Back in 2004 my brother in law gave me a free year to the photo sharing and storage site, Flickr. I’ve been hooked on it ever since. It offers two membership levels – Free and Pro. When you have a free Flickr account, you can upload 2 videos and 300MB worth of photos each calendar month. The Pro account costs $24.95 a year, and with that you get unlimited uploads of photos and video, along with unlimited storage and bandwidth. To date, I have uploaded 20,236 items to Flickr. Holler!

In my opinion, Flickr is one of the best sharing and storage sites out there (and I have tried them all at this point!) Why? Organization and printing options.

Since I have over twenty thousand photos uploaded to Flickr, organization is imperative – otherwise, I’d never be able to find anything! Flickr does some automatic organization for you – everything is put into an archive, not only by date taken but also by date uploaded.

If you click on a month, you get this:

If you allow your photo equipment to embed your location data, Flickr will even archive by location (or you can add the location later):

Tagging your photos is a very easy way to organize:

My preferred way to organize is to upload my photos into sets. I have 196 sets so far!

You can oven organize your sets into collections – I have collections for my kids, other people’s kids, other people’s weddings, vacations – it goes on and on!

All these different ways to organize allow me to find a picture in under a minute. It’s so helpful for blogging, or when I’m putting together gifts.

Speaking of gifts, Flickr has made it super easy to print out photos. You can even print out the photos of others, if they have allowed that in their privacy settings. Here’s what you do.

First, go to the page of the photo you want to print, then click on the photo so you are in the Flickr Light Box. In the upper right corner is the option “View All Sizes.” Click on that.

Depending on the photo and who uploaded it, you will have a variety of sizes available to download. Click on the LARGEST SIZE, then click download.

Save it to your computer, and then print! Depending on the size of the image, you can print a 4×6, 5×7, 8×10, or 8.4×11 inch photo.

If you want a larger photo, go back to the photo’s main page. Click on actions, then Order prints and more.

You’ll be taken to a Snapfish menu, where you can choose from sizes varying from wallet sizes to a 20×30 poster. You can also have the photo printed on a variety of different items, like photo books, calendars, and canvas.

As you know by now, I have a photo group on Flickr (yet another fun way to use Flickr!) for all of us to share our favorite photos. If you haven’t joined the TSAM Photo Fun Flickr group, please do!

You can find more information on printing from Flickr here, thanks to HP, my awesome photo partners.

Look for me August 3-6 at BlogHer – I’ll be taking photos for a posing tutorial and I need models!