fullres pictures on Flickr. It didn't complain.
    - quadhome 15y ago
      How is your script determine which files had been updated previously?
- joebadmo 15y ago
  Why recommend a Flickr replacement that has all of the same potential pitfalls of Flickr? In this context (HN) in particular, OpenPhoto seems like the best alternative: http://theopenphotoproject.org/ http://theopenphotoproject.org/
  - sp332 15y ago
    1. Smugmug isn't owned by Yahoo. 2. All of Smugmug's users are paying customers (even if it's less than $4/mo).
  - msbarnett 15y ago
    So I've spent like ten minutes clicking around the OpenPhoto site, and it seems to me that they somehow forgot to mention what it is that OpenPhoto actually does. Like, I don't need special software to store photos on S3. I don't need special software to hand links to files on S3 out to others, or display the files on my own site in galleries I build myself. Presumably, then OpenPhoto lets me collect said photos into galleries and hosts the gallery bits? If so, why doesn't the word gallery appear anywhere on their site? Why isn't there any way to explore the galleries that they are hosting right now? Do I have to create an account to even see them? Would people I want to share with need to? Why aren't there some screenshots of what these galleries look like? Does the absence of all of this information mean that it doesn't actually handle the gallery bits? If that's the case, what does it do? Their website is like a case-study in what not to do. It looks great, but at no point does it clearly communicate to me what it is their product does.
    - joebadmo 15y ago
      I pretty much agree with you that their landing page is a bit of a mess. Though, I probably should have given this link instead: http://openphoto.me/ http://openphoto.me/ My understanding is that the OpenPhoto Project is the open source project, and that site is aimed at developers. OpenPhoto.me is at least partly aimed at users. It explains it a little better. I will also take this opportunity to plug a piece I wrote for the Atlantic tech blog that explains a bit more about OpenPhoto: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/01/the-startup-challenging-the-centralized-internet/250008/ http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/01/the-st...
- dxbydt 15y ago
  Shameless plug: We've been using smugmug for the past 8 years. My wife's an amateur photographer, & she's been posting a daily ( a jpg shot the day before) every single day for the past 7 years. With zero marketing, we've sold over 20,000$ worth of merchandise ( photographs, photos on greeting cards, photobooks etc) & gifted free smugmug accounts to few dozen photographers. Amazing, amazing website, cannot recommend them strongly enough. They also do RAW & HD Video. They do phototours & have monthly photo contests with hefty prizes ( we won a few - a $5000 prize on a self portrait), strong smugmug communities in several cities. Downside - no adult content. http://vandanaphotography.com http://vandanaphotography.com
- sern 15y ago
  I've never been able to take them seriously with Comic Sans in their logo.
webwanderings 15y ago
Flickr is not the only last Yahoo product, people still use Yahoogroups (I do) and it seems to be working...on autopilot may be!
eftpotrm 15y ago
Flickr is good, I agree (speaking as someone with two separate personal pro accounts) but I think Yahoo has more in the arsenal than that. I recently returned to Yahoo Mail after a long absence, and to be honest, I like it. Honestly, for me I genuinely prefer it to GMail which just feels clunky in comparison now. Yahoo may have a rather chequered management history with these products, but the actual products themselves (in these two cases as the ones I actually use) remain good IMHO.
- ilamont 15y ago
  Long-time Yahoo mail user here (it's actually hard for me to admit this; I've noticed in software/tech circles that Yahoo increasingly has a stigma attached to it, not unlike AOL in '90s.) Anyway, one big difference I notice with Gmail and Yahoo mail is Google actively develops and improves the parts of the service that is visible to users. Every few months there is a significant update (recent ones that come to mind: G+ integration, new inbox design, some new templates, etc.). Yahoo mail not only fails to add/integrate new services, it doesn't even bother with basic tweaks that it can see over on the competition (Gmail). For instance, Gmail has this very prominent and useful feature: "Always show images from xyz@blah.com". Yahoo mail? It's still on a message-by-message basis. It's irritating, but also kind of sad -- Yahoo has a popular service that's still used by millions of people, but doesn't seem to care. The same can be said about Flickr, too.
  - eftpotrm 15y ago
    Yeah, I'll give GMail that. Yahoo's image handling does seem a little hit and miss - I've got some senders to always show, somehow, but it's not as good. But every time I use GMail now I find myself using keyboard shortcuts from Yahoo and wondering why they don't work. The interface jusst seems ugly and crude. Filtering I don't find as good - sorry, I've tried their labelling system, I disagree it's better and the setup interface is poor. I've noticed the spam folder grabs a lot more false positives, too. GMail is good, sure, but I odn't in any way regard it as a stand-out leader. Yahoo Mail may not be improving as fast as we'd like but it's frankly still a very good product.

ja27 15y ago

It's the only Yahoo product I've spent a dime on. In fact, except for Netflix, I've spent more on Flickr than any other online service and I'm a cheap bastard. That said, I did downgrade and stop paying them last year.

ja27 15y ago
I guess I should say that the reason I gave up on them is because of their layoffs and stagnation. I lost faith in their ability to survive.

haunted 15y ago

You've summed up the alternatives pretty well. I wanted to move from Flickr to 500px, but I feel like my Hipstamatic snapshots simply don't belong there, considering the caliber of talent on display there. I ended up settling for Instagram, even though I'm not too big on it.

sp332 15y ago

I can strongly recommend Smugmug as a Flickr replacement. $40/year for unlimited photo storage and bandwidth. They handle high-res photos at full resolution, and their thumbnails are less fuzzy than Facebook. (Actually you can change the amount of sharpening on a per-gallery basis, and the default is a good start.)

msbarnett 15y ago
Smugmug is only a viable replacement for Flickr if your content stays within their absurdly strict and conservative acceptable content policy. I've photographed a lot of burlesque events, and although none of the photos contain overt nudity, the mere presence of a breast with nipple concealed is enough to get your photos summarily removed by Smugmug's staff.
- sp332 15y ago
  Ah, interesting. I've never tried it, but that's good to know.
  - msbarnett 15y ago
    It's tragic in that they otherwise have a very nice service and I would very much welcome the ability to give them my money; they're taking themselves out of the running for rather a lot of photographers.
- gatlin 15y ago
  Maybe that's true for public photos; I know of a photographer who frequently snaps shots of wild and crazy college-town happenings and from my inspection, by your rules she should have been canned a few hundred times now.
  - msbarnett 15y ago
    They'll allow that kind of content only in non-public galleries that are also password protected. It's possible to slip some things through the cracks, but if and when they're found they'll delist the photos. There's no value for me in paying money for a service which requires I lock up my photographs like Fort Knox merely because they contain skin. Your friend's mileage may vary. (this is the relevant section from their TOS: "By using any Interactive Areas, you agree not to post, upload to, transmit, distribute, store, create or otherwise publish through the Site any of the following: Any photograph, video, message, data, information, text, music, sound, graphics, code or other material ("Content") that is unlawful, libelous, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, indecent, lewd, suggestive, harassing, threatening, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, abusive, inflammatory, fraudulent or otherwise objectionable or harmful, including without limitation photographs or other Content containing nudity that would be unacceptable in a public museum where minors visit;") edit: It's also not hard to find them discussing their policy, like the customer reps on their public blog: http://don.blogs.smugmug.com/2007/01/31/the-dark-side-of-the-flickr-acquisition/ http://don.blogs.smugmug.com/2007/01/31/the-dark-side-of-the... "I’m afraid if you’re a nude photographer, SmugMug isn’t the place for you. We’re a family safe site, and we will ask you to take down any photos that violate our terms of use." "Our nudity policy is pretty simple and written in plain English. You can see it in our TOS. The summary line is as follows: “we prohibit the uploading and display of photographs or other Media portraying explicit nudity that would be unacceptable in a public museum where minors visit, for example. If your photos would only be suited for adult sites, adult magazines, or R-rated movies, they are not suitable for Smugmug.” We do enforce this rule to the best of our ability."
mahyarm 15y ago
Does it choke on uploading your entire photo collection at once? I bought a flickr pro subscription, but getting my photo collection up on there reliably was like pulling teeth. Smugmug also doesn't support RAW/DNG uploads, which makes using it as a photo backup and sharing service unattractive. Do smugmug staff also look at your private photographs?
- jsavimbi 15y ago
  I've been using Uploadr for years, paired with direct individual uploads and I've never had an upload problem of note (>6000 uploads). Once the photos are uploaded, well, that's another story. Photo management was never at the top of the work queue, I guess.
- brlewis 15y ago
  As someone who runs a photo sharing service that works great for uploading your entire JPEG photo collection at once (or at least in a few 2GB batches), it would be to my advantage to perpetuate the myth that Smugmug does not support RAW. But the truth is, their SmugVault service does.
  - mahyarm 15y ago
    Yes but it's not a fully integrated workflow, and you have to pay extra for SmugVault.
- bad_user 15y ago
  If you know how to write Ruby scripts, checkout the "flickraw" gem. Myself I've written a script that behaves like rsync (i.e. uploads files from a directory that haven't been uploaded yet). And overnight I ended up uploading ~ 7000 fullres pictures on Flickr. It didn't complain.
  - quadhome 15y ago
    How is your script determine which files had been updated previously?
joebadmo 15y ago
Why recommend a Flickr replacement that has all of the same potential pitfalls of Flickr? In this context (HN) in particular, OpenPhoto seems like the best alternative: http://theopenphotoproject.org/ http://theopenphotoproject.org/
- sp332 15y ago
  1. Smugmug isn't owned by Yahoo. 2. All of Smugmug's users are paying customers (even if it's less than $4/mo).
- msbarnett 15y ago
  So I've spent like ten minutes clicking around the OpenPhoto site, and it seems to me that they somehow forgot to mention what it is that OpenPhoto actually does. Like, I don't need special software to store photos on S3. I don't need special software to hand links to files on S3 out to others, or display the files on my own site in galleries I build myself. Presumably, then OpenPhoto lets me collect said photos into galleries and hosts the gallery bits? If so, why doesn't the word gallery appear anywhere on their site? Why isn't there any way to explore the galleries that they are hosting right now? Do I have to create an account to even see them? Would people I want to share with need to? Why aren't there some screenshots of what these galleries look like? Does the absence of all of this information mean that it doesn't actually handle the gallery bits? If that's the case, what does it do? Their website is like a case-study in what not to do. It looks great, but at no point does it clearly communicate to me what it is their product does.
  - joebadmo 15y ago
    I pretty much agree with you that their landing page is a bit of a mess. Though, I probably should have given this link instead: http://openphoto.me/ http://openphoto.me/ My understanding is that the OpenPhoto Project is the open source project, and that site is aimed at developers. OpenPhoto.me is at least partly aimed at users. It explains it a little better. I will also take this opportunity to plug a piece I wrote for the Atlantic tech blog that explains a bit more about OpenPhoto: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/01/the-startup-challenging-the-centralized-internet/250008/ http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/01/the-st...
dxbydt 15y ago
Shameless plug: We've been using smugmug for the past 8 years. My wife's an amateur photographer, & she's been posting a daily ( a jpg shot the day before) every single day for the past 7 years. With zero marketing, we've sold over 20,000$ worth of merchandise ( photographs, photos on greeting cards, photobooks etc) & gifted free smugmug accounts to few dozen photographers. Amazing, amazing website, cannot recommend them strongly enough. They also do RAW & HD Video. They do phototours & have monthly photo contests with hefty prizes ( we won a few - a $5000 prize on a self portrait), strong smugmug communities in several cities. Downside - no adult content. http://vandanaphotography.com http://vandanaphotography.com
sern 15y ago
I've never been able to take them seriously with Comic Sans in their logo.

webwanderings 15y ago

Flickr is not the only last Yahoo product, people still use Yahoogroups (I do) and it seems to be working...on autopilot may be!

eftpotrm 15y ago

Flickr is good, I agree (speaking as someone with two separate personal pro accounts) but I think Yahoo has more in the arsenal than that. I recently returned to Yahoo Mail after a long absence, and to be honest, I like it. Honestly, for me I genuinely prefer it to GMail which just feels clunky in comparison now. Yahoo may have a rather chequered management history with these products, but the actual products themselves (in these two cases as the ones I actually use) remain good IMHO.

ilamont 15y ago
Long-time Yahoo mail user here (it's actually hard for me to admit this; I've noticed in software/tech circles that Yahoo increasingly has a stigma attached to it, not unlike AOL in '90s.) Anyway, one big difference I notice with Gmail and Yahoo mail is Google actively develops and improves the parts of the service that is visible to users. Every few months there is a significant update (recent ones that come to mind: G+ integration, new inbox design, some new templates, etc.). Yahoo mail not only fails to add/integrate new services, it doesn't even bother with basic tweaks that it can see over on the competition (Gmail). For instance, Gmail has this very prominent and useful feature: "Always show images from xyz@blah.com". Yahoo mail? It's still on a message-by-message basis. It's irritating, but also kind of sad -- Yahoo has a popular service that's still used by millions of people, but doesn't seem to care. The same can be said about Flickr, too.
- eftpotrm 15y ago
  Yeah, I'll give GMail that. Yahoo's image handling does seem a little hit and miss - I've got some senders to always show, somehow, but it's not as good. But every time I use GMail now I find myself using keyboard shortcuts from Yahoo and wondering why they don't work. The interface jusst seems ugly and crude. Filtering I don't find as good - sorry, I've tried their labelling system, I disagree it's better and the setup interface is poor. I've noticed the spam folder grabs a lot more false positives, too. GMail is good, sure, but I odn't in any way regard it as a stand-out leader. Yahoo Mail may not be improving as fast as we'd like but it's frankly still a very good product.