stupid flickr question

xpost xpost

17 May '05, 1.14pm EDT
We've made it easier to remove photos from group pools, with a little [X] that appears after the group name in the "send to group" menu on photo pages. And we fixed a bug that kept that and other menus from working properly for groups and sets with a " in their name. Still to come: removing a photo from a set in the same manner, and more!

posted 5 images yesterday, computer generated things i wrote on friday. today i look and all of them have 1 view each (probably me!) apart from one which has 16. why would this be? the popular one isn't exceptional in any way apart from being the most yellow.

nope, i just checked and the ***** ****** mail link just went to my flickr home. yes, public. nope to the longer description thing (#1 has the description, this was #4). all are tagged with identical tags. (had a quick look yesterday and there are thriving opengl and povray flickr groups. which is nice)

btw, girl on tv at the weekend pronounced it 'flick, r' but i've always used 'flicker'.

i can never work out how to use it cos the links are all over the place, and all in 8pt fonts

Another stupid flickr question. Is there any way to view photos differently? I know you can change the look of the first page, and mine is set to show the 5 pix as big as possible. But after that they're all little. OK. But what about when you click on them -- is it possible to do anything to Hide all the extraneous (useful) stuff about next / previous picture, sets etc etc, and just see a big white background?

I imagine not.

I ask cos it makes me reluctant to upload more pix, cos if I do then the nice white background behind the pix on the front page will be lost forever.

I think perhaps you want to be looking at the slideshow view. You'll see it a link to the slideshow view around the top right of the page. There is one for each photo set you make, too. Click on your "True Love Waits" set and you'll see it.

Things you might not like:

The photos will be on black, not white
Title and description is, by default, hidden in this view. Viewers can turn them on if they wish, by clicking on Options at the bottom right of their slideshow. The title and description will now be superimposed over the picture, in a manner you might approve of.

That is a thoughtful and generous answer, N., thank you.

I am trying the slideshow now.

I guess the black not white is a slight detriment, but, OK.

Wow, the title / description superimposition is pretty drastic stuff! Was it a typo when you wrote that I might approve of it? I guess not. Maybe I could approve of it. But on the whole one is likely to feel that they interfere with the picture itself?

You know, I think picture quality might actually be lower on slide show?

It was a typo, yes. I meant to type "not approve of". I now see at least one other mistake in my post, above. I seem to be making more and more of these.

It is a shame, about the superimposition.

Hmm, shouldn't be lower quality. I'm not sure whether the slideshow sizes-up to your screen resolution or whether you just see the "Large" JPGs that Flickr has stored away for each picture you upload (1024x768 for 4x3 images, 1024x683 for 3x2 images). Perhaps if the slideshow is doing some kind of on-the-fly resizing for your screen there may be some loss of quality.

(Btw, PF, none of your new pics have any EXIF data - that's the nerdy info which is generally collected in a little link on the right: "Taken with a .... / More Properties". How are you getting the pix off the camera/up onto Flickr?)

Oh, and for alternative ways of viewing your Flickr photostream, check out PicLens. You might like it.

PicLens !!

re. EXIF, well - I thought it was more important to import some JCB data via the Wilbury15, and resize that with Mountfield (new picture-viewing software I've downloaded from Sheedy Solutions - it's not that fast, but very reliable), than to worry initially about the sort of QPR properties that EXIF mainly concentrates on.

Mais non -- well, I have indeed seen this info on many people's screens, but I have never been given the option of inserting it, even if I knew what to insert. I specifically looked around the screen, after I got the new camera, thinking I might be able to put in this gear-flaunting info, but there was nowhere for me to do it.

How am I getting the pix on to flickr? Well, I plug a wire into the camera (or the mobile, aussi) and into the computer. And it makes a little noise and a screen comes up saying ... Open Folder To View Files? is that right? Meanwhile it also opens a thing called ... Adobe Reader? I'm not sure - something that doesn't seem very useful. I always close it down. Maybe I should find a way of stopping it ever opening.

Then, anyway, I open the folder for the camera and Cut all the pix from
it, and Paste them in a folder on my computer. And here I can rotate them for instance, if I remember. Then I go to flickr and Upload some pix from that. Then I usually add the names afterwards cos the numbers remind me what order to upload them.

Another, separate problem I have encountered is that when you select, say, 5 pix to upload, they don't necessarily come out in the order you want. So I have to delete some of them and add them again. Is this a universal problem?

EXIF data should appear automatically - it's embedded in your files. I was asking about its absence because I thought there must be something unusual in the way you go from camera to PC to Flickr that strips out this info. But...apparently not. So I remain puzzled. But, as I say, it's only really for geeks like me so no great loss.

I would try downloading Flickr Uploadr from Flickr - it's a little tool that allows you to name/order/tag/describe your pix before you upload. Handy for applying tags, etc to a bunch of pictures at once (though you can do much the same thing in Organiser after you've uploaded) - but most valuable (we find) for ordering large uploads.

I downloaded PicLens ... it seemed to produce a sort of galaxy of pictures against a dark background. I did manage to see a couple of my flickr pix on it, though only Public ones. Then it made my computer shut down.

Well, if your Flickr uploader helps you order things properly then that does sound useful.

If you've installed PicLens and you go to the first page of your Photostream and hover over the first image, you should see a little blue "Play" icon in the bottom left-hand corner of that image (there should also be some sort of PicLens icon in your browser toolbar - how/where it appears depends on the browser). Click on that and you should get a scrollable wall of images which, given time to fully load, will be your entire Photostream. You can zoom in and out of these images and, if you wish, you can play a conventional slideshow from within PicLens.

As for it shutting down...ah, well... it crashed Firefox 3.0 when I tried it in there but it seems to work flawlessly on Firefox 2.0 at home and IE 6.0 at work. What browser are you using?

There is a setting in the Privacy & Permissions section of Flickr's preferences to hide EXIF data. Perhaps PF has that set to yes? The only spanner in that suggestion is that I'm sure it defaults to no.

I like the spanner in that sentence.

Well, Mike, I did that, and found the wee blue button, and indeed for a sort of scrollable wall as you promised. It was quite promising, I think. But something odd seemed to happen, as though it thought I was trying to open many windows perhaps? - and the computer froze again.

This program is called Internet Explorer ... presumably some number or other. I have repeatedly been told that Firefox and perhaps Safari are superior, but have never been given any reasons to believe this (on the contrary, lots of things like pictures seem not to appear on Firefox), save

a) statistics showing that Firefox is safer - OK, but I'm not sure I am worried about 'safety' here
b) facebook sometimes / often doesn't work on IE, then does on Firefox
c) IE seems to shut itself down a lot; perhaps another program would not do that?

I'm not the person to recommend browsers - I use IE6 at work because, for a long time, it was the only thing that would work reliably with our online corporate database and FF2 at home because I liked the idea of tabbed browsing (which IE7 now has). No great problems with either.

I must have IE7 too, then, for this, too, has tabbed browsers, and indeed I am writing in one now.

a) statistics showing that Firefox is safer - OK, but I'm not sure I am worried about 'safety' here

You might not be worried about safety for your own sake, but you should care about it if you're a considerate internet user. If your computer falls victim to an exploit - whether it's because of the browser you're using or not - then it causes problems for the rest of the internet. Your computer will likely end up being used to send out spam and attack other people's computers. It's important to be a good neighbour.

After reading this thread, I tried the "Slideshow" button on Flickr, because I'd never bothered about it before. Result: an entirely black window, with no photos. Oh well.

(this is on Firefox 3)

Perhaps you were looking at photos of black windows.

Strangely enough, no.

It's important to be a good neighbour? I don't know what you're talking about. What is it that you think I have been doing that is bad for anyone else?

Well, it is a day for discovering new, possibly useful and possibly not, technologies and computer programs ... I now have the FLICKR UPLOADR and am trying to upload 5 pictures with it. I'm not too sure how well it is working - it seems slow so far and I guess I will have to wait and see whether the various tags etc are applied as I hoped.

I didn't read what you wrote but you should give up on computers.

I think the notion is that, by using a browser which has known security issues, you may end up with lots of unpleasant little viral trojan whatnots living on your PC which will then propagate themselves throughout the web, using your machine/web connection/email address book as a launching pad. Is that the idea, ForestPines? I know very little about this stuff.

Whether it's enough to have Norton or AVG or whatever other antiviral/spyware application running to counteract anything IE allows through, I don't know. I guess prevention is better than cure. I don't even know for sure than FF is better than IE in this regard.

xpost with ever-useful Catsup

The FLICKR UPLOADR did work for the first 5 pix but has now gone into a strange phase in which it says it is Uploading Photos to Flickr, also says DONE! and meanwhile is not actually adding anything to Flickr, as far as I can see.

Meanwhile a whole ton of not very interesting pix have been left in a strange limbo somewhere in the middle of the FLICKR UPLOADR in which they can be seen, with strange bars across them, but not manipulated or touched in any way. A kind of FLICKR PHANTOM ZONE.

Is "cafe au premier plan" a new one? I can see it!

Er, I'm not sure what's going on with your phantom zone stuff.

Yes that one is new. But there are 6 others that should have followed it which is got stuck in the PHANTOM ZONE. Finally I deleted them. from the ZONE. I think I will try to upload them the previous way, though this loses the advantage of the ORDR from the UPLOADR.

I don't think I've ever had a Flickr Uploadr failure (and that includes one batch of 700 photos) - except from the office, where many things don't work (Flickr video - took three months to work; streaming BBC live stuff - failed on day 3 of Wimbledon).

I should perhaps quit while I'm only slightly behind in this thread (settle for a 0-1); I've suggested two things which have flopped quite badly.

WANTAWAY JONES IN CRISIS

'MY GOODISON PAIN' BY MISUNDERSTOOD MAESTRO

if you're accidentally trying to uploaded an unflattened file or a cmyk image or even a file without the proper .jpg or whatever at the end - it can really mess with uploadr.

I finally went along with flickr's recommendation and took up the new 'Uploadr'. OK. But today, at least, it seems to be uploading photos in the reverse order from how it used to.

Like when they're in the uploadr page, the one in the top left corner should be the last to be uploaded, and appear at the top / newest point of the photostream, right? But the reverse seems to be happening. Is that only happening to me?

(btw when I say NEW Uploadr: I used the old one a LOT after Steady Mike recommended it - the only problem with it is how relentlessly it mangles tags, which seems an unhappy and unfair thing to do; I had been hoping the new one might be better)

I've never understood how Flickr orders its photos.

also - since i'm here - time for some shamless elf-promotion! just uploaded a set from Toledo, Spain:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2472/3829524218_59264f1bed.jpg

erm... "shameless self-promotion", that should be.

ok so i just popped for the pro acct and yes, there is a replace button now. thanks dudes

How good are Flickr about removing copyrighted videos? My friend wants to know.

I still don't know how to make a Flickr picture appear on ilx.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/9107386@N06/4999376848/

seems logical
but doesn't seem to post the picture!

It just posts a box with an x in it.

so how did people post all those Flickr pictures on here?

I think you have to use a version of the photo in a particular size.

it has changed since then
now you have to click on "share" (i think) and then choose html or bbcode and then c/p

Above the picture, it says "share this" it's all in there :)

hmmm, should've been quicker.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4146/4984635535_d7c54f00c0.jpg
Squid, parsley, pepper over spinach on Flickr

^^ this is if you c/p the entire bbcode

but this is if you just c/p the url

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4146/4984635535_d7c54f00c0.jpg

I did try that! I copied from html in that Share menu and added [img] and ilx said I was doing it wrong.

(I mean I did what Not Goodwin said, I thought)

you have to switch to bbcode -- there's a little choice down there

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4090/4999376848_19bdae1f98.jpg
number9dream by bellefox rendezvous, on Flickr

oh - so you don't add the img thing at all!

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/9107386@N06/4999376848/"; title="number9dream by bellefox rendezvous, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4090/4999376848_19bdae1f98.jpg"; width="500" height="375" alt="number9dream" /></a>

that was the html - so does that need the IMG thing?

No, can't make that work.

Grab the HTML/BBcode then paste in this box, then hit the convert button below and it should work.

you can c/p this part (http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4090/4999376848_19bdae1f98.jpg) and add your own img tag
and spare yourself from being identified as easily

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4090/4999376848_19bdae1f98.jpg (see, no direct posted link to flickr)

This box = Add a Post box :)

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4090/4999376848_19bdae1f98.jpg

that was using the CONVERT button, as recommended by not goodwin - I never even saw that button before or knew what it was for!

Took me a few attempts to get it right first time.
now you can pass on your interweb copy and pasting knowledge to others :)

I can't upload anything to Flickr. Is this only happening to me?

I expect so.

http://www.flickr.com/services/apps/72157626690796099/

how the shit do i upload a photo from my photo library from the new iphone app? i regret the update already.

Seems like you have to click on the camera button at the bottom, then the little library stack icon on the bottom right.

God damn, I hate uploading to Flickr from a cell phone, it's just not the same as sitting down with a gigantic photo and all of the tools!!!

Not very environmental, but Flickr is one thing that got me excited about desktops!

aha, so they instagrammed. that's too bad -- i don't use flickr like i use instagram at all. i hope the privacy controls are as easy to adjust when uploading and i don't have to automatically ALWAYS be public or ALWAYS be private.

thx

I like reading the message boards, people freaking out and scaring everyone, like "oh my god, I don't know how to make my pictures private"! Like, "calm the fuck down".

Why some people can't make time to learn the nuts and bolts is beyond me.

dear flickr, how is the new twice-as-expensive subscription / mass unsubscription / perpetual 404 thing working out?

idk but i had so many photos on there (7,586) that would be erased and lost so i ponied up for the pro account
i feel relief tbh!

i have just over 1000 but it only grows at about 4 per year. am trying to download everything in order to unsub (well, in march) but i just get the bad panda page.

it's hard to find anything on flickr.com that says how much it costs (especially at the moment). one comment in the forum(?) said that they were going from $25 a year to $50 a year AND would take 2 years at a time... can't find that now though.

(actually, it's a mystery as to how they are taking my subscriptions because when i looked it's using an old paypal address, but hey)

actually, something here: https://www.flickr.com/groups/2389839@N23/discuss/72157699746592621/

that might be a special 2-year subscription, which i didn't know existed, only the monthly and yearly

i paid $42 with the discount they offered via email. honestly, that's not a lot of money to make sure all of my photos are accessible. i am ok with it. this is where i stored my life. i don't expect storage of my life to be inexpensive, and $42 wasn't too bad.

done now, 3 zip files, 500 images a piece and another containing .json files for each photo (the metadata). there are a bunch i can cull that nobody will care about, to get me below 1000.

I've got 22k images up there, dating back 14 years. My 2-yr Pro sub auto-updated in October at the new, doubled rate. It was very late in the day before I saw that was about to happen.

The promised improvements to the phone app have yet to happen, and the access is flaky. But... what am I going to do? I'm not moving 80GB+ of content to another site for anything much cheaper than this (losing all the history / context / interaction in the process) and nor do I have the time/inclination to curate a subset of that elsewhere (I've tried, on 500px and Zenfolio, and I just give up after a while).

I fear there'll be a lot of Bad Panda in the coming weeks as people bulk-download/delete/bail.

today was the free-but-unlimited account cutoff day.

looking at the per-photo .json file it does appear to contain all comments (including some from you!) all the exif stuff. everything you'd see on the webpage bascially.

we should start a free replacement, call it FUCKR.

$0.023 per GB per month for raw aws s3 storage. $2 a month for 80GB.

($0.024 if you want it in london)

I do quite like the stats, even if they're a dubious measure of engagement (e.g. I put a photo in a heavy-traffic public group, it gets a "view" for everyone who visits the group while the photo is amongst the most recent pageful - bingo, 200 "views" in a day though likely only 2-3 people have really clicked on it - not how it used to work) and is subject to distortion by various web-crawling bots (the suspicious exactly-100 views that each recent page in my stream gets occasionally) and the referrals are mostly anonymous. I have a feeling 500px does this a bit better, but that's chiefly the domain of flawlessly-lit Russian "glamour" photography and it gets a bit samey.

I think I'm Flickr for life. Until SmugMug go bust and it all vanishes.

xp - it's not just about the storage (if I wanted to cloud-store my all-time catalog, it's going to be around 3.5TB)

I've scheduled a date to do a mass migration to HD and cull the herd down to sub-1000.

Mission accomplished... now what?

Mass import to IG (lol)?