Preparing photos for Flickr

3 years ago we backed up 5 years of photos to a new external drive and had our pc rebuilt. When we reconnected the hard drive it didn't work any more. No-one has been able to recover the pictures. The loss has been painful.

As a result, I upgraded my Flickr account and use it as a backup, along with a new external drive.

I have a DSLR now and shoot mainly in RAW. The (very) few I am pleased with I edit and share on other sites but I generally upload all to Flickr before I start messing with any.

I have noticed that my photos are never as sharp once they are in Flickr. They are generally OK if I have edited them first, and maybe saved as JPEG after, and if I save them for web.

I think I want to carry on using Flickr as my repository of last resort, but I either need to separate out the raw backed-up photos from my portfolio pictures or find a new place for the latter.

What do other folks think?

Can I just say that the program ain't easy???!! Nor intuitive.

For uploading to Flickr, I always tweek my photos, usually using ImageZone. But I want to do more (like add text) so something like photoshop is necessary.

Just wish they made their tutorials, and the whole learning curve clearer. I watched Heather Champ working it during BlogHer last weekend, and she rocked!! Made it look, not intuitively obvious but do-able. I can only hope.

Debra
A Stitch In Time ( http://astitchintime.blogspot.com )
Deb's Daily Distractions ( http://debsdistractions.blogspot.com )

I always edit my photos before uploading. My camera isn't really a DSLR so the pictures usually need a bit of help to come out looking the way I actually saw them (or close to it). I don't consider this cheating at all...I consider it a nice way to avoid subjecting the people that view my stream to complete crap. I try, anyway :)

Here's what my BlogHer set ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/slolane/sets/72157594... ) looks like.

Jenna:

Of course you don't have to do anything to your photos in Photoshop before uploading them to Flickr. Maybe I'm too much of a perfectionist, but I want my photos to look reasonably good before presenting them to the world. I've also been able to save some otherwise unusable photos (like those with extreme red-eye, or those that come out too dark because the flash on my point-and-shoot camera isn't powerful enough), so that I feel OK about posting them. You might also want to use Photoshop to crop your photos to improve the composition or to get rid of content you don't want, as Jilbean suggests in her comment.

If those things don't bug you, you can just upload photos straight to Flickr. There's even a resizing mechanism built into Flickr that pops up when you try to upload a very large photo and asks if you want to downsize.

Jan Kabili
Blogher Contributing Editor Technology & Web ( http://www.blogher.com/topic/technology-web )
Also blogging at The Unofficial Photoshop Weblog ( http://photoshop.weblogsinc.com )

I usually just crop pictures I add to flickr - as I am not a photoshop pro at this time....

www.spilltojill.com ( http://www.spilltojill.com )(advice Blog)
www.jilbean.blogspot.com ( http://www.jilbean.blogspot.com ) (personal Blog)
www.jilbean.com ( http://www.jilbean.com )(personal site)

I don't really edit any pictures that I upload to our flickr ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrsjennahatfield/ ). I occasionally mess with brightness and contrast when I'm feeling particularly artsy. But our camera is great with adjusting the light, with or without flash. It can make a poor photographer seem great. ;) Occasionally a few come out dark but I snap so many pictures it doesn't seem to matter. ha!

But the flickr uploader is my friend! Especially since I uploaded 220 unedited (meaning... HUGE!) pictures from our week at camp the other night. Selected entire folder, entered the information for a new set and walked away!

Family Living; Hatfield Style ( http://www.thejhatfields.org/blog )
Jenna