Flickr Makes Fresh Photo Makeover Live To All Users

Los Angeles — The advent of high-speed web has enabled people around the globe to boast their parties, outings and other memories captured on a digital format. Barely three weeks after testing, Flickr has a surprise in-store for its users which will augment the photo sharing experience. The Flickr blog has took the wraps off of its massively redesigned photo pages to all of its users.

The newly overhauled was introduced as an opt-in beta back in late June. Back then, Matthew Rothenberg who is Flickr’s chief of product, said in a statement that the aim was to distributed to everyone after a month of testing. Now, barely a week after that, the company now says it has been released to 100 percent of users as the default style.

The latest release will bring the photos themselves to the forefront, as they should be. The redesign overhaul focuses on the three key aspects of the photo page: the navigation, the context behind photos and the size of photos themselves. There are new navigation buttons above each photo to help you browse from one photo to the next. You can also switch between contexts via the new film strip in the sidebar. Finally, photos now carry the “who, what, when, where, and how” of each photo. The company uses this information to help create photostreams and to facilitate photosharing and storytelling via the website’s massive database of images.

The biggest thing to have been modified are the default photo sizes themselves. They are now 28% larger — that is 640 pixels wide. You can also contrasts the background around photos so you can enjoy the images and nothing else.

According to Flickr, the goal of the refurbishment was to improve the display of photos and maximize the interaction users have with any photo they discover. 800,000 members took part in the original testing of the redesigned photo pages. Now Flickr’s entire user base gets to play with these bigger and better photo pages.

Other features include:

• A new lightbox, that allows you to click on a photo or use the magnifying glass icon to browse through large photos on a dark background.

• Always there navigation buttons to navigate between photos.

• Navigate between the photostream, groups, and sets via the upgraded film strip on the photo sidebar.

• A new widget-like grouping of the “story” of the photo, with location, tags, author, etc all in one easy to find place.

• Licensing set by the author will be more visible in the new design.

• Favoriting is now more visible next to comments.

Flickr’s new look (screenshots)