You get to stuff as many photos into Flickr as you can; there’s no monthly limit, period.

In other words, you can upload one photo a month or a zillion.

Does that mean that you get to upload those super-high-resolution 40MB photos? Unfortunately not—there is still a limit on photo size: 20MB per photo. You can’t exceed 20MB per photo, even with a Pro account.

So when it comes to uploads, plan ahead—not on total upload size, but on individual photo size—100 MB monthly photo upload limit (10MB per photo).

Video is becoming a bigger topic on Flickr, and if you’re going to use Flickr for videos, you should really get a Pro account. The cost justifies what you get in terms of video capacity.

So what do you get? Unlimited video uploads, that’s what.

Does that mean you can upload a thousand videos a month? Yes, it does indeed.

Does it mean you can make each video as big as you want it? No, it turns out, it doesn’t.

There are still limits on videos on Flickr, even for Pro accounts. You can’t upload that rip of the original Tarzan movie or even that favorite Star Trek episode. You’re limited to videos that play for 90 seconds maximum and have a file size of 500MB per video or less.

Why is this? Why this limit? That’s because Flickr still fundamentally considers itself a photo-sharing site, not an unlimited video-sharing site. They’re definitely dipping their toes in the water, but Flickr’s not ready to make the jump yet to fully fledged YouTube-style video storage.

Whether or not Flickr will ever be ready to make this jump is an open question. As storage media gets cheaper, the odds get better, and we’ll probably see the size limits on each video increased.

Here’s another way that Flickr is dipping its toes into the video pool: by allowing high-definition video.

But only for Pro users. HD video isn’t available for free users. If you’ve got a Pro account, you can upload HD video and display it in your photostream, no problem.

Does this mean the limits on videos are increased for HD videos? Nope, videos still must be 90 seconds max and under 500MB. In fact, that’s why the limit for videos are 500MB for Pro users—for HD videos.

One can just imagine the Flickr staff viewing the increasing size of video files with great alarm as videos are increasingly becoming HD. They’re still hobbling videos in general with a 90-second limit.

As you might have guessed from the discussion of photo and video storage, you now have unlimited disk storage for your media.

And that does mean unlimited storage—which would be more impressive if there were no size limits per photo and video.

In any case, it’s nice to know you don’t have to worry about bumping into disk limits or upload limits for that matter!

Just as you now have unlimited disk space, you now also have unlimited bandwidth for uploading and downloading.

That means that people can download as much of your collection as they want without fear of being limited.

As you know, if you have a free account, Flickr chooses the sizes it decides to show your images as. But it’s different for Pro users.

For Pro users, Flickr stores your original image size without shrinking it. And people can view the original when they click the Available Sizes: Original link above the photo on the photo’s page, as shown in Figure 9.8.

Figure 9.8. Accessing the original size of a photo.

That means that your photos will be stored with the resolution you want and the size you want.

You’re limited in the number of groups you can post a photo or video to if you have a free account, but the limit is greatly expanded if you have a Pro account.

If you have a Pro account, you can post an image or video to up to 60 group pools at once. That might seem like a lot more groups than you’re likely to post to, but the truth is when you get into posting to groups, a lot of allied groups come to your attention. So it’s not unusual to find yourself posting to 20 groups.

Sixty groups is really enough for most purposes.

You don’t have to worry about ads when you upgrade from a free account to a Pro account. Pro accounts are free of ads and all kinds of similar distractions.

Free accounts usually don’t display ads, but Flickr is holding the door open for them for the future. Pro users don’t have to worry.

Here’s a nifty feature only available to Pro users: statistics (which Flickr calls stats).

Stats are designed to give you some insight into how people are finding your photos and where they’re coming from.

To enable stats (they’re not on by default), click the You menu on your home page and then click the Your Stats menu item, opening the page you see in Figure 9.9.

Figure 9.9. Setting up stats.

To activate your stats, click the Yes! Activate Me! button.

When you do, you see a page telling you that your stats are under construction. It can take, Flickr says, up to 3 days for your stats to be collected and displayed.

When your stats are ready, you’ll see them on the Stats for: Your Account page, as shown in Figure 9.10. (Note that your own views of your own photos and videos are not counted.)

Figure 9.10. Looking at your stats.

In addition to an overall aggregate, Flickr breaks the stats up into views for these areas:

Flickr lists your most-viewed photos and videos and also lists where the people viewing your media come from, using these categories:

Finally, Flickr Stats presents a breakdown of all your photos and videos, presenting you with such data as the following:

All in all, stats are very cool. If you’re a Pro user, enable them right away. You’re probably going to be surprised at how many page views your photos are getting—and not even from Flickr users at that, but people coming from search engines.