Flickr To Get Photo Editing and Upgraded Printing Features
October 20, 2007 |
Online photo sharing service Flickr, which recently announced new geotagging abilities, now has two more new updates that will be introduced soon.
Flickr users have long requested photo-editing capabilities which are now planned to be integrated within the coming months after the announcement of Flickr's partnership with online photo-editing service Picnik. Few details have been released but this deal is sure to shake up the mix of third-party online photo editors that are currently offering integration with Flickr.
Also in line are new printing features, the most important of which is the new batch printing ability that "should be happening in the next week or so," according Kakul Srivastava, director of product management at Flickr.
It was only a matter of time before Flickr started focusing on 'printing' photographs as well as 'sharing' them, given the closing of Yahoo! Photos citing the decision to "focus all efforts on Flickr." Currently users must individually print photos one at a time. Expect new and innovative printing options, such as photo cubes and photo books, to be included as well, through a partnership with Hewlett-Packard.
As for the news of upcoming photo-editing abilities, there are several web services which Flickr could have chosen, but Picnik appears to be a great choice that will appeal to the majority of Flickr's user base.
It has been described as "a user friendly service" by Duncan Riley of TechCrunch. "It’s avoids the cutting edge, youth market focus of sites such as Flektor, instead delivering what can best be described as a web based version of Picasa aimed directly at the mature end of the market. Moms and Dads, to Generation X users who are tired of the trendy graffiti style 'hip' focus of other services will love Picnik."
When the editing features launch, Flickr users will see an 'Edit' option on their photo pages, which will launch the Picnik tools. Picnik's current abilities include allowing users to crop, resize and rotate photos, remove red-eye, and make changes to a photo's exposure, color temperature, and saturation levels. Mike Arrington has reported that only Flickr Pro users will be able to overwrite the original image after editing it, while basic users will only have the option of saving the edited image as a new file in their account.
This has been a very busy week for Flickr at the Web 2.0 Summit, which should keep this Yahoo!-owned company well ahead of the competition.
