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Hey Flickr! Why Can’t I Search by Photo Orientation?
I don’t!? by Niels Heidenreich
Flickr’s search page is one sexy feature of the photo-sharing site that’s designed to be comprehensive. Almost overwhelmingly so: You can search with the basic boolean “twiddly bits”, a SafeSearch toggle, by content type, date, license, camera, or any combination of the above. You can get intensely specific with your search results.
So tell me Flickr, why can’t I search through photos by orientation?
Is it so much to ask? All I want is to only display results taken in portrait or landscape mode, or even perfectly square photos! It’s not so hard, is it?
You’ll let me search for only screenshots tagged with ‘cats’ (but not ‘dogs’) that are CC-licensed for commercial work, taken between 09/04/2006 and 09/04/2007. Naturally, the only result is a LOLcat.
Why can’t I just tack a ‘taken in landscape format’ on the end of that? My knowledge of database processing for search engines is admittedly quite thin, but it seems like a simple thing to implement.
Flickr already tracks dimensions as part of the EXIF data, as well as for creating thumbnails of photos. It should only be a minor task to return search results where the width is greater than the height or vice versa.
What additional search functions would you like to see Flickr add?
Brian Auer Said,
September 18, 2007 @ 12:42 am
I’ve always wanted to have control over which photos show up in my main photostream. It’s the first thing people see when they go to your photos, so it would be nice to exclude some of the less appealing public photos.
Andrew Ferguson Said,
September 18, 2007 @ 4:17 pm
Yeah, you can organize them in a variety of ways but there’s no simple method to having your best photos on the front page.
On one hand, I find it frustrating but on the other, I find it to be a personal challenge to take better photos all the time.