Five Reasons to Use Flickr

As many of you know, Yahoo Photos has been shut down for a while and Flickr took over. Some people have fallen in love with Flickr already and others hate it. Personally I never used Yahoo Photos and ended up with Photobucket. For some reason Photobucket started slowing down and I looked for a new alternative. Being a proud Google lover I used Picasa Web Albums for the past year, but something about Flickr drew me close. I found it easier to use than Picasa and fell in love with everything about it. If you haven't used Flickr yet, this ones for you.

1. Social Networking - So social networks like MySpace and Facebook are the thing right now, but what about pictures? Everyone has them and everyone loves them. Sometimes you want to share things with the world just to see what they say, and others you want to hide for personal use. Flickr lets you comment other peoples public photos, search for photos tagged to match your interests, and just share things with the world. Chances are this is going to make you feel connected with everyone on Flickr with a simple picture.

2. Photoshop Plug-In - Graphic artists are everywhere you go. Some of them like me just like to play around with Photoshop, while others are serious professionals. Sometimes it becomes such a chore to have to export a graphic then upload it somewhere to share with the world and see what they think, but with the Photoshop plug-in you do not have to export anything and the graphic is uploaded from inside of Photoshop! Things are just getting easier by the minute.

3. Bandwidth/Upload Limit - Unlike most photo hosting services Flickr doesn't have a real storage limit. Their deal is that you can upload up to 100 MB worth of photos in a single calender month for free. While you might not think that is much I have yet to exceed that limit. Think about it, I uploaded roughly 300 images the other day and I only used about 30 percent of my monthly limit. For most people this is more than enough. If its too little for you then you might want to think about upgrading your account.

4. Ease of use - Flickr is one the most simplest things in the world. Its self explanatory and the website is completely friendly on the eyes. I love the clean look of the website and functionality it offers. No one should have a hard time with learning how things work. Another thing I love is the Flickr Uploadr tool. Its available for Windows and Mac OS X. Another uploader tool that is available is jUploadr. It is a cross platform application that works on Windows, Mac, and Linux. If you are an iPhoto user like me and you have a little extra money you might consider the iPhoto Uploader tool called FlickrExport.

5. Organization Tools - Albums are overrated. They are hard to search through and their just plain old boring. For those of you who love tagging Flickr will be your best friend. You can tag photos with all sort of things. You can search photos by tag, look at what tags you used most and if you really want to you can always use sets. Set are similar to albums, but free accounts only get three. Be careful you just might fall in love with tagging.