Flickr's dirty little secret

Original is not an original.

Flickr app for iPhone will downgrade photos uploaded in presumably in their original quality to a lower quality. It will slightly change photo's color hue and use blurring to reduce JPG size. Original will change to a copy although the user is not warned. This is a misleading practice and is certainly not welcome among all Flickr's users, whether professionals or enthusiasts.

Flickr.app presumably and misleading allowing upload of images in their "original".

Flickr app's "original" when redownloaded from Flickr's website shows a smaller file size, thus evidencing a manipulation of the original file by applying compression algorithms to the original image.

Compressed image misleadingly uploaded to Flickr shows much less detail and noise, which for high quality photographs means a reduction in quality. (enlarged 500%, click to see in full size).

Crop of the original image sent from iPhone by Mail shows significantly more detail and noise. Again, for high quality photographs this translates to higher sharpness, more detail, clearer edges, more accurate color. (enlarged 500%, click to see in full size).

Additionally the Flickr.app will not allow for uploading of videos. FlickStackr the premier alternative for using Flickr on iPad/iPhone/iOS devices has stopped working properly since 20 May, no longer allowing uploads.

Workaround for photos

Uploading by email to your dedicated flickr email address used for uploading images by mail. Click the following link in order to set up customized email address for uploading to flickr. Upload via built in Safari browser (see below).

Workaround for uploading videos

Built in Safari browser allows selecting a video from iOS camera roll when uploading to Flickr as shown in the screenshot below.

Uploading to Flickr via the built-in Safari browser on iOS.

Make Flickr aware of our discontent

Flickr users: if you agree or would like to make your own tests and support the idea, please link to, "like" or otherwise make this information visible for the sake of Flickr community. Thanks!

Yahoo, please fix this. Thank you.

Keywords/Tags: yahoo, flickr, misleading, original, photo, image, upload, flickstackr, ios, iphone, ipad,  save, flickr.app, quality, video, tool, preserve, compress, compression, noise, issue, problem, help