Flickr wants to be your all-in-one photo hub, updates iPhone app to make it happen

Yahoo, parent company of Flickr, clearly has big plans for its photo sharing service. The company has been making some pretty radical changes over the last few months, including revamping its site, boosting storage to a whopping terabyte free for each user, and hiring an ex-Google exec to head up the service. It's also been acquiring other companies whose photo tech it can take advantage of, such as image recognition company IQ Engines.

Now, it's made another move aimed at persuading the public to take photos with the Flickr app, rather than those of rivals. The goal, it seems, is to become the start-to-finish hub for your photos. The new Flickr app is only available so far if you're using an iOS device, but that's true of a lot of people. (Android fans just got an update too, but it lacks the new features provided for iPhotographers.)

 

 

New features include framing guidelines, and the ability to lock focus and exposure separately. You can also use live filters that let you preview effects prior to capture, and customize filters to create your own effects. Interestingly, these filter effects aren't baked into images at capture time, either. If you decide you want to change them, the effect can then be tuned post-capture. There are also new enhance, crop, sharpen, color balance, levels, and vignette tools, and they're all available free of charge.

What do you think of the changes -- enough to sway you from your existing iOS app to Flickr? And if you're not on iOS, how do you feel about it scoring the new features before Android, not to mention the long-forgotten Windows Phone app? Share your thoughts in the comments below. And if you want to learn more about the Flickr update for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, get more details on the Flickr blog.