Flickr introduces illustration filtering

John Martz | March 22nd, 2007

Despite Flickr and Yahoo!’s insistence (previously: Flickr vs. Illustration) that Flickr is a tool for photographers and searching, tagging, and sharing photos, they couldn’t deny that the site is very popular with artists and illustrators using the site to display their artwork. They previously didn’t have any strategy in place to deal with illustrators other than to restrict those users’ accounts and censor their images from public searches.

According to the Flickr Blog, in addition to other changes, they’ve just introduced filtering by content type into their searches, and when you now upload an image you can define just what it is: photo, illustration/art/cgi, or screenshot. This is great news for illustrators who use Flickr to share their work (and there certainly are a lot of them, myself included) since these illustrations will now be included in public searches (under the right filtering conditions, of course). See the FAQ for full details.

After playing around, it looks like you can change the content type of already-uploaded images via the Organizer.

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  • The people who made the website do not only want it to be a place for photographers, and here is proof: doodlegang a group dedicated to drawings and administered by one of the founders of flickr.
  • You make a good point, fabulousrice, and I pretty much agree with you. If it's a photo site, it's a photo site, but the folks at Flickr have been pretty grey about the whole issue and have always said that they weren't necessarily against illustrations being posted on the site, but that it wasn't the initial purpose of Flickr. If they took a stand one way or the other, that would be great, but until now they haven't. It looks like they have made a firm decision in favour of allowing illustration, and accepted that technology evolves as people find new uses for it. Flickr is a phenomenal tool, and now that it's more friendly to illustrators is reason to celebrate!
  • fabulousrice
    The way I see it... What if the people who made the website only want it to be a place for photographers? What's wrong in that? I am both a photographer and an illustrator, and I believe it isn't too bad an idea to separate the two sometimes, and if I don't feel like seeing any illustrations, I'd go this way or if I'm going to search for ideas or inspiration for drawings, I'd go the other way... Who said the two mediums had to necessarily connect with each other? They don't!
    Besides - I can hear they scream at the word I'll just say - "deviantart" is more meant for illustrators than not, and yes it has commercial features, and yes a LOT of people strive for recognition there, but then there's other websites of the sort, fotolog, etc... So what if Flickr in-charges want Flickr to stay what it was created for?
    In the long run, Flickr might try to push forward its users' photos on search engines more than it already does, and this illustration thing is what could be the worry hidden behind all this.
  • sakraft1
    I love looking at illustrations on flickr. I knew of their former policy, so I would occasionally search for myself to see if I had been censored from public search yet. In addition to using Organizer, you can change the content type on a photo's (or illustration's!) page by hitting the Flag button (It says "Flag your photo", its not an illustration of a flag).
  • this sounds like a great solution for this. i like (and use) flickr for both illustration AND photography. additionally, i am inspired by both the photography and the illustration i see there. i can't imagine it being any other way. yay flickr!
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