I have been waiting for a long time to try the new Yahoo Photos Beta. I finally got in the beta site this morning. My first impression is CLEAN and WELL ORGANIZED. I am not a fan of AJAX application, but Yahoo has done a good job to impress me.

After I log in the first time, It displays the last three photos in the home page. However, there are not actually my last three photo uploaded. I don’t know how Yahoo sort the photos. I can tell they are not sorted by file name. It does , however, tell you how much disk space your photos have used. You can click on each album and rename the album, change the description. You can also drag and drop the images and create a new album or smart album. I have not tried the smart album yet, because I will have to tag each photos before make them into smart album.
Uploading photos is one of the the best part of the new Yahoo Photos. It allows me to upload a full size photos with the original resolutions. I used Nikon D70S fine + Large size JPEG format. The file size is at least 2.5MB. Although it take a while to upload 20 images (50MB), but I can download the original size image later. The only thing that I can tell for now is that I can only download the image one at a time. There should be a way to download the whole album in high resolutions.

Once photos are uploaded, I can modify the file name, description and add tags. You can also drag and drop the photos into the upper section to do whatever you want. One neat thing is that the browser won’t load the image outside of your browser viewing area. I bet it’s some sort of AJAX features. I was not impressed by the loading speed. I guess is that the thumb nail image is actually in pretty good compress quality. It doesn’t look blurry.

You can share photos in an album or in a smart album. I hope Yahoo can add the “Friends only” features back so I can share photos to those friends with Yahoo ID or Email address.

Well. For the people who look at my album, they will see the similar screen. It allows use to click on the album list and view pictures in slide mode or one at a time. The only weird things I found is that the album was not sorted correctly on the left side. No big deal.

I can download the full size pictures (original resolutions) later. This is import for me. I am going to travel for months, I need some place that I can upload and backup my photos. I like yahoo, because they provide FREE, unlimited space photos album, sharing services. I can even print the photos to Target.com and have my friends to pickup from the store near by. Even Yahoo put the advertisement on the page, I don’t care. What do you expect the free service? There is no free lunch.

After all, I can view the photos in slide show which give me not much flexibility to change the slide show features. It’s not a big deal. The photos in the slide show is in good compression quality. I like it.

Overall, I give this new Yahoo Photos two thumbs up! Very nice and well done photo services. I only hope Yahoo improve the speed. I don’t know how Flick.com does. They are fast. How about the Google’s new Picasa web Album? No way, There is no way Picasa web album can compare with Yahoo Photos. They are orange and apple. Picasa web album does have their own strength, but it just doesn’t fit my need. Free / Unlimited space is what I want first.