We’ve made a slight improvement to the quality of the photos as displayed on the website for all new photos added from this post forward.   As always, when downloading the full-sized photos, you’ll still get the exact same quality as the original photo that was uploaded, but now the smaller versions of these photos that we display on the website will be less pixelated than previously.

This also applies to the “Download Smaller” feature.  Now any photos downloaded at smaller than their original size will be sharper than in the past.

We’ve completely re-written the download script to improve its performance.  You should no longer have the timeout issues posted about previously, so you can go ahead and download up to 50 photos at a time.  The download should start quicker than previously.

Interestingly, your download will start sooner when downloading the full sized photos than when downloading smaller photos (since they don’t have to be re-sized first) but even with this initial delay, the total download time will usually be faster because of the smaller file size of the re-sized photos.

We will continue to test the new download utility and hopefully be able to raise the 50 photo maximum per download.

This issue should now be resolved.  See  the Improved Download Performance post for details.

Lately there has been some issues with zip downloads of large numbers of files.  We are working on the issue.  For now, if a zip download of multiple files doesn’t work, try selecting a smaller number of files at a time, say 1 or 2 rows at a time.

You can now export your photos from an event directly to your Flickr account, in addition to being able to export photos to Facebook. You don’t have to download them from Full Photo Swap then upload them back to Flickr, you can send them there directly. Further, you can limit the dimensions of the photos transferred to speed the transfer and save storage space in your Flickr account.

To use this feature, check off the photos you want just as you normally would, then from the “More Actions…” drop down menu select the “Send to Flickr” option. This will launch a pop-up window where you can log into your Flickr account and give Full Photo Swap permission to communicate with your account. You can then select an existing set for the photos or give them a new set, and select the Maximum Photo Size to use for the photos. Then just keep an eye on the status bar until the export is complete.

This is probably the coolest feature we’ve added yet.  You can now export the photos you like from an event directly to your Facebook account.  You don’t have to download them from Full Photo Swap then upload them back to Facebook, you can send them there directly.  Further, we automatically downsize the photos to the maximum size at which Facebook displays photos, so the transfer is really fast, even if the original images are 10 megapixels.

To use this feature, check off the photos you want just as you normally would, then from the “More Actions…” drop down menu select the “Send to Facebook” option.  This will launch a pop-up window where you can log into your Facebook account and give Full Photo Swap permission to communicate with your account.  You can then select an existing album for the photos or give them a new album.  Then just keep an eye on the status bar until the export is complete. Once complete you can visit Facebook to view the photos and approve them.

You can now download sets of images from events at the dimensions of your choice.  So if you don’t need the full-sized files you can specify the size you want for a smaller, faster download.

To take advantage of this feature, check off the images you want from a given event as you normally would but instead of hitting the download button, use the “More Actions…” drop down menu and select the “Download smaller” option.  In the dialog box that pops up, select the maximum size for the images you want, and click the “Download Resized” button.

We’ve recently finished moving Full Photo Swap to a new web server environment.  This new setup should provide increased upload and download speed, as well as faster processing of image resizing and faster zipping of multiple images together for download.  It also has the storage space we need to continue to grow the service.  Enjoy!

When viewing the photos for an event, you can now hold down the shift key while clicking on a photo’s checkbox to select all the checkboxes between that one and the last one you clicked on. Useful for selecting or unselecting multiple photos to download or delete.

You can now easily navigate the zoomed in photo pop-up with keyboard shortcuts, in addition to the clickable arrows.

• Use the right and left arrows to navigate forward and back one photo at a time.
• Use the up and down arrows to go to the first and last photos.
• Hold shift while pressing the left or right arrows (or use the page up or page down keys) to jump by 10 photos at a time.

Try it out next time you are browsing the photos.  What’s great is that it even works with my Windows Media Center remote control!

I’d like to announce the winner of the “Good Times” photo contest.  The random winner is Cam T.  The photo that best represents the theme “Good Times” is callan.jpg uploaded by Beth M.  Here it is again:

Congratulations to both our winners who will each receive a $25 gift certificate to the movie theater chain of their choice.

Thanks to all who entered.  There are many other really good photos so I encourage you to check them out at f-swap.com/GoodTimes/

This demo directory will continue to stay open for people to try out.  They just won’t win anything