Flickr Pro Accounts are broken
When you upload an image to a free Flickr account, the original image size is hidden. The “all sizes” link takes you to a page that has various sizes of the image, up to 1024 pixels wide, but hides the original image. If you upgrade to a Pro account, your original image is also on that page and there is no way to hide that original image without removing the “all sizes” link completely. The only option to hide the original is to remove the “all sizes” link or to not have a Pro account, so I have just asked to have my account downgraded from pro to free. I don’t want a refund, I would rather lose the money than lose the functionality of having the “all sizes” link on my photos while hiding the original images. I would not have bought a pro account if I had known that it would break the way I used Flickr.
I like Flickr enough to pay $ for a pro account but I quickly realized that I don’t like the pro account on Flickr. I used to get a little angry when I would visit someone’s photo and they did not have the “all sizes” link available. Now I understand that the reason people remove that link is because Flickr Pro Accounts are broken.
The default image size is too small so the “all sizes” link is needed, at least for me. With the free Flickr account, I had that “all sizes” link but my original sized images were hidden. I can’t have that same functionality with a pro account. Flickr Pro Accounts are broken.
There are work arounds, of course, but all of them require me to do more/extra work just to get the same (or less) functionality than with a free account. That leads me to have to think that Flickr Pro Accounts are broken.
I can make a smaller image first and then upload that instead of my original but that means I am going to have duplicates of all of these images just so I can get the same functionality I get from a free account? If I have to have duplicate files and do more work so that my paid account works like the free account does, then Flickr Pro Accounts are broken.
I can ugly up my images by putting a watermark on them. This means I would be doing more work with my paid pro account for less (and less appealing) results than with the free account. To me, that means Flickr Pro Accounts are broken.
I can disable the “all sizes” link and be “that guy” I always curse and call names under my breath. I hate when people have the “all sizes” link disabled. So if my pro account forces me to lessen the experience for the (very few) people who view my images in Flickr, then I have to say Flickr Pro Accounts are broken.
Sure, I can disable the “all sizes” link and then add a “view large” link manually for every image in the comments/description of the photo, causing me to waste a good bit of time and do extra work for every image just so my pro account has something close to the same functionality as the free account? Then Flickr Pro Accounts are broken.
I really wish I had done a search before paying for the pro account. I had no idea that paying for an upgrade would downgrade my experience as a Flickr member and that so many of the people I had curse for hiding the “all sizes” links were doing so because Flickr Pro Accounts are broken. It really surprised me; there is no way I would have guessed this.
Oh well. The 2 days I had my pro account were cool (I liked the stats feature, even though my image views aren’t really worth keeping stats on) but Flickr Pro Accounts are broken and I would rather just lose the $25 and get back the free account I liked so much.
[originally posted on Flickr: http://flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/87993/]