Join us in previewing Flickr’s new photo experience

Starting today, you can preview our new photo experience that we are planning to roll out later this year.

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Joining is super easy, just click the “Try our new Photo Experience” button on any photo page on Flickr. (It’s currently only available for English users, but is coming to all other supported languages soon.) We believe you will notice three main things in the preview:

Wow. The photo got bigger!

The new photo experience gives you the largest possible image, while not deprecating the story around a photo. The image is about 25% bigger than on the previous photo page. You’ll see more pixels, get a cleaner view without any elements on the top or bottom of the page, so that photos are even more of the centerpoint.

The story is on the side of the photo.

The photo is more than just pixels: It’s the story that you and other people have built around it. The photo’s story is not only the photo’s title, but also in the comments, tags and photo-specific information, such as the camera used. Our goal is to present you with a big image, but also to remove the need to scroll to see what the image is about. In the sidebar, you’ll find all the important actions and valuable information. We also started to add recommendations to the sidebar, so that if you enjoy the photo that you are seeing, you’re offered the opportunity to find photos of similar appeal.

The need for speed.

The new photo experience is built from the ground up and uses new technology to show you photos much faster. While we are still working on improving the performance even more, you’ll see a significant performance boost just by going from one photo to another — which you can simply do by clicking on the viewed photo.

Over the coming weeks, we share many more details of the new photo experience here. But for now, we invite you to test it and provide us feedback. Please keep in mind that this an early look into what is coming and that not all features are available yet.

We are very excited to invite you to this new experience today, as we think it uniquely combines high-resolution photos and celebrates the story around them. Now, head over to a photo and join us in previewing the new experience.

Photo from Darren Bradley.