General Photography Chat

[Rizzo]

^ I finally broke down and started renting photoshop from adobe. It's $20 / month and I think you can install it on multiple computers so as long as they aren't running simultaneously.

Sucks, but I enjoy photography and hobbies come with a price.

[bulliver]

[i_am_hydrogen]

^No shit! The new layout is awful.

[bulliver]

It's an ugly bastard child of facebook and tumblr. Surprised to not see any chatter about it here, I know lots of SSP photogs use it to host.

[Okayyou]

It will take some time to get used to but flickr was in need of an upgrade. I'm not complaining about the 1TB of storage.

On a side note, has anyone else with a flickr account been spammed with contact requests? I started getting multiple per day around the same time the iphone app came out. I don't know any of the people and most have only a few uploads that look like they are from a phone. I had 50 requests in the last hour and now have something like 3000 people that call me a contact. I have no idea where or how these people are finding me. Most of the time they seem to be dead accounts.

[bulliver]

Originally Posted by Okayyou

It will take some time to get used to but flickr was in need of an upgrade. I'm not complaining about the 1TB of storage.

Certainly a lot of space but previously it was completely unlimited. They are purposely trying to get pro users to "downgrade" because they will make a lot more money in ad revenue than they ever will with subscription fees.

And these changes are far beyond simply getting used to. They have completely destroyed usability. If there was some way to disable the justified 'streaming' of photostreams I could probably live with it but as it is it loads slow as hell, and all the pics are smashed together in a giant mess competing for attention. I much prefer my shots to have a bit of whitespace for padding so that they may breath a bit. Also, they have moved/obfuscated info like comments/titles/EXIF et al behind more mouseclicks.

A huge step backwards for elegance, simplicity, accessibility and usability. It is fairly clear that flickr wants to become yet another generic social media site rather than a serious community for artists to share their work.

[bulliver]

Specific reasons the new flickr sucks. If I am just not understanding something, or if anyone knows a workaround please let me know.

1. facebook style 'cover' wastes space for actual content and provides zero benefit.
2. justified streaming photostream is very slow to load, and obfuscates the photo's title and description. Also, makes it near impossible to use the 'help' et al links in the page footers.
3. Trying to find a random shot in your (or someone else's) photostream (or group pool, or contacts uploads) near impossible due to lack of sane pagination. I'm supposed to endlessly scroll through thousands of shots to find the one I want?
4. Important information such as EXIF, license details et al obfuscated behind mouse clicks.
5. Comments are now hidden underneath a full-page lightbox that cannot be disabled.
6. Multiple comments now hidden behind a mouse click a la facebook.
7. The landing page is now a mish-mash of recent activity and contacts uploads, which is displayed ridiculously large.
8. I have contacts that post nudes. Before they would appear in a discrete thumbnail. Now they show up large size, front and centre. Not good if viewing in a sensitive spot or with mixed company to have full frontal appear.
9. Ability to browse thumbs/small sizes and decide which pictures to look at large is gone, again, wasting load time and bandwidth...
10. Map completely jettisoned. I for one found it useful. [EDIT] I found the map, but it is hidden behind a mouse click.
11. It appears you can no longer preview your comments. Why would you remove that?

[Okayyou]

Yeah, the forced activity page is annoying. I liked the options of the old ones. If I wanted to see my contact's photos I could do just that, if I just wanted the activity on my shots I could see only that. Now I'm forced to see everything mixed. I don't want to see some random contact's snaps from a birthday party mixed in with my activity.

It feels like the site is still old with just a new html 5 wrapper. Click on a group or stats and you are back to the old flickr. I like the new layout of sets but it definitely takes longer to load and is hard to find a specific shot.

I'll give it a week and see how I adjust. Not sure what other photo sharing services I could switch to if I decided to jump ship. I'm hoping they listen to feedback and make some adjustment after things get settled.

[mr.John]

I don't see how anyone will find anything you posted in this train wreck,however if you only use Flickr for storage and hosting it's great (and free)

[i_am_hydrogen]

I feel bad for people who have lengthy blog posts that accompany their photos. Now, those are completely hidden from the front page, so they don't draw in the reader/viewer.

[ue]

Originally Posted by bulliver

Certainly a lot of space but previously it was completely unlimited. They are purposely trying to get pro users to "downgrade" because they will make a lot more money in ad revenue than they ever will with subscription fees.

And these changes are far beyond simply getting used to. They have completely destroyed usability. If there was some way to disable the justified 'streaming' of photostreams I could probably live with it but as it is it loads slow as hell, and all the pics are smashed together in a giant mess competing for attention. I much prefer my shots to have a bit of whitespace for padding so that they may breath a bit. Also, they have moved/obfuscated info like comments/titles/EXIF et al behind more mouseclicks.

A huge step backwards for elegance, simplicity, accessibility and usability. It is fairly clear that flickr wants to become yet another generic social media site rather than a serious community for artists to share their work.

No offense, but I wouldn't call flickr terribly serious. It is the land where glittery gifs and a million and a half brain dead comments (with classics such as "great shot" and "nice picture") run rampant.

It's not a bad site (or at least it was, this new interface looks like a POS) and it is an excellent resource for new photographers, but it was/is not some holy grail for online photographers that is above the rest with all it's seriousness.

[M II A II R II K]

A better, brighter Flickr

http://blog.flickr.net/2013/05/20/a-...ighter-flickr/

In the beginning, Flickr innovated the way people share and discover photos. Today, we are shifting the photo-sharing landscape again. We’re releasing a Flickr that’s more spectacular, much bigger, and one you can take anywhere.

.....

[bulliver]

It is the land where glittery gifs and a million and a half brain dead comments (with classics such as "great shot" and "nice picture") run rampant.

I've not had any of that in years. I think the quality of your comments depends greatly on the contacts you keep. If one of your shots hits explore you will get a boatload of useless comments but that is rare for me.

And anyway, my "serious community" comment speaks more to the presentation of the photo. I like to consider one photo at a time, and choose which photos I want to look at in large size. I want photos to have room to breath.

Go to an art gallery...it will almost certainly have white walls, and each work will have plenty of space to breath. What a gallery will NOT have is hundreds of works crammed on a wall frame to frame. One cannot easily enjoy and consider the art with such a busy presentation.

[bulliver]

Originally Posted by i_am_hydrogen

I feel bad for people who have lengthy blog posts that accompany their photos. Now, those are completely hidden from the front page, so they don't draw in the reader/viewer.

Indeed. I often add long descriptions. I also often add a few more shots relevant to the lead shot in the first comment. These are now hidden behind mouse clicks.

[R@ptor]

Worst. 'Upgrade'. Ever.


In addition to the points already mentioned by bulliver I would like to add the following:

-it is now excruciatingly slow to browse through a photostream or a set

-you can no longer create collections, which were quite useful to sort your photos

-the tiles of your sets look absolutely messy because they show only 10% or so of the original photo

-the starting page now only shows photos of my contacts/groups I'm a member of, rather than showing me who commented on my photos

[QuantumX]

Originally Posted by Hayward

^ I finally broke down and started renting photoshop from adobe. It's $20 / month and I think you can install it on multiple computers so as long as they aren't running simultaneously.

Sucks, but I enjoy photography and hobbies come with a price.

Flickr used to have pretty damn good photoshop for free until Google bought and disposed of it so that you have to pay to get decent photoshop capabilities.

[Witty Nickname]

My thoughts and last upload to Flickr.


Goodbye Flickr by Witty nickname, on Flickr

http://www.ipernity.com/doc/witty_nickname

[mr.John]

I agree with you 100% Witty,but unfortunately Flicker isn't the only website that's gone the drain, SSP's photo section has become a complete mess, you know there's a problem when you have threads by Okayyou, Sabotai, and flash relegated to page 2 after barely getting a thousand views. Why has this happened? for starters you have about a dozen serial bumpers who have taken upon themselves to make their threads "sticky" (you know who you are) and then there's certain people who decide to comment on 10-12 threads at one time, I'm sure their intentions are not bad, but by doing so they inadvertently bump a bunch of threads to page 2 or move new threads down the page, and finally there's people who post total crap bordering on spam every few days, which again results on threads being bumped to page 2 (the page of death). Things need to change

[glowrock]

Originally Posted by mr.John

I agree with you 100% Witty,but unfortunately Flicker isn't the only website that's gone the drain, SSP's photo section has become a complete mess, you know there's a problem when you have threads by Okayyou, Sabotai, and flash relegated to page 2 after barely getting a thousand views. Why has this happened? for starters you have about a dozen serial bumpers who have taken upon themselves to make their threads "sticky" (you know who you are) and then there's certain people who decide to comment on 10-12 threads at one time, I'm sure their intentions are not bad, but by doing so they inadvertently bump a bunch of threads to page 2 or move new threads down the page, and finally there's people who post total crap bordering on spam every few days, which again results on threads being bumped to page 2 (the page of death). Things need to change

While I somewhat agree with you in terms of the threads getting relegated to page 2 after a short time, I don't necessarily think it's any one thing causing it. First of all, I definitely agree that the number of replies and page views has slowed considerably in the photo section. It's one of the reasons why I was pushing for elimination of the A-M and N-Z deliniation. Secondly, if someone decides to post replies in several photo threads, as long as those aren't the standard "Nice shots!" in ten threads type of posts, it's not really a problem in my mind. Thirdly, I do believe that the authors of photo threads can and should be able to reply to comments others leave in their threads. If that results in "bumping", then so be it.

Lastly, I'm not sure what type of changes you're even advocating. Eliminating thread originators from replying in their own threads? Eliminating people's ability to comment in multiple threads sequentially? Exactly what are you advocating changing?

If you don't want to publically comment, please PM me, and I promise to look into whatever suggestions you have, especially given that I've essentially taken over as the moderator for the photo threads.

Aaron (Glowrock)

[mr.John]

There's nothing wrong with responding to questions or comments someone posted on your thread,but adding a few photos every few days (to bump up your thread) is a little too much,have some respect for other people posting (i'm not referring to you)