Loking for GOOD alterantives to flickr

While I'm certainly also googling for the answer I thougt I should ask here too since I know some of the board memebrs are quite good photographers.

 

Edit: Addign link to flickr's official help forum post about this new feature

 

In the past, as some of you might remember, flickr offered paid pro accounts. When someone visited the photo stream of a paid account, they didn't see any ads on that photo stream - regardles of whether or not the visitor had a paid acount. Quite some time ago (last year?) that changed and now the visitors have to pay to not see ads. True, there are ad blockers but the point is that the account owner can no longer disable ads on their photo stream for all visitors.

 

While annoying I could sort of live with that and continued to pay for an account (pointless, I know). Then the other day, flickr rolled out a new feature - auto-tagging of photos! Neat perhaps except you can't opt out - not even if you change your account settings so that noone except yourself can add tags! Well, some people might say "no big deal" and I'd be inclined to agree if it wasnt' for the fact that most of the auto-tags are incorrect. For example, most of my doll photos had been auto-tagged with "people" and "child", photos of sunrises were auto-tagged "sunset" and photos of night skies were auto-tagged "sea", "water" or "water front" Needless to say I've now had enough of flickr's silly antics.

<\rant mode off>

 

So, as the title says, I'm now looking for a good, somewhat pro, alternative to flickr. The features I want are:

 

• Completely add free or *I* should be able to turn of adds for the viewers of my photos
  
• Preferably free but if a paid account is needed to disable ads for my viewers then so be it
  
• Somewhat unlimited upload in terms of photo dimensions, file size and number of photos
  
• A "proffesional" service. flickr, photobucket, imageshack, instagram and so on have all turned into everyone and their granny's photo dumps. I'm by no means a good photographer so I'm probably in that category too I still don't mind feedback on my photos as long as it's constructive and friendly feedback. I have zero tolerance for harsh, and thus pointless and unconstructive, critique from wise-asses who think they know something.
  
• A community that can tolerate photo subjects that the general puplic considers odd, such as dolls

Edited May 17, 2015 by Guest

I've personally started using 500px.com more and more instead of Flickr. Their free mode is quite a bit more limited than Flickr in regards on how many photos you can upload.

 

And there are no ads!

 

https://500px.com/waha is my page if you want to sample their layout.

 

Granted, it lacks some features of Flickr, but it doesn't constantly annoy me.

True, there are ad blockers but the point is that the account owner can no longer disable ads on their photo stream for all visitors.

Other than the home page, where do you see ads on Flickr?

Thanks for pointing this out sleepywolf! I had no idea that Flickr had rolled out this terrible feature Just checked my photos and like you said they have been tagged as "Child", "People", "Indoor", and etc~ That is really annoying as these tags are unnecessary. I meant to cancel my Pro account this year, but it slipped my mind and had already auto-renewed. I'll definitely be turning that off since really the paid account isn't all it's cracked up to be anymore~ Though for now I'll stick with Flickr since I follow so many other people there. But again thanks for the head's up! Hope you're able to find a better alternative~

Thanks waha! 500px looks quite nice, simplistic and streamlined. I'll sign up for an account and see what they offer for signed in memebrs.

 

Other than the home page, where do you see ads on Flickr?

Flickr is sneaky as he** about this. Not sure what the logic behind it is but it seems to affect some accounts more than others. Been trying to find an example and finally found this:

 

1. Log out from your flickr account

2. Disable any and all ad blockers

3. Open a private/incognito tab or window - this will make you look like a new, fresh visitor without flickr cookies et.c. (didn't have to do this but YMMV)

4. Go to baldinbro's 2014 Utah Road Trip album

5. Click on the first photo of the red car so it opens as a single picture

 

Now click on the arrow to the right of the photo (not the thumbnails below the photo) to go to the next photo and continue like this. First time I tried I got this ad as the fourth picture. The next time the same ad showed up as the second picture:

 

 

You're welcome, Innocentsake. For someone like me that has terrible imagination, the auto-tagger could have been a nice feature - if it wasn't for the fact that a) like so many other flickr features, the users were not given the chance to vote or voice an oppinion before it was introduced, b) there's no way to opt out and c) you can't batch edit/remove the auto-generated tags!

 

Anyway, we'll see what happens. Judging by flickr forum posts and other articles on the internet, this may have backfired quite a bit due to downright offensive and insulting auto-tags.

That's annoying about the ads, I didn't know they did that. However, I don't see ads on your photostream, but I do see them on mine.

 

That said, I don't have a problem with the auto tags. They added them to improve searching, and it's obvious when something has an auto tag vs. a normal tag (it's also obvious when an auto-tag is wrong). They added some useful tags to mine, but they should probably stop tagging doll photos as people/children (－‸ლ) They seem to be tagging stuff based on context, so if you wrote hat in the description and it looks like there's a hat, they'll add the hat tag. Hopefully it'll improve.

 

If searching for children resulted in a bunch of doll photos, then I'd be annoyed.

Yowza, I wasn't aware of that with Flickr. Seems all these photo hosting sites seem to go to pot as time goes on...

I use adblock though and have yet to see an ad on flickr. Probably why I was not aware of ads

Interesting read, thanks for posting this!

Thanks for the heads up on the ads and the tags. I've been with flickr for a while and still have the old paid pro account. I got the ads on the linked album but I don't see any while logged out on my own account (thankfully). The feature in flickr I like the most is the BBCode linking so I can post my photos on various forums.

Thanks for the heads up on the ads and the tags. I've been with flickr for a while and still have the old paid pro account. I got the ads on the linked album but I don't see any while logged out on my own account (thankfully). The feature in flickr I like the most is the BBCode linking so I can post my photos on various forums.

 

I'm grandfathered in with an old Pro account and don't ever plan to let it expire.

 

I still hate this "new Flickr" they rolled out a year or 2 ago. And they keep making changes that make it worse >_>"

this seems cool. once i get a full user i will be trying this out thanks

I use ipernity..... I like it