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Posts Tagged ‘Users’

500px combines Terms of Service and Contributor Agreement, confusing some users

24 Dec

Photography community 500px recently updated its Terms of Service, adding its Contributor Agreement into the TOS to provide a single destination for both. As tends to be the case any time a social network or other service updates its TOS, some users have picked through the text and come away frightened. A recent analysis of the changes by PetaPixel, however, finds little to be concerned about.

500px released its updated Terms of Service earlier this month; users were alerted to the change when the service prompted them to read and agree to the latest TOS. A number of users posted concerns about various snippets on social media, questioning the terms and, in some cases, demanding the company make changes.

PetaPixel recently dug into the latest Terms of Service and compared it to 500px’s older archived TOS, finding that the language has remained essentially unchanged. Some users may be surprised by the changes because of the inclusion of the Contributor Agreement within the updated TOS. Those added terms only apply to users who choose to sell images through the platform, however.

Users always retain the option of deleting their 500px account. The latest Terms of Service explains that:

Upon termination (by 500px or you), 500px will remove your Visual Content from licensing within 180 days and will inform all distributors that the Visual Content should be removed during that time period, provided however that 500px (and our distributors) may retain digital copies of Visual Content for archival and record-keeping purposes. 500px will continue to make payments due to you after termination in accordance with these Terms.

Via: PetaPixel

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Flickr CEO sends out email asking users to help ‘keep the Flickr dream alive’

21 Dec

In a very candid email sent out to users last night, Flickr (and SmugMug) CEO Dan MacAskill shared the current state of the Flickr platform, detailing the struggles the SmugMug team is facing regarding the financial situation of the photo-sharing network.

The email opens up by saying ‘Flickr—the world’s most-beloved, money-losing business—needs your help.’ In the full email, which we’ve embedded below, MacAskill explains how the SmugMug team has done its best to optimize the platform from both a user and financial standpoint, but it hasn’t been enough. According to MacAskill, Flickr is ‘still losing money,’ despite its new owners’ best efforts to streamline overheard and bring on hundreds of thousands of new Flickr Pro subscriptions.

Put simply, MacAskill says ‘We need more Flickr Pro members if we want to keep the Flickr dream alive.’ MacAskill doesn’t specifically state how long the ‘Flickr dream’ can stay alive in its current state, but such a letter wouldn’t be written if things weren’t heading towards dire.

In conjunction with the letter, MacAskill also announced Flickr’s end-of-the-year promotion that will get you 25-percent off an annual Flickr Pro subscription, a push to bring even more users on board to support the platform. He wraps up the letter saying:

‘If you value Flickr finally being independent, built for photographers and by photographers, we ask you to join us, and to share this offer with those who share your love of photography and community.’

After reading through the letter, we had a few questions, so we contacted MacAskill with a few questions regarding the future of Flickr. Specifically, we asked the following:

In response, MacAskill responded with:

After the above response from MacAskill, we inquired further about the ‘follow-up contingency plans,’ but are yet to receive a response. We will update this article accordingly if MacAskill responds.

The email is an interesting one. MacAskill is known for his candor, so seeing this transparency is far from out of character for him. At some level, the email inspires would-be Flickr Pro members to subscribe to the premium version of Flickr. However, it also instills fear in current Flickr Pro members, who effectively see this email as the writing on the wall for their images and the network they’ve built on the platform. Proof of this dichotomy is clearly visible in the Reddit thread regarding this email, where users strike a balance of respect for MacAskill and the SmugMug-owned version of Flickr while simultaneously showing concern for the future of the platform in the comments.

Full email:

Dear friends,

Flickr—the world’s most-beloved, money-losing business—needs your help.

Two years ago, Flickr was losing tens of millions of dollars a year. Our company, SmugMug, stepped in to rescue it from being shut down and to save tens of billions of your precious photos from being erased.

Why? We’ve spent 17 years lovingly building our company into a thriving, family-owned and -operated business that cares deeply about photographers. SmugMug has always been the place for photographers to showcase their photography, and we’ve long admired how Flickr has been the community where they connect with each other. We couldn’t stand by and watch Flickr vanish.

So we took a big risk, stepped in, and saved Flickr. Together, we created the world’s largest photographer-focused community: a place where photographers can stand out and fit in.

We’ve been hard at work improving Flickr. We hired an excellent, large staff of Support Heroes who now deliver support with an average customer satisfaction rating of above 90%. We got rid of Yahoo’s login. We moved the platform and every photo to Amazon Web Services (AWS), the industry leader in cloud computing, and modernized its technology along the way. As a result, pages are already 20% faster and photos load 30% more quickly. Platform outages, including Pandas, are way down. Flickr continues to get faster and more stable, and important new features are being built once again.

Our work is never done, but we’ve made tremendous progress.

Now Flickr needs your help. It’s still losing money. Hundreds of thousands of loyal Flickr members stepped up and joined Flickr Pro, for which we are eternally grateful. It’s losing a lot less money than it was. But it’s not yet making enough.

We need more Flickr Pro members if we want to keep the Flickr dream alive.

We didn’t buy Flickr because we thought it was a cash cow. Unlike platforms like Facebook, we also didn’t buy it to invade your privacy and sell your data. We bought it because we love photographers, we love photography, and we believe Flickr deserves not only to live on but thrive. We think the world agrees; and we think the Flickr community does, too. But we cannot continue to operate it at a loss as we’ve been doing.

Flickr is the world’s largest photographer-focused community. It’s the world’s best way to find great photography and connect with amazing photographers. Flickr hosts some of the world’s most iconic, most priceless photos, freely available to the entire world. This community is home to more than 100 million accounts and tens of billions of photos. It serves billions of photos every single day. It’s huge. It’s a priceless treasure for the whole world. And it costs money to operate. Lots of money.

Flickr is not a charity, and we’re not asking you for a donation. Flickr is the best value in photo sharing anywhere in the world. Flickr Pro members get ad-free browsing for themselves and their visitors, advanced stats, unlimited full-quality storage for all their photos, plus premium features and access to the world’s largest photographer-focused community for less than $ 5 per month.

You likely pay services such as Netflix and Spotify at least $ 9 per month. I love services like these, and I’m a happy paying customer, but they don’t keep your priceless photos safe and let you share them with the most important people in your world. Flickr does, and a Flickr Pro membership costs less than $ 1 per week.

Please, help us make Flickr thrive. Help us ensure it has a bright future. Every Flickr Pro subscription goes directly to keeping Flickr alive and creating great new experiences for photographers like you. We are building lots of great things for the Flickr community, but we need your help. We can do this together.

We’re launching our end-of-year Pro subscription campaign on Thursday, December 26, but I want to invite you to subscribe to Flickr Pro today for the same 25% discount.

We’ve gone to great lengths to optimize Flickr for cost savings wherever possible, but the increasing cost of operating this enormous community and continuing to invest in its future will require a small price increase early in the new year, so this is truly the very best time to upgrade your membership to Pro.

If you value Flickr finally being independent, built for photographers and by photographers, we ask you to join us, and to share this offer with those who share your love of photography and community.

With gratitude,

Don MacAskill
Co-Founder, CEO & Chief Geek
SmugMug + Flickr

Use and share coupon code 25in2019 to get 25% off Flickr Pro now.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Canon users are reporting front-focusing issues with the RF 70-200mm F2.8

14 Dec

Update: Canon has offered the following official response: “Canon has become aware of this phenomenon, which occurs when focusing on a close subject at 200mm,
and is preparing a firmware update that will be released as quickly as possible.”

Canon may have an issue on its hands as multiple users of its new RF 70-200mm F2.8 L IS USM lens report that it misses focus when used at the closest minimum distance. A thread on our forums as well as posts on Fred Miranda state that when used at the longer focal lengths, and with subjects at the closest focusing point, the lens focuses in front of the area under the AF point in use.

DPReview forum member pokesfan posted some tests which he says demonstrate that the lens focuses about 3cm in front of the active AF point when uses at the closest focusing distance while at the 200mm setting.

Tests carried out by users report the fault is most pronounced at the longer ends of the focal range and that it gradually reduces as the lens is brought back to the 70mm setting. More distant subjects also avoid any issues, as it seems to happen only close up.

The Canon RF 70-200mm F2.8 is said by owners to be exceptional in every other situation, but this will be something that needs attention. Forum member pokesfan says that his lens was sent to Canon to be checked and the service engineers claimed there was nothing wrong with it.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Facebook explains how its AI helps Instagram users discover new images

27 Nov

In a new technical post on its Artificial Intelligence blog, Facebook details the technology that determines which images Instagram users see in the platform’s Explore tab. According to the company, it had to develop ‘novel engineering solutions’ in order to select a relatively minuscule number of recommended images, videos, and Stories out of the billions of options each time the Explore tab is opened.

Instagram’s Explore tab is found by tapping the magnifying glass icon within the service’s mobile app. The content presented within this tab is a small selection chosen from the billions of images and videos uploaded by users. Instagram uses machine learning (ML) to determine which content is most relevant to the user, helping them discover the types of images and videos they’re most likely to care about.

Facebook explains in its new post that Instagram’s Explore tab is powered by a three-part ‘ranking funnel’ system that is capable of making 90 million model predictions in a single second. Engineers developed multiple systems to ensure that Instagram’s Explore recommendations are ‘both high quality and fresh,’ among other things.

Facebook explains:

After creating the key building blocks necessary to experiment easily, identify people’s interests effectively, and produce efficient and relevant predictions, we had to combine these systems together in production.

The overall recommendation system first engages in what Facebook calls Candidate Generation, which determines the accounts (‘seed accounts’) an Instagram user may be interested in based on the accounts they already follow. Using these seed accounts, the AI then uses embedding techniques to find other accounts similar to the first batch it found.

Using this entire batch of accounts, Instagram’s system then determines which images and videos those users engaged with (likes, shares, etc.), as well as the content they posted. Thousands of candidate posts are identified for each average person using the platform, according to Facebook.

Once the candidates are identified, the system takes 500 of them and ranks them using a three-part ranking infrastructure. The first pass in this ranking system uses a distillation model to select 150 of the highest-quality posts from the 500 candidates.

The second pass utilizes a lightweight neural network to pick 50 of the highest-quality posts from the batch of 150. Finally, the third and final pass uses a deep neural network to pick 25 candidates that are both most relevant to the user and of the highest quality. Those 25 candidates appear on the first page of the Instagram Explore tab.

The selection process isn’t quite as simple as it sounds. Facebook explains that its system predicts which individual actions users will take on any given post, such as whether they’ll ‘like’ or share it — or, alternatively, whether they’ll have a negative response, which is something like choosing to ‘see fewer posts’ like the one they were recommended. The system can be designed to give more weight to certain predicted actions than others.

Instagram’s Explore tab factors in the intention of showing users posts related to new interests in addition to their existing interests, according to Facebook, which explains:

We add a simple heuristic rule into value model to boost the diversity of content. We downrank posts from the same author or same seed account by adding a penalty factor, so you don’t see multiple posts from the same person or the same seed account in Explore.

The ultimate goal of Instagram’s Explore tab is helping users find new, relevant, and interesting content from other users. Facebook says that its engineers are ‘continuously evolving’ the discovery tab.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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iPhone users get free unlimited Google Photo storage for original photo files, for now, while Pixel 4 owners have to pay up

22 Oct

All Android phones running Google apps come with free Google Photos cloud storage for images and videos captured with the device. However, image and video files are not stored at original quality. Instead, they are compressed to what Google calls ‘high quality’. Users who prefer to store their original out-of-camera files in the cloud have to shell out for one of Google’s storage plans.

On its own Pixel device, Google has in the past made an exception. Users of the Pixel 3 and previous Pixel devices could store unlimited original files for life, but this perk has ended with the brand new Pixel 4. Users of the latest Google flagship will just be treated like users of any other Android phone.

Now it seems the only ones benefiting from Google’s free unlimited storage for original photos are actually the users of one of Apple’s recent iPhones. Reddit user u/stephenvsawyer discovered that images in the HEIC/HEIF format, which recent iPhones use by default, will be stored without any compression.

A screenshot from Google’s Pixel 2 promotional page captured at the time of the release showing the no-longer-current benefit of getting unlimited storage of original files for free.

The reason for this is pretty simple: if Google tried to compress the images, the file size would actually increase. So the decision to save original HEIC/HEIF files to its cloud platform saves Google both storage space on its servers and computing power. It’s worth noting that this only applies to photos. iPhone videos are saved at 1080p resolution, even if they were recorded at 4K settings.

The latest version of the Android OS, Android 10, technically supports the HEIC/HEIF format, but Pixel 4 devices don’t currently offer this option. So, at least for now, iPhone users are actually getting more out of Google Photos than users of Google’s own flagship phone.

In a statement made to Android Police, Google said ‘We are aware of this bug and are working to fix it.’ What exactly this ‘fix’ entails remains to be seen, but there’s a good chance this iPhone loophole could get closed down in the near future.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Instagram releases its ‘Restrict’ shadowbanning feature for all users

05 Oct

Instagram has fully released the ‘Restrict’ shadowban feature it first introduced as a test in July. The tool enables an Instagram user to restrict other accounts from posting content on and sending messages to their own account. As Instagram first explained this summer, Restrict is intended to limit the reach of bullies without fully blocking them, an action that may make the bullying worse.

The philosophy behind shadowbans on Instagram is simple: many users, particularly teens, face bullying from peers they know in real life, such as classmates. Blocking a bully on Instagram may cause that bully to increase their torment of the user in real life, which is why many users avoid blocking them.

In addition, and more broadly speaking, blocking an account that is posting abusive content may simply drive the bully to create a new account after the first one is blocked. For these reasons, blocking is not always the ideal way to prevent problematic comments and messages from being directed at an account.

Restrict is a solid alternative, enabling Instagram users to instead limit an unwanted account in a way that doesn’t alert the bully. Comments published by a restricted account are hidden by default and any private messages sent from the restricted account will be automatically sent to the recipient’s Message Request inbox. These restricted DMs can be read, but the sender won’t be alerted to the fact that their message was viewed.

Restrict is now available to all Instagram users.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Facebook expands Face Recognition photo scanning, makes feature opt-in for new users

06 Sep

Facebook will no longer scan uploaded images for users’ faces by default, according to The Verge. The change will apply to new users who receive the Face Recognition setting as Facebook rolls it out globally over the next several weeks. The Face Recognition feature, which was first introduced in late 2017, will not be turned on unless the user chooses to enable it.

The facial recognition feature works by scanning images for users’ faces and alerting them about these images even if they’re not tagged in them. Users who receive one of these alerts can choose to tag themselves in the image, ignore it, or report the image when applicable.

In an update on the technology following the outcome of its federal appeal in August, Facebook has revealed that the facial recognition feature is rolling out to all users, but that they’ll need to manually enable it if they want the platform to scan other users’ images for their face. A notice in the user’s News Feed will alert that user when the feature becomes available on their account.

Users will be able to find the Face Recognition feature in their account’s Settings menu. Facebook users who currently have Face Recognition on their accounts can find instructions on disabling it here.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Instagram removes ad partner accused of harvesting huge trove of data on users

13 Aug

More than a year after Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook-owned Instagram has banned one of its vetted advertising partners, HYP3R, after it was allegedly caught scraping a huge amount of data on users. The claim comes from Business Insider, which published a report last week alleging that HYP3R was saving Instagram Stories and harvesting posts from public location pages to track users.

HYP3R is a location-based marketing platform, according to the firm’s website. Business Insider claims it spoke to ‘multiple former’ HYP3R employees on the company’s practices in addition to reviewing public documents and marketing materials. Though the amount of data the company allegedly scraped from Instagram remains unclear, sources told BI that ‘more than 90%’ of the company’s data on ’hundreds of millions of the highest value consumers in the world’ came from the social media platform.

Among other things, the marketing company was accused of building a tool that enabled it to download and save Instagram Stories related to locations of interest.

An Instagram security issue that allowed users to view public location page posts without logging in made HYP3R’s alleged data harvesting possible, the report claims. Among other things, the marketing company was accused of building a tool that enabled it to download and save Instagram Stories related to locations of interest.

As a consequence of this alleged action, BI claims that HYP3R was able to ‘build up detailed profiles of huge numbers of people’s movements, their habits, and the businesses they frequent over time.’

Instagram reportedly sent HYP3R a cease-and-desist letter after learning about the marketing firm’s alleged actions, telling BI in a statement that the ‘actions were not sanctioned and violate our policies.’ In addition to removing the advertiser from its platform, Instagram said, ‘We’ve also made a product change that should help prevent other companies from scraping public location pages in this way.’

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Mirrorless Users Will Switch Back to DSLRs, Ricoh Executive Claims

24 May

The post Mirrorless Users Will Switch Back to DSLRs, Ricoh Executive Claims appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.

pentax camera DSLR

The Pentax K-1 Mark II 36MP Weather Resistant DSLR.

Imaging Resource recently released an interview with a group of executives from Ricoh, the company that produces Pentax cameras.

When discussion turned to mirrorless cameras versus DSLRs – and decreasing DSLR sales – things got especially interesting.

Said Hiroki Sugahara, General Manager of the Marketing Communication Department:

Currently, mirrorless is a newcomer, so of course many users are very interested in the new systems, they want to use [them]. But after one or two years, some users who changed their system from DSLR to mirrorless [will] come back to the DSLR again.

When questioned by the interviewer, Sugahara further explained:

The mirrorless camera is very convenient to shoot, because users can [preview the final] image before shooting. But I believe the DSLR has its own appealing point, because users can create their own image from the optical viewfinder. People can see the beautiful image through the optical viewfinder, and then think how they can create their pictures–for example, exposure level setting or white balance or ISO [sensitivity]–and then imagine how they can get [the result they’re seeking].

Sugahara concluded:

So the DSLR market is currently decreasing a little bit, but one year or two years or three years later, it will [begin] getting higher.

Could Sugahara be right? Might DSLRs soon be making a comeback?

Personally, I don’t think so. While some people do follow the latest trends, mirrorless cameras have the specs to back up their popularity: they’re lightweight, they’re compact, and they produce top-notch images. And mirrorless systems will just keep getting more and more appealing, as electronic viewfinders improve and mirrorless lens-lineups expand.

 

Of course, there are reasons to stick with a DSLR. For one, DSLRs tend to be more rugged than mirrorless cameras. And electronic viewfinders can have lag issues. But mirrorless technology is improving, and how many photographers will switch back to DSLRs for a more rugged body?

Not to mention the questionable reasoning employed by Sugahara. Sure, the occasional photographer may not be happy with an electronic viewfinder. But will photographers really prefer the greater challenge provided by a DSLR optical viewfinder, as Sugahara seems to be implying? In my experience, capturing stunning photos is hard enough. Photographers won’t want to make it harder on themselves.

What do you think? Will DSLRs rebound? Or is mirrorless the system of the future?

Share your thoughts in the comments!

The post Mirrorless Users Will Switch Back to DSLRs, Ricoh Executive Claims appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.


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