MetaChat - Fellow flickr folk, esp. those with pro

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05 December 2005

Fellow flickr folk, esp. those with pro I have questions, please.→[More:]
I'm toying with stepping up to pro. Seems reasonably priced and I've hit a point where I feel I would use enough features to justify it. (Public/private, more than three sets, etc.)

I harbor no illusions of going pro with my actual photography, but I currently have photos on four separate sites and don't think I'll be putting down any of my cameras anytime soon. It would be nice to consolidate them for projects, posterity, etc.

What do you think of it? I realize that a number here are far less pedestrian than I in your usage, but you may have insights I don't or wouldn't consider without the benefit of hindsight.

Also, is anyone aware of ways to import albums/pics directly from ofoto/Kodak vs downloading them onto my hard drive and the uploading them to flickr? Of course, Kodak won't help me migrate, but I can't find anything on flickr and was wondering if this might also be a 'pro' perk.

Palabra. You're awesome.

post by: Frisbee Girl at: 23:11 | 19 comments

I've had pro since the beginning and I can't imagine how Flickr could really be usable without it. If nothing else, the unlimited sets help organize my photos better than anything on my machine could. I think it's totally worth it and I'm definitely not a pro photographer.

As far as the uploading, I think there's a third party app that will take care of what you need...I seem to recall it being linked from the Flickr upload page.

posted by YouCanCallMeAl 05 December | 23:20

Uploading tools: http://flickr.com/tools/

posted by YouCanCallMeAl 05 December | 23:21

There's a bulk uploader that is essential. I think Al probably pegged the link.

posted by mudpuppie 06 December | 00:31

Holy shit. I swear your post changed after I first read it, Fris.

Or maybe I'm drunk. That's always a possibilty.

posted by mudpuppie 06 December | 00:33

Huh. Well, I did type it out quickly before I ran out the door and having now returned to re-read it, wish I'd paid a bit more attention to grammar and typing, but, um...no, I don't have admin status to make changes like that.

Weird! I'll take some of what you may or may not be having, though.

posted by Frisbee Girl 06 December | 00:38

No, it was probably my state.

But i refuse to go into that.

posted by mudpuppie 06 December | 00:40

What's wrong with California?

posted by ooga_booga 06 December | 00:52

ooga, no *wrong* with it, if you know what I mean.

(Btw, didn't get your message until 6 or so. Call you manana.)

posted by Frisbee Girl 06 December | 01:00

Erg, "nothing". Guh.

posted by Frisbee Girl 06 December | 01:00

Right. In that case, I'll call you banana.

posted by ooga_booga 06 December | 01:02

That's "Cheeky Monkey" to you, mister, and don't you forget it.

posted by Frisbee Girl 06 December | 01:11

I'm very happy with my pro account at Flickr. It's a great place. At 2GB a month upload, I can store more stuff on Flickr than I'll ever shoot, which is great. More than 3 set is essential.

I really like Flickr. I use something called iView Media Pro on a Mac and a program called PictureSync to tag all of my photos on the Mac, and then upload them to Flickr with all the tags in place. Very cool.

posted by teece 06 December | 01:19

The photosets are really essential. Once you have the ability to create as many as you want, you'll wonder how you got by before. Other than that though (and the added storage space of course), there isn't really much difference between pro and non-pro now that Yahoo! is running things. I seem to recall that their used to be benefits but I think they gave them to everyone after the sale...

Also, I'm not aware of a way to automate the process of moving photos from another online storage site to Flickr. As some have suggested, the easiest way would be to download all the photos and use the Uploadr to get them to Flickr. Perhaps ofoto/Kodak allows you to backup all your photos to your computer? That would really simplify the process.

posted by panoptican 06 December | 02:39

panoptican, I have all of the images on various hard drives already, it wouldn't be that hard to sort through and burn them to a disc so I could upload them collectively to flickr, but the albums that I have at ofoto/Kodak have been cropped and color corrected as well as ordered and captioned for specific events.

It's just going to be a bit of a pain in the ass especially because ofoto/Kodak's site in clunky, slow and prone to logging you out mid-process. For that reason, I was wondering if there wasn't a more elegant (read: automated) solution at my disposal before I began doing the manual grunt work.

posted by Frisbee Girl 06 December | 02:53

Fris, i don't think there is an automated way of grabbing your ofotos. Flickr has an API you can use to automatically grab images from the database, but it looks like ofoto is locked up tight. Looks like a manual job.

posted by urbanwhaleshark 06 December | 05:20

There is a third party plugin for iPhoto to tag and upload photos directly from it.

posted by terrapin 06 December | 08:21

Looks like you heard all you need to about uploading, but I'll add my name to the list of those who has a Pro account and wouldn't want to use Flickr any other way.

posted by BoringPostcards 06 December | 09:52

What boringpostcards said. A friend gave me a Pro account and I can never go back - the upload limits are a lot higher, the unlimited sets - it's all good.

posted by mygothlaundry 06 December | 11:14

Thanks to all for the feedback, much appreciated! uws, thanks especially for looking directly into the ofoto image transfer issue for me.

I upgraded this morning and did a "holy shit! it's christmas!" when my 'upload capacity used' went from 78% to 1%. I fear they have created a monster.

posted by Frisbee Girl 06 December | 12:27

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