Flickr released a major update today to their iOS app. Much of the talk has been about the addition of filters (ala Instagram) but there's a lot more to it that is worth a look.
There's a lot to like...
The contacts view. Double tap = favoriting/liking the photo (chalk up another nod to Instagram). You can flick across to see more pics from any one contact, or down to see more contacts. Tap on a photo to go through to a details page & comment.
The explore tab. The 'interesting' section looks very nice, but the 'nearby' tab is particularly....interesting. A great way to discover other peoples angles on the stuff you are probably walking past every day.
The camera view itself. You can tap & split the focus/exposure pointers (pic below) on a shot ala Camera+ and control (i.e. turn off) the flash. I couldn't see how to 'lock' that exposure and be able to completely reframe your shot - ala ProCamera, but for most shots where that isn't required, I'm guessing I'll be using the Flickr app to take pics that I want to upload immediately. Interestingly though, I can't seem to take a photo and have it saved to my regular camera roll if I choose not to upload it to Flickr right there and then. If I take the photo and hit cancel - it's nowhere to be found. Instagram will save it to your camera roll regardless so you can shoot a bunch of shots in quick succession and edit/upload later.
Upload original res, with location/set/group info. Loading the available sets and locations when uploading was super fast. I've got hundreds of sets and somehow they seemed to load faster here than on the desktop site.
The much discussed filters are all there. Some of the filters auto-apply a frame effect as well - but at the moment it doesn't look like you can toggle those on/off. If I want to apply a filter I suspect I may end up still tweaking my pics in Camera+ as it allows you to vary the level of the filter that is being applied - so it's not so brutal. A nice touch within the Flickr app though is you can go into settings and choose to not show filters at all. That whole step is removed from the flow of screens when taking/uploading.
Tools for cropping/contrast etc. These are 'powered by Aviary' and allow you to do minor tweaks on saturation/contrast, or go crazy with overlayed text. These tools are a little hidden though and took me a while to find them. There's a (pretty) little pencil/edit icon overlayed the photo top/right when on the filters screen that takes you through to more photo editing options.
Ability to add friends from Facebook & Twitter. It was almost too easy to add contacts on Flickr that were also on Twitter & Facebook. Hopefully this will help to reinvigorate the Flickr community.
EXIF data remains intact. Shutter speed, aperture, ISO is all there on the photo details page which is nice.
Will it revitalize Flickr?
I've personally been a long time (paying) member of Flickr, and while activity on the site has definitely dwindled in my circles over the last few years and moved off to twitter itself and Instagram, hopefully this reworked app will go some of the way to bringing a community back to the service. I definitely appreciate the ability to tag and and photos to sets etc on Flickr - along with the ability to then embed your photos on other sites with galleries etc.
This post was originally posted on our Australian site.
Photo credit / links to Flickr users seen in my contacts above (in order within 1st screen shot):
anildash - http://www.flickr.com/photos/anildash/
diversionary - http://www.flickr.com/photos/diversionary/
remysharp - http://www.flickr.com/photos/remysharp/
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