Just Fred Loc: Darwin's Waiting Room

I guess I should have seen this coming, but it annoys me nevertheless.

Back in April, online photo resource Smugmug acquired from Verizon, Flickr, another similar such web site. Don't worry, we were told, nothing's going away. We're just going to make it better.

Now, something is going away. That something is Flickr's free, unlimited photo storage capability. Free accounts will be limited to 1,000 photos. If you want more, you'll have to pay $50 a year.

That might make sense, except it bothers me because:

I pay for a Smugmug "power" account ($72 year). Many of my photos are duplicated across the sites because it's easier sometimes to utilize one over the other. I currently have 3,491 photos on Flickr. I do not wish to nearly double my yearly payment, so now I will need to prune my Flickr account.

Does Flickr make this easy to do? No. I must use their "Organizr" utility and load and delete photos in batches. I can't simply download them to my computer and delete them en masse.

So now I will have to spend hours going through the photos on my Flickr account to choose and delete those I don't wish to keep there, just so I can stay under the 1,000 photo limit. In fact, there is now no reason for me to have two accounts, so I'd prefer to download all my photos and delete my Flickr account.

Who says technology makes things easier?

ETA: I found a freeware program called flickrdownloadr and am giving it a try. I anticipate it taking most of the day to download everything, and usually programs of this type go belly up somewhere in the middle of the process. Crossing my fingers...

Vaun's photography Loc: Bonney Lake, WA

I already deleted enough to get below the new 1000 photo limit, but it irked me to have to do that after the assurance that the merger would have no effect.

Screamin Scott Loc: Marshfield Wi, Baltimore Md, now Dallas Ga

The "free" account was always limited to 200 images being able to be viewed... I just don't like how the price of "Pro" accounts doubled. Yeah, they say you get these other benefits, but they are only a benefit if you can utilize them, I can't...

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

One reason I built my own website.

Just Fred Loc: Darwin's Waiting Room

Much to my surprise, the flickrdownloadr program seems to have done the job it purported to do. I now have 3,490 photos (and 3,490 "sidecar" JSON files) in a folder on my hard disk. The number matches up with what Flickr reports. I'm going to do some comparison checking, but I think I now have the basis for at least getting a handle on my Flickr account moving forward....

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

I have been on flickr since about 2006. I have a few more than 3000 images there. However, I don't delete my images locally when I upload them so if the images go away if I don't pay the fee there's no loss.

As I recall you have a month or two to recover the stuff you have on flickr if you don't keep those things in your archives.

Flickr was never intended to be an archival site.

Just Fred Loc: Darwin's Waiting Room

True. I do keep every photo I've taken on an external hard drive, and back that up to another, so my paranoia should be covered.

I always like to back up data before I begin mass deleting anything. This habit is why I want to preserve my Flickr data before I begin pruning. If I accidentally delete something from Flickr, I can now restore it in moments, rather than have to connect my external drive, locate the photo, and upload it again.

Stan W. Loc: Tampa, Fl

If you put all your photographs in an "album" you can download them all at one time. Flickr will make several zip files and send you an email when they are ready to download to your computer.

mborn Loc: Massachusetts

My Flickr files are just jpeg dups of my raw/Pnd flies stored on my HDs so if I lose them no big deal

Haydon

I don't find 1000 images confining for a free account. Others I'm sure have more talent than myself but I would prefer to post my 100 best than a 1001 duds.

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

1. Why do people think everything should should be free?
I want free gas and electricity too.
2. I do not ever trust or believe in any sort of storage outside of my own hard drives. If I can't figure out how to share a photo off my hard drive then just shoot me.
Companies come and go, policies change. I lost out on free buggy wheel replacements for life when the company went out of business. My prepaid Kodachrome mailers are no good as well now as far as I can tell with Kodak.

bigjoe

I’ve been with flicker since 2004 I have over 8000 photographs on there When I got a email that the free account was going away with unlimited Storage which was not unlimited it was a terabyte I decided to simply to delete my account. I back up my photos to my computer and to a external hard drive I only used it to display my work at to other photographers .. there better professional website out there that if I choose to spend money on.... there’s nothing free in the world

Bugs

SmugMug is an awesome service. I'm happy to pay for it. I pay for Backblaze, and Adobe Cloud, too. Free stuff? Boohoo for for grieving freeloaders, I say! Too bad, so sad, for Flicker users. "Free" is another word for "strings attached." Yes, when "free" is freely offered, I take advantage, too. But I know, there is always "cost" involved, somehow, someday. I will eventually pay. Flicker Payday has arrived.

MikWar Loc: Chicago, Western Suburbs

I, too was disappointed that Flickr started charging for more than 1,000 pics. I currently have more then 5,000 on there and was building a collection of albums of birds seen in Illinois as a reference guide. Until the changeover, Flickr proudly told me I had used 1.32145455632% of my free Terabyte. So they evidently had no problem letting 10's of thousands of users operate for free within the Terabyte limit. Since they would have started to delete my pictures after Jan 1, 2019 I decided to purchase the Pro version (for a "discounted" rate of $38) to buy some time (I kicked myself after upgrading now - if I would have waited till Dec. 31 I would have bought myself even more time). By the end of the year I hope to have figured out how to put the pictures up on a website for less cost (any suggestions?).

suntouched Loc: Sierra Vista AZ

For everyone that feels that 4.00 and change a month is too much for storing unlimited photographic images try Fine Art America. At last check they were still free.