Do you use the free version of Flicker? If you answered yes, there are Changes Coming To Flickr For Free Users, and they will affect you if you have over 1000 pictures stored. If you use Flickr, you will want to read this, as you will lose pictures if you have over 1000 stored on a free account. Per the announcement by Flickr, changes are coming as of January 8, 2019. Alert: Changes Coming To Flickr For Free Users
What Are The Changes / How Will You Be Affected
According to the announcement from Flickr, the initial part of the changes will start on January 8, 2019. Starting on that day the following things will happen to free accounts
- All free accounts will be limited to 1000 photos /videos (combination of both, not each).
- If you are have over 1000 photos / videos on your account, you will no longer be able to upload any more files to your Flickr account.
The second and IMPORTANT PART for Flickr free accounts comes on February 5, 2019.
- Starting on Feb. 5th, free accounts that contain over 1000 photos or videos WILL HAVE CONTENT ACTIVELY DELETED. Flickr WILL DELETE starting from the oldest to newest date of upload. Flickr will delete whatever it takes to bring the account to 1000 files.
What Can You Do
In essence you have a couple of choices. For those who love Flickr and don’t want to change to another storage service
- You upgrade your Flickr to Flickr Pro for $49.99 per year.
- With a Pro account, you will get unlimited storage, ad-free browsing, video uploads allowed go from 3 min to 10 min (video increase coming early 2019).
- In addition, you will have available discounts with Flickr partners, like Adobe and SmugMug.
If you aren’t tied to using Flickr, there are a number of other choices for photo storage. Among the storage choices
- Google Photos which offers unlimited space and uploads. There is 1 small caveat: Photos can be stored at a maximum resolution of 16MP and video at 1080p.
- Amazon Prime Photos, for those who are Amazon Prime members. The service lets you store and share unlimited photos on your desktop, smart phone or tablet.
If you are a Flickr free user and want to remain a Flickr free user
- Check and see how many pictures / videos you have uploaded. If you have over 1000 uploads, you want to download your pictures and videos starting with the oldest. Remember that if Flickr goes into its active delete mode, they will delete starting from the oldest upload.To check how many photos / videos are on your account use the “Organize” option (following these steps)- Log into your Flickr account– Hover your mouse over the “You” option in the black header area at the top of the page- Select “Organize” from the drop down box- Once in the Batch Organizer, look to the bottom left area. Just above the thumbnails of your photos you should see an option box, click this and make sure the option is set to “All your content”- Just below this box, you should see “# items :: 0 selected | Select all”, with the number of items being the amount of photos and videos present in your account
Notes
With all the changes at Yahoo, one of the changes was the selling of Flickr to SmugMug. Up to now, Flickr has operated with no changes, but as of January 2019, the announced changes are part of SmugMug taking full control of Flickr. Also happening in January 2019, there will be no need for a Yahoo account to use Flickr.
Source(s)
- Flickr – Flickr Storage Change Notice
- Google Photos – General Information
- Amazon Prime Photos – General Information
- The Guardian – Flickr Sold to SmugMug
