Facebook is rolling out support for high-resolution images this month to give the social-networking site's 500 million users the ability to share print-quality photos with friends and family members. The company is also introducing an improved photo viewer based on Adobe Flash Player 10.1 and a simpler uploader for handling large batches of photos.
Facebook believes its improvements will be welcomed by its members, who post more than 100 million photos per day. The goal is to make the experience of sharing pictures the best on the web, said Facebook Product Manager Sam Odio.
"We're increasing the size of the photos stored from 720 pixels to 2,048 pixels on the largest edge, for an eight times increase overall," Odio wrote in a blog. "And unlike on many other online services, you don't need any kind of premium or paid account."
A Big Improvement
The code for Facebook's photo viewer has been written from scratch to make album browsing a faster experience. "You can now view photos and even whole albums without even having to go to a new page," Odio wrote. What's more, the viewer now opens in the center of the screen, so "there's no need to go back and forth between pages or reload the page," he added.
To make photos stand out on Facebook pages, Odio's photo team has added a dark frame around the images. Even better, the completely rebuilt photo uploader is now based on Flash Player 10.1, which makes photo access more stable and reliable than before, Odio observed.
"Your experience getting photos onto Facebook is an easy one -- especially when you have lots of them," Odio wrote. "While this change is mostly behind the scenes, we think you'll notice a big improvement."
But what really captivates the eye is the enhanced resolution of the photos now being uploaded to Facebook. Readers can visit National Geographic's Facebook page to view examples of the online magazine's print-quality images by clicking the "download in high resolution" link at the right of the photos in the September album.
Tagging Is Crucial
Odio joined Facebook last April when Facebook acquired Divvyshot -- a company he cofounded to make it easier for Internet users to share photos. The startup's innovative technology also made it possible for multiple users to edit albums grouped around various events and places.
Tagging is crucial when it comes to searching multimedia files, which is one of the reasons why Google acquired the online photo-editing service Picnik last March. This also explains why Divvyshot first caught Facebook's interest.
The first fruit of Facebook's Divvyshot acquisition landed in its user interface last July, when Odio added face-detection capabilities that made the photo-tagging process less time-consuming for Facebook members.
"People love tagging their friends and family in photos, but we've heard that it can be a tedious process," Odio wrote in a July blog. "You now can add tags with just a couple of clicks directly from your home page and other sections of the site, using the same face-detection technology that cameras have used for years."
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