Good news for Flickr users today. Along with the announcement of a new and improved uploader they’ve also announced that they are increasing the size limits on photos. Pro account users can now upload photos up to 50MB (previously 20MB limit) in size and free accounts can now upload photos up to 30MB (previously 15MB limit).
This is a welcome announcement as today’s larger megapixel DSLRs are increasingly producing original JPG image files larger than 20MB. Previously if you tried to upload these photos to Flickr the uploader would reject them and the bulk uploader would accept them but resize them down to super small photo sizes.
Flickr’s new uploader is a marked improvement over the previous uploader and feels much more like their more professional bulk uploader that they previously offered as an add on. Users simply drag and drop multiple photos into an app like interface where they can rearrange photos into the order that they want to upload them.
(Pro tip: make sure the last 5 photos and especially the last single photo you upload are your strongest in any given batch).
Flickr actually begins processing and uploading the photos in the background before you even press upload but you have until you are ready to upload to commit the photos to your account. This is one speed enhancement improvement. Overall Flickr says that uploads of large files with the new uploader will now be up to 60% faster for users overseas and up to 30% faster for users in the US.
I’ve been beta testing the new uploader for the past few months and can confirm that photos do seem to upload much faster.
Other photo sharing sites had previously increased size limits and it was important for Flickr to keep up with today’s move. SmugMug announced in March that they were increasing file sizes to 50MB and photo sharing site 500px now offers 60MB file sizes.
Google’s Picasa service still limits photographs to 20MB. I can’t find anywhere where either Google+ or Facebook explicitily state a MB file size limit, however, in the past I’ve noticed that photos on Google+ fail to upload if they are over 20MB. Both Facebook and G+ resize your photos to smaller versions than the original sizes.
This is the second major enhancement that the Flickr site has completed this year. Earlier this year Flickr served up a redesign in their “Photos from your contacts” page that now shows these photos in a larger justified page format that allows bigger photo views and the ability to hover over a photo and fave the photo directly from this page.
This is another positive move forward by Flickr Chief Markus Spiering and his team coming off of Spiering’s promise of a “renewed sense of purpose” that he blogged about on the Flickr blog in January. Flickr has also established a new photowalking meetup site and has held major East Coast photowalks earlier this year in New York and Philadelphia and one this past Saturday in San Francisco.
The new “justified” view seems to have made its way on to the “my favourites” page, too, I’ve noticed.
That is great. Thanks for the news.
Trevor, yes it’s also used for favorites now. I suspect it may be used for sets next. 🙂