The new print option appears as an option in the upper right of the Organizr tool, so users can now print batches of photos more easily.
(Credit: Yahoo)As expected, Flickr has retooled its photo printing abilities to make it easier to print batches of photos.
The new print ability is now available in the Organizr tool, which already was available to help users group photos into sets, change viewing permissions, add tags, and otherwise manage their photos. Flickr's Eric Costello announced the Flickr printing move on Yahoo's blog Wednesday.
I loathed Flickr printing in the past, and the new option worked much more smoothly for me. I suspect I'm not alone here in my dislike--Flickr this year got a major influx of new members when Yahoo started closing down its Yahoo Photos service in favor of its faster-growing Flickr site, and the older site was more geared toward old-school photo site tasks such as printing. Indeed, Yahoo steered printing-oriented Yahoo Photos members away from Flickr when presenting migration options.
Various options are available for printing groups of photos.
(Credit: Yahoo)Previously, a user had to choose individual photos manually to print from each photo's Web page, although one print partner, Qoop, offered a more streamlined approach. Now, the Organizr's new "order prints" option lets a user select a group of photos to print, quickly choose from a variety of photo sizes, and add them to the shopping cart.
Also, opening the contents of a set presents the same option if you've already sorted photos into a batch.
The interface also includes tabs for sending the prints to Flickr's print partners, Qoop and Moo, which offer more elaborate options such as books, mugs, greeting cards, and miniature business cards.
Update: Regular Flickr printing also includes options for ImageKind, Blurb, and Zazzle.
SAN FRANCISCO--Flickr was originally designed for sharing photos, but Yahoo is trying to make life easier for those who want to print pictures and not just see them on a screen.
The Yahoo site is working on an upgrade to Flickr's Organize interface, which lets people select batches of photos, to make it easier to print multiple photos, said Kakul Srivastava, Flirk's director of product management. Today, each photo must be selected individually off its own Web page, which rapidly gets tiresome.
"It should be happening in the next week or so," she said in an interview here at the Web 2.0 Summit on Thursday. Flickr also announced plans to upgrade the site's ability to put geotagged photos to better use at the show.
The company also is trying to make printing "more interesting," expanding with new possibilities that arrived "since the world of Kodak 4x6 prints," she said. Those new options include photo cubes and photo books enabled through a partnership with Hewlett-Packard that the printer and computer maker announced at the Web 2.0 conference.
Flickr printing today feels to me like a grafted-on afterthought. And with hordes of users moving over from the shutdown of Yahoo Photos, which was more oriented toward printing than sharing, it's wise to pay attention to the feature.
Personally, I'd like to see some other printing-related features, too. Maybe you tagging gurus know a way to do this, but I tag photos when editing them on the computer, and I'd like to include a tag for the shots I'm likely to print so I can rapidly sift them out of the archive at an online site such as Flickr.
I'd also like the ability to show high-resolution versions of photos only to family and friends so they can print their favorites and I don't have to worry that somebody is going to snatch them for their own stock photo purposes. Right now I sometimes upload two versions of a photo, one private and high-resolution and one public and smaller.
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