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Picasa Web Album (Google's answer to Yahoo! Photos?)
(1 to 100 of 144 replies in Picasa Web Album (Google's answer to Yahoo! Photos?))
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I haven't tried this yet, but one thing that I will say. On my blog I get more traffic from Google Images than any place else. The images that I upload with Picasa get fantastic Google juice. I've had my imags appear consistently on the first page search results for many, many terms. "Duck" "Rain" "San Francisco", etc.
By contrast, any of the photos that I blog with Flickr never appear anywhere near the front page of Google image search results. It's as if Google penalizes me for using Flickr, instead of their own property Picasa to upload.
I could live with this if I felt that I was getting Yahoo! juice from Flickr but even there Flickr/Yahoo Image Search integration is no better than Flickr/Google Image Search integration.
I do need to explore GoogleBase and suspect that images uploaded via GoogleBase may fare best of all in Google Image Search.
Just some thoughts.
Posted 26 months ago.
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i don't want my photos indexed by the search engines. i wish that were an option.
Posted 26 months ago.
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Not sure I want googles "we own the web" attitute and there, you uploaded it, it belongs to us now, and we are watching attitute any near my photos thank you very much..... :)
Originally posted 26 months ago.
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Mr DoeyBags edited this topic 26 months ago.
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if u have a gmail account u can access a variety of services dat google offers : orkut online community, google calendar, picasa photo album, etc.
all u need to do is simply login using ur gmail id. but again gmail also is by invite only. so d best thing to do(as i did) was ask sum1 u knw who has a gmail account to invite u.
every gmail user is given 99 free invites, vich is reset at regular intervals.
Posted 26 months ago.
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@BLANKArtist Thanks for posting the info on Picasa web albums.
I do have a gmail account, it took me thirty seconds to sign on and access picasa web albums.
It took me another 30 seconds to realise that only 250 mb of storage is provided free.
One can upgrade to 6gb storage but that costs $25 a year.
I guess my question is...how much storage do I need? (I have started a new thread asking how to calculate flickr storage here)
Am I right that flickr gives me unlimited storage with my Pro account?
Cheers.
Originally posted 26 months ago.
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Simon Cockayne edited this topic 26 months ago.
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What you get with a Flick Pro account:
* 2 GB monthly upload limit
* Unlimited storage
* Unlimited bandwidth
* Unlimited photosets
* Permanent archiving of high-resolution original images
* Ad-free browsing and sharing
Posted 26 months ago.
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LeoL30, cheers.
Right...so when you consider unlimited storage on flickr, a 6gb limit on Picasa seems ridiculously constraining.
Posted 26 months ago.
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The main issue for me is there seems to be no community aspect to it. No comments, no groups. That makes it an entirely different concept to Flickr. It is a web album site, and probably a good one. 250MB is limiting but better than Flickr's 200 photo limit on free accounts.
[edit: I'm wrong on that last point. It depends on the size of your photos! If you upload 4Mpixel images at 2MBytes each you can only have 125 photos. If you upload smaller sizes only for web viewing you could get more than 200 photos. Also Flickr alows you to keep uploading past the 200 limit but only shows 200 in your photostream. Flickr wins this one I think.]
Originally posted 26 months ago.
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PhotoGraham edited this topic 26 months ago.
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Good point. The community aspect is a weclome feature of flickr.
Posted 26 months ago.
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I think Thomas is right. For pros, a community may be important, but the ability for somebody to search and come across your photos trumps that. And I've yet to meet somebody who's default search engine *isn't* Google.
I've just started dabbling with Googlebase, but it's not a particularily attractive way to browse photos. There isn't even a "photo" class. You have to manually create your own attributes.
Originally posted 26 months ago.
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BLANKartist edited this topic 26 months ago.
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Awesome! The new Picasa supports Adobe DNG files! This is SO what I was looking for. Hopefully it will convert/resize on-the-fly when I upload to my Web Album.
Posted 26 months ago.
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ahhhh, but will Picasa get a Flickr Commercial API in order to allow us to import our photos and tags directly into it like we can with tabblo. Somehow I doubt it.
I'd like to try Picasa and probably will shortly. I try most photo sharing sites and have thousands of my images up at Webshots, Riya, Zooomr, Vizrea, tabblo, etc. along with Flickr. But lately something has been bothering me. I'm investing many, many hours carefully documenting the metadata on my images (tags) but I'm increasingly becoming concerned that this data doesn't belong to me.
I see the longer term answer coming from Microsoft who will allow you to tag your photos directly on your hard drive coming up in Vista. I'd assume that Flickr and other photosharing sites will begin to automatically read this metadata from the source file, rather than make you re-enter the data a second time. But this doesn't make me feel entirely comfortable about the many hours that I've spent tagging my photos on flickr. I really do kind of see this labor as belonging to me more than it belongs to flickr.
What, if any, provisions is Flickr making (or should they be making) to ensure that the metadata that I build with my images is portable and can be imported and exported as I wish.
I was thinking about this specifically because as I mentioned above I do want my images indexed for search at Google and I do suspect that having them all in Picasa will help me with that. I do not relish having to respend the countless hours though retagging all of my images all over again a second time. The more I think about this the more important I think that this is going to become for me. Maybe this won't affect the causual user who doesn't tag much anyway and sure I can use downloadr to get all of my images back if I want them (although in my case this is not necessary as I keep all of my originals on hard drive). But for those of us who are taking tagging seriously and in some aspects contributing the very most to flickr, don't we deserve to have our metadata made portable. We did the vast majority of the work to get it where it is today.
Should I be denied the ability to export my metadata to Picasa just because Google is a competitor to Yahoo?
Posted 26 months ago.
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I add descriptions and tag all my photos (using Photoshop Elements) before I upload them and Flickr grabs all that information. So my metadata is there on the originals if I ever need it back.
I can see the usefulness of being able to grab the metadata that I've added to the photos once they are on Flickr (say, a new tag because of a group, etc.) but it's not that big a deal to me.
Posted 26 months ago.
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curiouskiwi. Maybe that's what I should start doing as well. Still, I hate to feel like all of the tags that I've already entered are somehow locked in flickr.
Posted 26 months ago.
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The correct solution is to embed metadata directly into the files. Replying on web tagging only is really, really stupid. And for the record, Vista will not be the only solution. Other OSs will be able to to play too. :)
Picasa lets you create tags, but I'm not sure whether the data is being embedded directly, or if Picasa is creating a separate database somewhere. I had spent hours creating labels in the old Picasa only to have the database corrupted and lose everthing. My collections were preserved, but that's because those are tracked by invisible .ini files (which litter your hard drive after a while). Hopefully the new tagging system is more robust.
Posted 26 months ago.
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Thomas - the IPTC header is your friend. You tag the actual image file using the various IPTC fields and the metadata stays on that image. Flickr reads three of them - one for the image title, another for the image description, and a third for keywords. There are over a dozen fields in IPTC, so you can use a rich variety of metadata should you want. It's my understanding that Stock agencies use IPTC extensively.
But to answer your question more directly - when you buy a DVD dump of your Flickr images it's advertised as coming with all of your metadata as well. I've not purchased a DVD of my photostream yet, so I can't be more specific.
(edit: typo)
Originally posted 26 months ago.
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Eric in SF edited this topic 26 months ago.
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Thomas Hawk: "... but I'm increasingly becoming concerned that this data doesn't belong to me." & "I really do kind of see this labor as belonging to me more than it belongs to flickr" & "Should I be denied the ability to export my metadata to Picasa just because Google is a competitor to Yahoo?"
Your position strikes me as a little disingenuous. I know you know that we have an API (you even mention it at the top of your comment). We support tens of millions of API calls a day at no charge**. We spend a huge amount of time defending the rights of users, dealing with policy issues, explaining copyright laws, building technology to safeguard users' rights, etc. We take it extremely seriously.
Nowadays, many online services offer APIs as a matter of course, but when we released ours in 2004 that was not the case (note that even now, none of the other services you mention have an API, except Zooomr's partial support of the Flickr API). Why the suspicions of us then? Like, we've been playing along for years, but it's all been an extended ploy we're somehow about to screw you? We've been extremely open and we have no problem with people building tools to export their data from Flickr (there are several already). There is no lock in.
With respect to granting a commercial API license to a direct competitor: we might not. It kind of depends on the specific product, any relationship we have with them, whether we complement each other or not, etc. In the case of a truly direct competitor (and, so far, we have very few), we probably wouldn't. And I don't see that as malicious on our part: why should we burn bandwidth and CPU cycles sending stuff directly to their servers?
If a user developed it for their own purposes and distributed it, no problem. If they imported what the various Flickr exporting tools produced, no problem. We'd never go out of our way to block them -- we just wouldn't go out of our way to help them.
And here's the thing: back when we first started, we got asked to develop tools to bring in people's photos in from other sites (notably Buzznet, which started before us, was larger, and was popular for cameraphone users). We actually developed a tool to do that, but never released it. Why? Because it just seemed ... lame, and mean, and competitive in a bad way, at least if we did it ourselves. (If the market develops a solution on its own,again, no problem.)
Finally, re PicasaWeb: if Google requests a commercial API key from us, we'd consider it. But I wouldn't hold your breath on them asking us ;) On the flip side, for the last two years, hundreds (at least - probably thousands) of Picasa users have asked for a way to post directly from Picasa to Flickr (see the Picasa group on Google groups, the old Picasa forums, the Picasa group on Flickr, etc.) And that never happened, even when Picasa had no online component and even before we were acquired by Yahoo! But, eh ... you never know.
** We have commercial relationships with some users of the API, and they do pay us. This represents a small fraction of a percent of API use. In the future, we intend to make a self-serve commercial API program.
[edited to fix runaway italics]
Originally posted 26 months ago.
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Stewart (a group admin) edited this topic 26 months ago.
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Am I mistaken or does Picasa only work for PCs?
Posted 26 months ago.
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The next version of ACDSee will support flickr.
Posted 26 months ago.
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"gmail also is by invite only. so d best thing to do(as i did) was ask sum1 u knw who has a gmail account to invite u."
You can get a gmail account if you have access to a cell phone in the US. IOW, in that case, an invite from someone isn't necessary. Via cell phone is how I got my gmail account.
Posted 26 months ago.
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if your creeped out by google getting a hold your mobile telephone number(like me), send me an email via *FLICKR* and include a *real email address* and I'll hook ya up.
i have *many* invites to pass around.....
Originally posted 26 months ago.
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Todd Kravos edited this topic 26 months ago.
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p.s. i have to wait for an official invite from google to use the new picasa even though my gmail ID is from the first month it was 'born'
Posted 26 months ago.
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ACDsee is quite a cool program ... nice to hear that they are going to support Flickr ...
Posted 26 months ago.
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Stewart, my concern is at the user level. If I spend hours and hours tagging my photos in flickr this data is not at present able to be exported to the best of my knowledge. It is essentially locked into flickr.
I've talked a lot about search in the past. I'd like my photos indexed for search. My past experience has been that photos that I've uploaded via Picasa get indexed really, really well for search at Google. Several of my Picasa uploaded images are on the first page search results for many terms on Google Image Search. A while back Choice Hotels found one of my photos via Google Image Search and paid me $500 to use it in a television commercial. For me that was kind of cool. I'm interested at the hobbyist level right now in opportunities like that. This is not my primary reason for posting to flickr but I think that there are a lot of us here that wouldn't mind the attention and possible opportunity from external search engines.
My Flickr Images by contrast fail to register significantly on either Google Image Search or Yahoo Image Search, or Image Search anywhere outside of Flickr. And so maybe Flickr doesn't want their images indexed, I don't know. But if I want to have my images indexed I think my tags will help Google better read the images in Picasa. But they are not my tags. They are flickr's tags. And the only site I've seen where I've been able to export them directly too is tabblo. I can't export them to Picasa, I can't export them to Zooomr, I can't export them to WebShots, I can't export them to Riya. I can't export them to Google Base where I suspect Google might index from most of all.
And while I appreciate flickr's stance towards ensuring that content owners own their content and a supportive environment that you speak of above, even as flickr too benefits, I'm not suspicious just frustrated.
I kind of feel like I was the one who took all of the time to meticulously tag my photos. I contribute heavily towards photos of flickr. Even beyond my own tags I tag a lot more photos than others tag mine -- because I think the metadata is cool and useful and fucntional.
But it seems to me like it's only functional to me within the confines of flickr. And I guess like my photos, my tags feel like they kind of belong to me. I'm sure in a legal sense they don't but since I did the majority of the work tagging them it just feels this way. I've got 5,600+ photos or so on Flickr and add new ones every day. I'd like to get it to 100,000 someday.
Obviously photos and tags can be transferred to other sites. Tabblo already an example of that. And I already transferred all of my photos and tags from Tabblo pretty much the day they launched. That seemed really cool to me. Do I spend much time on Tabblo? No. I've got two tabblos and that's it. Because it's nowhere near as cool as flickr. But I sure wouldn't mind having all my photos sitting in Picasa indexed highly by Google for search. And this I can't do today. So I'm frustrated.
And I'm thinking about trying to, in fact, put something together as we speak, in the stock business. It may be pie in the sky stuff right now but I'd like to figure out a way for talented amateurs to monetize their libraries of images. For the non-pro photorapher I'd like to figure out a way where an on ramp to a career in photography can be built. A sort of transitionary agency between part time talented amateur work and full time stock or fine art work. Tag search would be critical to this. If I could figure this idea out and somehow create a business around it search and keyword tagging would play a critical role.
"On the flip side, for the last two years, hundreds (at least - probably thousands) of Picasa users have asked for a way to post directly from Picasa to Flickr"
And I think I'd be just as critical of Picasa for this as I feel about Flickr right now. But you're right. Probalby all that bullshit about Google doing no evil is just that bullshit. Google too is a business and they probably want to lock their users in. So I probably shouldn't hold my breath there either.
The problem is probably of my own making because I probably should have been tagging at the IPTC header level instead of on Flickr in the first place as has been suggested above. Vista will make it far easier to tag photos this way from the betas that I've played with.
"building tools to export their data from Flickr (there are several already)."
But not to export tagged photos that I'm aware of. But I might be wrong about this and this is good to hear. Unfortunately I have zero programming skills but it's nice to know that the possibility might exist that someone else could build such a tool someday.
Posted 26 months ago.
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"why should we burn bandwidth and CPU cycles sending stuff directly to their servers?"
Because it's our stuff and we've paid you to look after it.
Originally posted 26 months ago.
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julian- (a group admin) edited this topic 26 months ago.
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Michel ! [deleted] says:
tags and more generally, metada entered by humans, is a means used by yahoo! to increase its revenues from ads , to get better search results, and to fill the gap with Google and Microsoft.
You can understand why Yahoo! acquired del.icio.us and Flickr. You'll get more accurate results when searching for photos with keywords, if these keywords can easily match data attached to photos, that is tags. (see also the new yahoo! "toy" : answers , answers.yahoo.com/ , a "social search engine", more on yahoo! search blog: www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000242.html )
As Stewart said in this interview ( www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2005/02/04/sb_flckr.html)
" ... The other side is monetizing the whole collection of photos, essentially advertising. If you look at photos that are tagged with "Italy," you'll probably see ads for hotels in Italy, tours of Piedmont and whatever "
To sum up, tags are a cornerstone of the flickr system and its business model.
Whose tags are these anyway ?
I'm not saying it's right or wrong by the way. ( well, maybe)
So I'm rather doubtful that flickr will ever sell an API key to a "big" competitor as Google.
And finally, it does not seem difficult to me to write a program that would read your tags in flickr, inject them in the IPTC fields of a copy of your photo, and finally replace the original photo with the new one. Your tags will be embedded in your photo.
just my two cents
Originally posted 26 months ago.
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Michel ! edited this topic 26 months ago.
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Thomas - interesting observation - I find that many of my plant photos are returned on the first page, usually in the top 5 results, of a google search (not an image search) on any given species name.
Posted 26 months ago.
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I used to have lotsa Google stuff installed on my PC's, like Picasa, Google Desktop and so forth.
But after reading this www.google-watch.org I removed everything that comes from Google.
I'd rather be safe then sorry...
Posted 26 months ago.
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someone must have already written an API tool to pull a users tag info into IPTC..? (as per julian~'s comment)
Posted 26 months ago.
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The fellow who developed Flickrbackup is working on a version that will write the tags/descriptions/notes/comments into the IPTC/EXIF data on backup.
Posted 26 months ago.
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"The fellow who developed Flickrbackup is working on a version that will write the tags/descriptions/notes/comments into the IPTC/EXIF data on backup. "
This is great and I'll look forward to trying it. Still, quite a bit more work than simply transferring them over like I did with tabblo.
And, I still have no way right now of getting all my tagged photos over onto Picasa where they might be better indexed for search or any other photo service beyond tabblo for that matter. It still feels like my tags are trapped to me.
Originally posted 26 months ago.
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Thomas Hawk edited this topic 26 months ago.
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@claudecf - in their specs they mention safari, so macs are in.
Posted 26 months ago.
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"Thomas - interesting observation - I find that many of my plant photos are returned on the first page, usually in the top 5 results, of a google search (not an image search) on any given species name."
Many art directors are using Google Images to find images these days. They then contact the owner and offer to buy it. As mentioned before I've sold one of my own to Choice Hotels for $500. Flickr images seem to be largely ignored (in my experience) by Google Image Search. They certainly are there and flickr users certainly get indexed in regular non Google Image searchs, but they are nowhere near the important first few pages of Image Search results.
Go to Google Image Search and try searching. Type in "cow" or "pig" or even "cat" and you get zero Flickr first page results. But type in "pig" in image search and you will see on the first page result an image of mine right now uploaded with Picasa. And feel free to make whatever Thomas Hawk pig jokes you'd like. I don't look anything like the pig in my picture.
So without better insight from either Flickr or Google (who won't talk about these things) I assume that either Google discriminates against flickr photos (perhaps because Yahoo! owns them) or that Flickr uses technology to impede these photos for Google Image Search. Flickr is too rich a place to find photos in my opinion to believe that it's just ignored out of coincidence. I might just believe the Google conspiracy thing except for the fact that even Yahoo! Image Search doesn't promote flickr photos either. So like I said maybe Flickr doesn't want their photos indexed. Fine. That's their decision to make. But if other photo sharing sites feel differently I feel like I should be able to put my photos there and I think it should be made easier for me to do so than having to manually retag everything at this point.
I understand and can appreciate the desire to not help competitors but it still sucks not to be able to get my tagged images onto other sites. And to this extent the tags don't feel like mine at all. That's all I'm saying.
Originally posted 26 months ago.
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Thomas Hawk edited this topic 26 months ago.
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Stewart: Finally, re PicasaWeb: if Google requests a commercial API key from us, we'd consider it. I actually find this more disengenious. Google hasn't asked for a commercial API key because they know the answer would be no. Zooomr's already asked and in fact the answer was no.
Posted 26 months ago.
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I'd like a way of preventing search engines from indexing my images as well. I know there's a post in Flickr Ideas somewhere, so I won't run off and add one, but I would if there wasn't. :-)
Posted 26 months ago.
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"maybe Flickr doesn't want their photos indexed. Fine."
I doubt it, go ahead, google image search "Nymphaea sumptuosa" and the first result is my flickr photo of same. This is the result for many of my plant or flower images, same as Eric mentioned.
I think you're asking a lot for your general flickr photo searches to turn up on the first google page. The world doesn't revolve around Thomas Hawk (yet).
BTW, yaay, Brenda that sounds like a terrific utility!
Originally posted 26 months ago.
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van swearingen edited this topic 26 months ago.
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Yolise, and I think that's fine and certainly valid. And I think Flickr might feel the same way hence the poor indexing as it is now. I'm all for user choice. But if Flickr does a poor job at indexing and Picassa does a great job at indexing then I should have an option to move my photos there as well. It's not a takeaway from Flickr. I can't imagine ever not being very very active at flickr. I've got most of my photos on half a dozen other sites already but I spend the most time here by far.
I suspect that my tags would help Picasa better index my images but I can't access my tags without manually retyping them all. This sucks and in that sense they don't belong to me at all. Other sites could easily allow me to transfer both my images and tags into their site. tabblo is already an example of that. The problem is that they need access to a commercial API and as Stewart said before he's not inclined to use bandwidth and CPU cycles to help a competitor. So bottom line is my tags can't easily be transferred.
I'd be all for, by the way, an option that a user could check to either allow heavy indexing of their images for Yahoo/Google/etc. or to allow no indexing by Yahoo/Google, etc.
I also want to build a business at some point to try and help emerging fine art photographers (myself included) market their work. I'd much rather Flickr do this but my impression is that this is not necessarily where Flickr/Yahoo wants to go. I can imagine a scenario in the future where even if I could get an idea like this off the ground that were I to ask flickr for a commercial API key to help users move their libraries into a site to monetize them that I too would be denied.
Here is the basic framework of what I have in mind for a business by the way. www.flickr.mud.yahoo.com/groups/utata/discuss/21907/page2...
It doesn't exist anywhere today. I wish it did.
Posted 26 months ago.
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Utata threads can't be viewed by non-utata members, Thomas.
Posted 26 months ago.
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Van, "Nymphaea sumptuosa" shows up because there are only two images in all of Google Image Search for it. Many other Flickr Images show up in Google Image Search too they are just buried unless very obscure. Type in any term with a large library of images and Flickr is typically nowhere near the first page results. Not "Thomas Hawk's" Flickr images, no flickr images. With as many great images that flickr has I find this more than coincidence.
I think you're asking a lot for your general flickr photo searches to turn up on the first google page.
And yet many of my picasa uploaded photos do actually show up on Google's first page Image Searches. I'm not asking for Yahoo/Flickr to index my images on the first page. I'm asking for the capibility to transfer my tagged images to another site that might index them better than flickr does. I kind of feel like that's my right. And I can do this, I just can't do it with my tags is all.
Posted 26 months ago.
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Utata threads can't be viewed by non-utata members, Thomas.
Oops, sorry about that. Here's my business plan cut and pasted from the Utata thread. The thread by the way is by Catherine Jamieson is entitled "Who Sells or Wants to Sell their Work."
I've been shooting freelance stuff for San Francisco Magazine for the past 5 months or so. They actually are putting one of my photos on the cover in their big Best of San Francisco issue. And I've been making some money through that.
I'm extremely interested in building a company or agency or whatever that caters to the pro/am and helps them market their images. I've been interviewing with people about this and doing mostly research at this point but the way I see it there are a lot of ways that pro/am photographers can make money with their work.
1. Sell prints. I've been talking with some folks that would do all the framing/matting/shipping/mailing etc. The idea would be that people pull down your images and then can buy prints. It would be up to the artist as to how they were sold, limited edition, unlimited, size, format etc. The key though would be to make it super easy for the artist. They in fact would have to do nothing except post their images and maybe sign limited edition prints.
2. Sell stock photography. I think that there is a sweet spot between the Getty Images/Corbis of the world and the almost freebie stuff at iStockphoto. I think sellling stock in a more simplified manner at maybe $100-$400 per image would have a lot of appeal to marketers.
3. Get freelance work for photographers. The idea here would be to play matchmaker. Lots of publications are looking for specific assignment work. They could post an assignment and then local photographers could offer to shoot. Let's say there were three photographers willing to go do a shoot for money, the publication could then look at the three and pick one. Even thiings like weddings, shooting kids, etc. Kind of like a Craig'slist for photography but where buyers could actually see the work of the person that they might hire.
4. Possibly open a real life actual physical gallery in San Francisco. You could showcase your member's work on there. Assuming a retail strategy could work and could be succesful consider expanding these types of galleries in other cities. These galleries might also be set up to serve beer and wine and they could be used as places for flickr meetups, other tech meetups, etc. There are two galleries like this in San Francisco now, 111 Minna and Varnish. I don't know about the economics of this side of the business though. I've been talking with SeenyaRita about something like this as well. It would be super cool to have a place to hang out for photographers and flickr users.
5. Build photoblog templates for your members that they could use to customize their work. These templates would direct people back to the main site to buy work and could also contain advertisments if a user desired where they could earn ad revenue.
My thoughts would be to use a site like this to provide either an onramp for the hobbyist to ramp up and turn pro over time or simply as a place for the person that can't leave their full time job etc. to make some extra money with their passion, photography.
The idea would be to let users choose modules if they wanted. They could for instance sell prints and not stock or vice versa. Or they could sell both.
I think that there would be a demand for a site like this from both users as well as from marketers. Some of our work is quite good it's just that as non pros it's difficult to get past the traditional gatekeepers of the fine art and stock business. A site like this would be designed to bypass the gatekeepers and allow it's members the ability to connect directly to marketers and art buyers.
Again it's very early and I'm really only in the research stage on all of this but I think our work is good enough and for those of us who want to begin to earn our living in photography a tool like this doesn't exist today.
Of course I'd be thrilled to see flickr offer us a suite of tools to do this but I don't think that is where they are headed.
Posted 26 months ago.
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That's only one example. Pick any of the couple thousand specific species names I've labeled, and they show up high in the google image search.
So use Picasa to upload then and stop being such a whinger. Flickr might allow you that privilege, but I'd hardly call it a right, nor for twenty-five bucks a year would I expect it.
There are a bazillion sites for art photographers to market their work already. Smugmug, photographer's direct, etc.
Careful with the 'fine art photography' lingo - that has a specific meaning. It means that the artist was personally involved in the printing process. Sending it off to be printed by someone else doesn't count.
Originally posted 26 months ago.
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van swearingen edited this topic 26 months ago.
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That's a very limited definition of fine art. Reminds me of the old Duchamp ready-made controversies of 80 years ago.
Fine art is in the eye of the beholder...
Originally posted 26 months ago.
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aqui-ali edited this topic 26 months ago.
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"So use Picasa to upload then and stop being such a whinger. Flickr might allow you that privilege, but I'd hardly call it a right, nor for twenty-five bucks a year would I expect it."
Van, Flickr is what it is because of user generated content. Flickr would be nothing without it's users. They have profitted personally and significantly from this. And as they should. They definitely deserve this, all the success, all the money, all the fame, etc.
The point is that I *can't* use Picasa to upload my tagged photos at this point. That I must spend hours and hours and hours manually retagging them if that's what I want.
Pick any of the couple thousand specific species names I've labeled, and they show up high in the google image search.
So then show us a Google Image Search with lots of results where a Flickr image ranks highly. And although I'm sure there are some there are 100 others where flickr doesn't show at all. Pick the most common things "sunset", no. "San Francisco", no. "New York," no. "Seattle," no (but there is one of my images uploaded with Picasa on the first page Google Image search for Seattle). Some obscure latin term? yeah, sure.
My point in all of this is that I've just started realizing for the first time that all this work I've done with my tags doesn't really belong to me in the user generated content contract after all. Fine. It just rubs me the wrong way.
Posted 26 months ago.
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aqui-ali - I didn't make that definition, but I agree with it, so unless I'm controlling the entire process with my own hands and eyes, I'm not going to call prints of my work "fine-art". "Art", yes, "Fine Art", no.
Oh, and Thomas, I don't really care. Take it to FlickrIdeas.
Originally posted 26 months ago.
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van swearingen edited this topic 26 months ago.
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"so unless I'm controlling the entire process with my own hands and eyes, I'm not going to call prints of my work "fine-art". "Art", yes, "Fine Art", no."
Yeah, I'm sure most fine art painters stretch their own canvas too. Reminds me of the same people who object to people using photoshop on their photographs, as though it somehow invalidates the creative process. Doing every manual task associated with creating your work does not invalidate it or somehow reduce it's significance.
From Wikipedia on Andy Warhol: "He hired and supervised "art workers" engaged in making prints, shoes, films, books and other items at his studio, The Factory, located on Union Square in New York. Warhol's body of work furthermore includes commissioned portraits and commercials..." blah, blah, blah.
And I'm sure folks shouldn't be calling Warhol's work "fine art" either.
Originally posted 26 months ago.
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Thomas Hawk edited this topic 26 months ago.
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Not to mention that a large part the Sistine Chapel ceiling painting was executed by a cadre of understudies under the direction of Michaelangelo, as was many other Renaissance art pieces...
Originally posted 26 months ago.
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aqui-ali edited this topic 26 months ago.
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I think that Van is talking about the specific "Fine Art" photographic market, not the perception of photos as being art or not. I do seem to recall that it is a definition used by museums, galleries and auction houses. I would assume that it requires a specific archival permanance as well as being signed and of a limited edition. As such, it's possible that digital photos may not count as "Fine Art" - at least not to Sotheby's and the like.
Originally posted 26 months ago.
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Yolise edited this topic 26 months ago.
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[edit - Bingo, Yolise, thanks for saying it better than I could.]
Whatever, call them what you like. The whole world is calling this "." a dot. It's still a point, period, or full-stop to me. This "·" is a dot.
Originally posted 26 months ago.
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van swearingen edited this topic 26 months ago.
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"As such, it's possible that digital photos may not count as "Fine Art" - at least not to Sotheby's and the like. "
The whole point to my idea in the business is to bypass these gatekeepers who have traditionally told you what to buy. It's ridiculous. These gatekeepers are the problem. It's a small pool of gallery owners, auction houses and currators that not only decide who gets seen and who doesn't, but they even tell you what to buy. They are the ones deciding what's art and what's not art and I'd like to see the whole thing opened up and democratized. I'd like to see the wave of super talented people I've seen on places like flickr have an opportunity to go direct via the internet instead.
But this is getting off my point that I think it sucks that my tags are stuck at flickr. By the way, interestingly enough today Riya is announcing that they will become a major image search engine.
www.siliconbeat.com/entries/2006/06/15/riya_supersizes_pl...
I've had all of my images at Riya for a while now. But I have none of my tags at Riya. I'd imagine these tags might help Riya index my work.
Posted 26 months ago.
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And it's a great idea for FlickrIdeas, dude. Or shall we just re-name FlickrCentral to Thomas Hawk Central?
Damn, I'm feeling a certain "brockiness" today, I think I'll go have lunch and a lie-down.
Posted 26 months ago.
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"They are the ones deciding what's art and what's not art and I'd like to see the whole thing opened up and democratized"
Again, it's not that they are saying what is and isn't "art". It's about specific definitions. For example, a woodcut is a piece of art created with a wooden block. You could make something that looks like a woodcut in photoshop, but that does not make it a woodcut to a museum.
Museums are important repositories of cultural artifacts. Just because your photos won't appear there right now does not make them less artistic and there's no need to get huffy about it. Museums and auction houses aren't telling people what to buy, they are simply selling things of value to the people who can afford them.
The vast majority of people are not going to buy an original Cartier-Bresson from Sotheby's, so you really have nothing to fear from the likes of them.
Originally posted 26 months ago.
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Yolise edited this topic 26 months ago.
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Since there are now many different topics merged in this thread, I'll do different posts to address some of them (I'm not touching "fine art"/"Fine Art" though ;)
Re search indexing: we definitely don't do anything to impede indexing of flickr.com. I also doubt that Google does anything to specifically penalize Flickr (though, of couse, I have no idea - just guessing). If Flickr images don't show up highly there, it most likely has to do with their relevancy algorithm, the structure of our pages, or the interaction thereof.
It's important to note that, at least based on what people say in help cases and the various fora on this site, MANY more people *don't* want their images showing up in Google/Yahoo/MSN/etc. image search than do (as far as I can remember, Thomas is the only person that's been visibly passionate about getting his images indexed).
As for having Flickr images fed into Yahoo's image search, we didn't want that to happen until (a) Flickr users had a way to opt out of API-based search (which is now built and available on your account page) and (b) the image search results credited the user, linked to the photo page, etc., since one of the fundamental good things about Flickr is that there is a person behind every photo. We don't want to break that and have it show up as the typical "here's the jpg file, here's the page we found it on, here are the dimensions".
(I don't see the connection between Google's relevancy ranking in image search and whether tags "belong" to you or not, so I'm not sure what to say about that.)
Posted 26 months ago.
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Re API keys for direct competitors: this is something that we've never had any set policy on and this thread has sparked a lot of internal debate on the team: some people felt that it was unreasonable, some people felt like it didn't matter since Flickr should win on the basis of being the best thing out there.
I actually had a change of heart and was convinced by Eric's position that we definitely should approve requests from direct competitors as long as they do the same. That means (a) that they need to have a full and complete API and (b) be willing to give us access.
The reasoning here is partly just that "fair's fair' and more subtly, like a GPL license, it enforces user freedom down the chain. I think we'll take this approach (still discussing it internally).
Posted 26 months ago.
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@Stewart - thanks for the posts. As someone who absolutely loves Flickr its nice to see that you as a company pay as much attention as you do to the user community you have brought together and that you openly communicate with those who use your service. Its refreshing and one of the reasons I think Flickr is so great.
Originally posted 26 months ago.
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Dshalock the Libertarian Emperor of DMU edited this topic 26 months ago.
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Thanks :)
Posted 26 months ago.
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Re Using the .jpeg file istelf as a metadata store: It took me a long time to understand what Thomas was saying here (in the same comment saying that he exported photos and metadata to Tabblo and then saying it was impossible to export photos and metadata, which left me a little confused). But now I think I get it: there's no way to export from Flickr with the metadata in the headers of the jpeg files.
That's true. It's also technically impossible to build something like Flickr (or even a desktop photo management program with search capailities) without some kind of database. Having the data in discrete jpegs that you'd have to open and query for each action just wouldn't work.
Since most people's PC's are idle 99% of the time, it's fairly easy for a desktop program to insert the metadata into the jpeg when you edit and keep that in sync with the database. On a server based system where you might have thousands of additions, edits and updates each second, writing the metadata into the jpeg files isn't really feasible in real time. (We've also tried to design Flickr so that it doesn't touch the original images *at all* -- e.g., we don't rotate the original -- so you can get them back the way you put them in.)
However, we've always intended to build a backup service that would do everything: put the metadata into the files, build static html pages for browsing, build a static search index for the backed-up photos/data, etc. It just (like several hundred other things) hasn't happened yet.
(Note that: this is also something that we'd have to limit in some way (e.g., people get a fixed number of exports each year or have to pay a nominal fee, etc.) since the process of exporting every single piece of data (querying it, building indices, etc.) and various sizes of photos, plus the originals, etc. would be very intense in terms of CPU and bandwidth.)
Of couse, as noted by others, it is not particularly difficult for someone else to build this service, and as I said, we'd have no objections (there are already backup tools).
Posted 26 months ago.
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Re API keys for direct competitors: this is something that we've never had any set policy on and this thread has sparked a lot of internal debate on the team: some people felt that it was unreasonable, some people felt like it didn't matter since Flickr should win on the basis of being the best thing out there.
I actually had a change of heart and was convinced by Eric's position that we definitely should approve requests from direct competitors as long as they do the same. That means (a) that they need to have a full and complete API and (b) be willing to give us access.
Stewart this is really good to hear. And I appreciate the change of heart. What I meant with tabblo is that they have the capability (built on their end if I understand it correctly) to import all of my images and tags from flickr. I've in fact done this there. I don't think the tags are actually imbedded in the .jpg file when they import, I think they actually use your commercial API to pull the tags from Flickr's database. It doesn't really matter to me whether the data resides in the .jpg or in the flickr database, as long as flickr is willing to let others get at my data from your database (tags) when initiated by me the user on my own personal photos.
I like the idea of tagging and creating richer and richer and richer metadata over time but I want to feel like I have some level of control via exportability and transferability of this data. With my RSS reader for instance I can export an OPML file and import it into any other RSS reader that I like. Photographs are more complicated of course, but I'm pleased that there is a willingness on flickr's part to say yes if a competitor requests a commerical API key to import. I also hope that someone develops a tool at some point that will do this as initiated by the actual user too. I wish I could write one myself and if I had any idea what I'm doing I would but I don't.
Like Dshalock I too am really pleased by the way to see you answer these things here. It is very meaningful that you are willing to interact with flickr users. You don't have to do that of course and most large company executives never do. You of course though are not like most large company executives.
Posted 26 months ago.
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I also doubt that Google does anything to specifically penalize Flickr (though, of couse, I have no idea - just guessing).
Maybe not. But it's hard for me to grasp why I have many of my images appear ranked highly in Google Image Search. They actually bring more traffic to my blog than any other source consistently. I have and continue to have, as Google reindexes about once every two months, many many of my images show up in first page search results. The only thing these images have in common is that they were uploaded with Picasa and I've used Picasa html code to paste into the blog entry. When I use the exact same structure but paste flickr html code for the image they get ignored. The only exception to this is one image that comes up on like the third page of search results for the search "Pussycat Dolls" images.google.com/images?q=pussycat+dolls&svnum=100&a...
"As for having Flickr images fed into Yahoo's image search, we didn't want that to happen until (a) Flickr users had a way to opt out of API-based search (which is now built and available on your account page) and (b) the image search results credited the user, linked to the photo page, etc.,"
Ok, this is great to hear. And I definitely don't have a problem with people opting out and it sounds like now they have a way to do this. It sounds like you guys are planning on letting Yahoo! index flickr images once you can get it worked out where it links back to the user. This is even better than a static image of course and I think that's exciting. It's nice to know that this is in the works.
Posted 26 months ago.
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which is now built and available on your account page
Ooh, nice one! Thanks for that!
Posted 26 months ago.
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wow i didn't know that
was that aprt of all the gamma newness?
or am i slow?
Posted 26 months ago.
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(If the market develops a solution on its own,again, no problem.)
the problem is that any solution the market develops will require a download and and re-upload on flickr user's part.
a sideload is the most effecient, and easiest on the flickr user .. and yet this is the one form of data transfer flickr wants to curtail.
it is ANNOYING to have to download all of these photos and even more annoying to have to reupload them to another service.
the worst part is that the annoyance is brought to bear upon the flickr user, as flickr and the competing service don't suffer any more or less in this three party data transfer.
The reasoning here is partly just that "fair's fair' and more subtly, like a GPL license, it enforces user freedom down the chain. I think we'll take this approach (still discussing it internally).
is it flickr's place to enforce this? if a user wants to move data to a 'non open' competing server, i think this is the user's perogative and flickr should support that decision as much as they'd support a decision to back up a flickr stream to a hard drive.
trust users to know what's best for their data, support them in doing what they want with their data, and get out of the way.
if someone wants to apply GPL philosophy and only put their data on open API enabled servers, swell .. but why does flickr want to make that decision on the user's behalf?
i'm of two minds about the last bit, because i can see myself wanting to sideload to competing services that might not have an API built to 'flickr standards' .. but on the other hand, the possibility for increasingly ubiquitous data portability could be furthered by flickr's iron openess-enforcing fist.
ultimately, i think i prefer the idea of thousands or millions of iron fists over the idea of one large fist.
Originally posted 26 months ago.
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striatic (a group admin) edited this topic 26 months ago.
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Ok, well I have been playing with this briefly and here is the result, which I'm assured you should all be able to view:
picasaweb.google.com/nico.morgan/SpringInMyGarden
Seems ok, if a little barren compared to the wealth of features and community-orientated elements of Flickr.
One of the new features of Picasa which I like, besides the web albums, is the ability to geo-tag your pics using Google Earth. Select the option from the menu and Gearth is spawned, along with a geo-tagging dialogue which couldn't be easier to use.
Add to this Publish by FTP which appears to create web-based albums for you, ready for direct FTP to your own site, thus removing the need for the web album service if you have space available of your own.
Originally posted 26 months ago.
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Nikō edited this topic 26 months ago.
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it is ANNOYING to have to download all of these photos and even more annoying to have to reupload them to another service.
But surely it's standard practise? When I purchase a content management system, that system may provide a way to migrate my data from a competing servise to their system, but would not provide a way to migrate away. If Picassa wants to provide a method to migrate away from Flickr, then surely that's their job, not Flickr's? Flickr has said that they support backup tools and the like, so presumably they are not getting in the way of that?
Posted 26 months ago.
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