Hack 67. Store, Sort, and Share Your Photos

Flickr makes it easy to share your photos with the world.

At its most basic, Flickr is a web application that helps you create a public journal of photos. You can upload your photos to Flickr and see them appear on a web page with the most recently added photo on top. But once you start playing with Flickr, you'll quickly find that it's much more sophisticated. In fact, Flickr is an open platform for storing, arranging, sharing, discussing, and discovering photos with people across the globe.

What began as an independent project by a small company called Ludicorp was recently purchased by Yahoo! and is in the process of being integrated more closely with Yahoo!. At the time of this writing, Flickr is still very much an independent application, and you'll need your own Flickr account to upload photos (a Yahoo! ID will not work). You can create a free Flickr account by browsing to http://www.flickr.com and clicking the pink "Sign up now!" button.

A basic Flickr account is free, lets you upload up to 20 MB in photos per month, show up to 200 of your photos, and create three individual galleries (which Flickr calls sets). You can also upgrade to a paid Flickr Pro account, which gives you much more storage and unlimited sets. At the time of this writing, a Flickr Pro account is $24.95 per year.

Once you've created an account, you can add some information about yourself to your profile that will tell others a bit about you. Flickr is a social application, and unlike some sites where uploading photos feels like a lonely process, adding photos to Flickr feels like a group activity.

3.18.1. Store

The first step in getting to know Flickr is to upload some of your photos. The steps required to move photos from your camera to your computer vary widely, so that will have to be left as an exercise for the reader. But once photos are on your computer, there are several ways to move them to Flickr.

3.18.1.1. From your browser.

The simplest way to upload photos is via your web browser and the "Upload Photos to Flickr" page (http://www.flickr.com/photos/upload). Click Browse… next to one of the blank fields on the page, and a new window will let you choose an image file on your local computer. Figure 3-42 shows what choosing a file looks like on Windows XP.

When you highlight a photo and click Open, the previously blank field will be filled in with the local path to the image file. You can upload up to six photos at a time and set tags and privacy settings for each photo in the group. Clicking Upload sends your photos to Flickr, which might take some time, depending on the size of your photos and your connection speed. Once your photos have been uploaded, you'll have the option to add titles and descriptions to each of them. It's easy to add titles and descriptions later as well.

Figure 3-42. Choosing photos to upload to Flickr

You can set default privacy options for every photo you upload, by clicking Your Account from the top of any Flickr page and choosing Default Photo Privacy from the menu. Or you can browse directly to http://www.flickr.com/profile_photoconf.gne to set options such as who can see your photos, who can comment, and who can add notes and tags.

3.18.1.2. From your desktop.

Once you're completely hooked on Flickr, you might want to upload entire sets of photographs at a time. You can find a number of ways to upload photos on the Tools page (http://www.flickr.com/tools). The tools are programs you can download and install on Windows or Macintosh computers that allow you to upload a number of photos at once. Figure 3-43 shows the Windows Flickr Uploadr in action; you can simply drag images from the Windows File Explorer and drop them onto the Flickr Uploadr window.

Once you've added all of the photos you want to send to Flickr into the Flickr Uploadr, click the Upload… button. You'll also have the option to add tags to the photos or change the default privacy settings for those photos.

Figure 3-43. Adding photos from the desktop with Flickr Uploadr

3.18.1.3. From an email address.

In addition to uploading photos via the Webor a desktop application, you can send photos to Flickr by email. Click the Your Account link from the top of any Flickr page and choose "Uploading photos by email" under the Photo Settings heading. You can also browse directly to http://www.flickr.com/profile_mailconf.gne.

Once there, you'll find a randomly generated email address that's unique to your Flickr account. You can use the address to send photos to Flickr as email attachments. This option is particularly handy for cell phone cameras, because you can snap your photo on the go and post it directly to Flickr without making a trip to your home computer.

3.18.2. Sort

You'll find every photo you upload in your Flickr photostream. A photostream is simply a list of every photo you've uploaded in reverse-chronological order (i.e., the photo you uploaded most recently is listed first). And once your photos are in your photostream, there are a number of ways you can organize them beyond the chronological listing.

3.18.2.1. Tagging.

Tagging is a simple form of organization that lets you associate keywords with each of your photos. Unlike traditional categorization schemes, tags are free-form: you can use any words, numbers, or phrases you like. Figure 3-44 shows a photo at Flickr with its tags listed just to the right of the photo.

Figure 3-44. A photo with tags at Flickr

The photo was taken in the town of Kaneohe, Hawaii, at a Buddhist temple, and the photographer has tagged the photo with the words temple, Kaneohe, and Hawaii. By clicking any tag, you'll see all of your photos tagged with that particular word. And by clicking the globe icon next to any tag, you'll see photos by everyone at Flickr tagged with that word.

3.18.2.2. Organizing.

The key to more complex organization is the Flickr tool called Organizr. Organizr runs in your browser and you'll need the free Macro-media Flash Player (http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer) installed to use it. You can fire up Organizr by clicking the Organize link at the top of any Flickr page.

Inside Organizr, you'll find your photos in the main window. You can view all photos, limit your photos by date, or search your titles, descriptions, and tags. The sliders below the main window adjust the dates you'd like to view (see Figure 3-45).

Figure 3-45. Sorting photos with Flickr Organizr

Inside Organizr, you can create and edit photo sets. A set is group of photos that you assemble into an individual gallery. Once you've created a set and given it a title, you can drag a photo from the main window and drop it into a set on the right to add the photo to the set. From there, you can arrange the photos in a set into a specific order. Figure 3-46 shows what the cover page of a set looks like to someone browsing a set for the first time.

Free Flickr accounts are limited to three sets, but you can create an unlimited number of sets with a Flickr Pro account.

The "View as slideshow" link on the front page of a set will let someone see the group of photos as Flash presentation. Viewers don't even have to type on the keyboard or click their mouse; they can sit back and watch the photos dissolve in and out as the presentation automatically moves from one picture to the next.

3.18.3. Share

One of the primary benefits of using Flickr is that once your photos are uploaded, they are accessible to anyone with a web browser.

Figure 3-46. A Flickr photoset

3.18.3.1. Free to the public.

The easiest way to share all of your photos is to create a simple URL, called a Flickr address, that you can share with others. Browse to http://www.flickr.com/profile_url.gne and choose a simple word as your address. The format of the URL will look like this:

	http://www.flickr.com/photos/insert your word

It's important to choose your Flickr address carefully, because your choice is permanent; you can't edit your Flickr address once you've created it. The newly created URL will point directly to your photostream, and you can give the URL to your friends and family or link to your photostream from another web site using the URL.

Once your photos are on Flickr, you can also share them by automatically posting them to a weblog [Hack #98] or by displaying your latest photos with a Flickr badge [Hack #99]. Flickr also provides RSS feeds for photostreams, groups, and tags, so once your photos are in the system, there are myriad ways for others to view them.

One benefit of these methods of sharing is that others viewing your photos don't need to be members of Flickr to see them. They don't have to go through an account creation process simply to look at your photos. But if someone does go the extra mile to become a Flickr member, there are several more ways to connect and share photographs.

3.18.3.2. Flickr community.

Flickr works best when your friends and family are also participating at the site. Once someone has an account, you can add him as a friend, family member, or contact.

Keep in mind that whichever category another Flickr member is in will determine which photos of yours she can see if you alter the default privacy settings for a particular photo.

As you build a group of contacts at Flickr, you'll be able to easily browse their photos just as they can browse yours. Clicking the Your Contacts' link in the Photos: bar at the top of any Flickr page will show the latest photos added by all of your contacts, and it's a great way to keep up with your friends. You can also browse a full list of your contacts by clicking the People link at the top of any page and then clicking someone's name to see his photostream. Figure 3-47 shows a contact list at Flickr.

Figure 3-47. A list of contacts at Flickr

The Groups feature lets anyone form a public discussion and photo-sharing space at Flickr. In addition to sending photos to a group photo pool, you can post messages to the group and carry on a conversation. For example, there's a group called The Bookshelf Project (http://www.flickr.com/groups/bookshelf). The members there share photos of their home bookshelves and discuss the topic of storing books.

If you're interested in a specific topic, chances are good that someone has created a specific Flickr Group devoted to it. You can browse a full list of groups, organized by topic, at http://www.flickr.com/groups_browse.gne. Figure 3-48 shows the Flickr Group for this book, which you'll find online at http://www.flickr.com/groups/yahoohacks.

Figure 3-48. A Flickr Group page

Flickr members can also comment on each other's photos, help out with tagging, and even add notes to specific areas of a photo. And, as always, these features are contingent on the permissions you set for your photos.