Tag Archives: Flickr

Flickr

SmugMug buys Flickr – should we stay or should we go?

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Flickr Photostream

So the wait is over. When it was announced that Verizon was to buy Yahoo! there was concern as to what was going to happen to Flickr. Yahoo! never did much in terms of developing Flickr and what it did do was rubbish. Trying to add the location of your photo is an interesting experience at the best of times. You might be able to pin it onto the map but the name of the place is all too often wrong. I used to spend half my time on Flickr manually changing the location – not something to be taken on lightly – but I generally don’t bother now. It’s not worth the effort.

Then there are the auto generated tags that Flickr adds to your photos without asking for confirmation. (Flickr pulls out all the stops with automatic tagging). These are sometimes relevant and it is helpful to be reminded of tags that might prove useful when searching, but the error rate is far too high to leave Flickr to its own devices when generating these. Deleting the oddballs after you have uploaded individual photos is not too onerous but checking a back catalogue of thousands of photos for rogue tags is not really feasible. It explains why Flickr search results often include photos that no way match your search terms.

It would also be nice if we could have interfaces with social media and mobile apps that actually work.

And finally, many of us are looking forward to not having to use a Yahoo! account to log in.

Unfortunately, the email that is hitting subscribers inboxes right now states:

“Nothing will change immediately with regard to your Flickr account. You will still access Flickr with your current login credentials and you will have the same Flickr experience as you do now.”

They do, though,  go on to say:

“We will continue to work to make your Flickr experience even better.”

Hmm. We shall just have to see if that is going to work out. In the meantime we have until May 25th, 2018 to decide if we want our Flickr account and data transferred to SmugMug. If we don’t:

“you must go to your Flickr account to download the photos and videos you want to keep, then delete your account from your Account Settings by May 25, 2018. If you do not delete your account by May 25, 2018, your Flickr account and data will transfer to SmugMug and will be governed by SmugMug’s Terms and Privacy Policy”.

So there we have it. I shall stay with Flickr/SmugMug for the time being and see how things develop. In any case, I shall be backing up my Flickr photos as usual just in case something goes seriously awry.

Flickr, images

Flickr no longer allows easy deletion of automatic tags

UPDATE: Flickr have now restored the option to delete their automatically generated tags

Flickr no longer allows users to easily remove the automatically generated tags that it adds to photos. Flickr has been using image recognition technology for a couple of years to automatically generate tags for users’ photos but didn’t make them visible until May 2015.  As well as new photos, the computer generated tags had been added retrospectively to all previously uploaded photos. My own experience is that many  of the tags are useless and some are totally wrong. See my earlier posting Flickr pulls out all the stops with automatic tagging.

Flickr_Star_Anise_TagsUser generated tags are in a grey box and Flickr’s automatic tags are in a white or light grey box. As the tags are used by Flickr when searching for images it is important that they are correct, and it explains why Flickr search results often contain irrelevant images.

Until now, both users’ and Flickr’s tags could be deleted. Hover over a tag and a cross would appear in the upper right hand corner enabling you to delete that tag. The cross no longer appears on Flickr generated tags so they cannot be deleted that way. There is a work around which is to manually add a tag that is identical to the one you want to remove and then delete the tag you have just added. This also deletes the corresponding Flickr tag.

Several people have commented that there is an option under Settings, Privacy and Permissions  that enables you to hide auto tags. This does exactly what it says on the tin:”hides” the tags. It does not remove them so they will still be used  by Flickr’s search.

 

Flickr

Flickr pulls out all the stops with automatic tagging

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Flickr really went to town with its automatically generated tags for my photo today. The photo was of star anise, which I took for the Challenge Friday Group; this week’s challenge is stars. A straightforward, simple photo of the spice, I thought but Flickr read a lot more into it.

This is the photo:

Star_Anise_20160311_Signed

And these are the tags:

Flickr_Star_Anise_TagsThe ones at the top with the grey background are the tags that I assigned to the photo. The rest are Flickr’s.

I deleted several of them before I thought of taking a screenshot for posterity but what is left gives  you a flavour of the range of concepts that Flickr feels are relevant.  Some of them I agree with (pattern, star shape, symmetry). Others I shall delete  as they are of no help to anyone searching on them (foliage, leaf, landscape, tree, forest, blossom,  pastel).

I do, though, rather like “minimalism” even though the structure and complexity of flavour and aroma  of star anise is far from minimalist. It  stays.

Flickr, images, Techie Stuff

Are your Flickr photos backed up?

Are your Flickr photos backed up? If Flickr accidentally deleted part or all of your account would you be able to quickly restore your collection? My own complete photo collection that has been gathered together from mobile devices and various cameras is stored on my laptop and an external hard drive, but my Flickr photos are a small subset and are organised differently. I would not relish having to rebuild my Flickr sets from scratch.

Flickr has just announced that it will be down for planned maintenance tomorrow (Thursday 24th) from 4 PM PDT to 10 PM PDT. As far as I am aware there have been no major data losses so far as a result of maintenance and upgrades by Flickr, but it once accidentally deleted a user’s entire account (Flickr user gets back account after its accidental deletion http://thenextweb.com/media/2011/02/03/flickr-user-gets-back-account-after-its-accidental-deletion/). Flickr did, however, eventually manage to restore the account.

You cannot assume that maintenance and upgrades will be without incident, though. A couple of years ago some bloggers using Google Blogger lost posts as a result of problems that arose during maintenance. (Blogger still down; 30 hours of posts lost http://www.neowin.net/news/blogger-still-down-30-hours-of-posts-lost). My husband was one of those whose posts never reappeared but thankfully he had backups. Some of his articles are quite long and detailed so he is in the habit of preparing them offline before uploading to Blogger. He also has a full backup created using Blogger’s Import/Export option (it can be found under Settings, Other). Flickr, however, does not offer an option to export your data so one has to resort to third party tools.

One of the best tools I have found to date for backing up a Flickr account is Bulkr (http://clipyourphotos.com/bulkr). This has to be downloaded to your computer and requires Adobe AIR to be installed. The free version allows you to download your photostream (small, medium or large sizes but not the original) and up to 15 sets.

 Bulkr download sets screen

If you want to download all of your sets, the original sized photos and include the metadata (title, description, tags) then you will need to upgrade to the Pro version, which currently costs USD 29.99/year. There is a Pro+ option, which is a one time payment currently offered at USD 49. Bulkr does not download comments.

An alternative is MyFlickrBackup (http://myflickrbackup.com/), which costs USD4.99 and requires .NET Framework Client Profile to run. It downloads original sized photos and all of your sets, but not the metadata. Two other programs that have been recommended to me but which I haven’t yet tried are FlickrDownload (http://www.onstation.org/flickrdownload/) and photoSync (http://webecoz.com/).

I’d be interested in hearing your experiences of any of the above, or if you know of other useful Flickr backup apps.

Flickr, images

UK National Archives on Flickr

The UK’s National Archives have added over 200 of their photos to their Flickr photostream. They can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/nationalarchives/. It is an interesting mix including Maps and Plans, Historical Documents, 19th and 20th century photographs, and 23 photographs taken by Felice Beato on the expedition for the relief of Khartoum in Sudan. There have already been comments about spelling mistakes and inconsistencies  in some of the photograph descriptions but National Archives have explained that they have reproduced exactly the photographers’ own notes if available. The tags added to the photos by National archives do have the modern spellings.

National Archives on Flickr

The photos have “no known copyright restrictions”:

“The National Archives is unaware of any current copyright restrictions on these images either because they are Crown Copyright and the copyright is waived or the term of copyright has expired. All of the images may be subject to other third party rights, such as rights of privacy. You are responsible for obtaining other such necessary permissions for reuse”

The images may be downloaded and reused without permission in any format for purposes of research, private study or education (non-commercial use) only. You are also asked to credit ‘The National Archives’ and include the catalogue reference of the item to allow others to access the original image or document.