Google Photos & Flickr

I do love my photography, especially that of urban scenes or events.

Recently, I was dismayed at the decision by Flickr to charge users for an app that allows for their photo directory on a computer to synchronise and upload photos to their accounts. This took the stress off me in terms of organising photos for uploading as the app scanned the selected folders and only uploaded recently taken photos.

It makes cloud back up of my photos alot more difficult now.

But Google Photos have stepped up to the plate. They have now replaced Picasa as a photo hosting site for Google. You can upload up to 15GB of photos in any size, or unlimited uploads of photos of up to 16 Megapixels. Any higher than 16 megapixels and the image will be resized. While the backup works, it does mean for me a loss of photo size as some photos are 20 megapixels.

Compare that with Flickr which offers a generous 1TB of storage space for each account. Still that is very good. 

I am in the process of backing up 110 000 images from my computer taken over 14 years. This is about 100GB in size. I like the simplicity of the free backup app which gives security, but compressing the images will let me down, especially with photo editing. Also they don't upload by folder, they leave it to you to organise the images into albums. 

But in the classroom, the simplicity of Google Photos will help and the fact its tied to your Google account will make its use easier. But what about if a person finishes school or leaves? What happens then to the images

Flickr - A photographers dream?

I love my recreational photography and enjoy sharing photos on the Ozscrapers forum of cityscapes, architecture and more.

Until recently, I had been using Imageshack but had found for instance that you could not organize photos effectively with a 100 photo limit per album nor your edits with the images would be recognized. I found I would rotate an image and then the photo was "out of service" with the change or edit not accepted.

I enjoy the relative freedom that Flickr gives you in terms of editing your images and organizing them into sets. There is no limit to how many photos can be placed in a set for instance and hundreds of photos can be viewable on the one page. Few clicks are needed to reach your image.

The 1TB of storage space (and its free) should serve me well for a long time. My ten years of photography has only taken 100GB of my hard drive unless I opt for bigger photos. Even if you are not an active photographer, the 1TB is extremely generous compared to your rivals. You could easily fit a lifetime of photos within the 1TB.

Another big advantage is the fact that it allows for third party apps that allow you to control how you use flickr and even let you use the desktop to do so. The options are completely endless. The apps also allow you to be creative with the images. You can make albums, create effects and mosaics. For those like me who have many photos, desktop managers allow the albums to be managed on the desktop and are automatically synchronized. Upload managers allow you to upload a countless number of photos, much more effectively than the website upload feature (200 photos max per upload).

As a classroom resource, I would highly recommend it for photo hosting or to host any visual files that might support ones learning. I think the fact that the user can have a lot of control and flexibility allows it to be use effectively as well,

I'm obviously continuing to learn about its features and obviously if anything of interest pops up, I'll comment on them.

A few links of interest are included if you are interested in downloading apps to support the Flickr experience. However you may find that some are no longer available for download.

The App Garden (Flickr hosted)
Hongkiat.com
"Flickr Toolbox"