If you're a Flickr user and you haven't been there for a day or two you will be in for a surprise because the veteran photo (and video) sharing site has had a long-overdue make-over.

On top of that the many of the old restrictions on ordinary non-professional grade accounts have gone. Free users can now upload as much as a terabyte (1,000 gigabytes) of photos, and the maximum photo size has been increased from 10MB to 200MB - in fact that's more generous than the Pro limit of 50MB.

In fact Pro accounts are no longer available for new registrations although Flickr promises to continue paid-up Pro account subscriptions and renewals indefinitely. Pro account users will retain premium facilities like enhanced statistics and be free of ads. Free accounts can also be ad-exempt for an annual $49.99 fee.

The new default page after you log in now features large photos from your Flickr contacts. Any groups your are a member of are also shown. Go into your photostream and you are presented with a patchwork of your own photos. It's almost like a celebration of your work and I feel it's a big improvement on what we had before.

Personally, I was never inclined to purchase a Pro account and I suspect that I was not part of a minority. Yahoo!-owned Flickr has seen the light and bitten the bullet. Some commentators are saying it is too little and too late, and that Flickr still won't attract the really big swathe of smartphone photographers who already expect more for free from Flickr rivals.

But for more 'dedicated' or 'thinking' photographers - especially those who have already embraced Flickr, the changes should mainly be welcome.

[url]http://www.flickr.com/photos/dpnow/[/url]