Flickr just unveiled a major overhaul of its upload, photostream, share and search experience across mobile and desktop. It comes with the company’s advanced image recognition technology.

“This new set of tools and powerful search will make it easier to access, organize, and share your photos anywhere,” a spokesperson for Flickr tells WebProNews.

So far, I haven’t seen a lot of feedback from users, which is probably a good sign. You definitely see a lot more when users don’t like the changes to a product.

In a note on the Flickr blog, director of user experience and design Shaun Forouzandaeh writes:

We’re on different devices and platforms at different times and we never want to think twice about accessing the photos we love and want to share. Flickr for iPhone, iPod, iPad, Apple TV, Android, and Web is now a unified design experience, working seamlessly wherever you are. In addition there are Flickr Uploadr apps for Windows and Mac OS, which allow you to quickly upload thousands of photos up to the Flickr cloud.

Refined, crafted, and vibrant, Flickr’s new design helps users understand the product as they use it, with new ways to experience gorgeous photography. The UX will help you find photos effortlessly, organize with hyper speed, make pixel edits without destroying originals, and share seamlessly with control over privacy.

The new desktop Uploadr apps work in the background and provide notifications letting users know when photos have been found and take them directly to them on the web as soon as they’re uplaoded.

There’s a new profile and camera roll. The main management view now displays and organizes thousands of photos and provides you access to tools as you need them. When you scroll, a timeline scrubber appears so you can jump back and find a particular moment in time more easily.

“Select photos and the action tray appears, giving you the right control at the right time,” explains Forouzandaeh. “This simple, powerful Camera Roll is the new home for all your photos in the apps and on the web. With refined typography, consistent grids, and useful tools, your photos feel more organized and beautiful from every angle.”

In an effort to remove friction from the management interface, Flickr has implemented a multi-select swipe gesture on mobile and a click-and-drag experience on the desktop. When photos are selected, the action tray appears with editing tools and options for sharing and creating albums.

Additionally, in edit mode on mobile, you can swipe over and down with one gesture to select a range of images more easily. Again, click-and-drag works on desktop.

There’s a new unified search experience that lets you search your photos, photos from people you follow, and the billions of photos on Flickr with a single query. There’s also a new set of filters on the web version for primary color search. You can also combine color filters and aesthetics like minimalism, and depth of field. The search engine recognizes patterns and understands objects and aesthetics.

They’ve also made design tweaks to comments and descriptions, lightening the backgrounds and placing greater emphasis on the photos themselves.

What do you think? Big improvement?

Images via Flickr