The current photo viewer on the social networking site has caused lots of controversy since its introduction. Facebook users who did not like the photo viewers interface or functionality at all may be glad to hear that Facebook changes the layout and functionality of the Facebook photo viewer once again.

The company introduced the new features on the official Facebook blog. To sum it up: Three core changes are introduced in the new photo viewer.

Photos can now be shared with a resolution of up to 960 pixels in width, which does not look like much on first glance when compared to the existing solution of 720 pixels. Take a look at the photo below to see the difference in action.

Even better: Despite the increase in size, loading times of photos have been cut in half. Photos on average should load now twice as fast as before which means that Facebook users can access larger resolution images faster on the site.

Photos that have already been uploaded by the user will automatically be displayed in the new higher resolution.

The third and final change is a new photo viewer which on first glance looks a lot better than the current viewer. The new viewer puts the focus on the image. Instead of displaying the image on a black background, it now displays on white which is a lot easier on the eyes.

The clean interface is still displaying comments and other options (like tagging) below the photo on the photo viewer page. Here is a sample shot.

I personally like the new photo viewer and the fact that photos now load faster on Facebook.

The features are currently being rolled out to all users. It make take a few days before you get access to them in your account.

Facebook some days ago announced changes to the way tagged photos would be handled on the site. Instead of being posted directly to the wall, these photos are now moved to a preview area where the user who was tagged on them can accept or delete the posts.

The same is now true for photos uploaded by a Facebook user. Instead of allowing just anyone to tag your photos or posts, you are now in a position to review the tags to either approve or reject them.

It is now on the other hand possible to tag friends or anyone else on Facebook thanks to the new preview before publishing system.

Facebook is also making it easier for users to control the profile visibility. Instead of having to navigate to sub-menus to make changes to the visibility of specific profile elements, it is now possible to use inline profile controls to handle the settings directly with a click of the mouse button.

In addition, the new visibility button has been made available on each post as well to make it easier for users to understand who they are sharing that post with.

The blog post at the official Facebook blog lists additional enhancements to the sharing and visibility options on Facebook. The new changes, as tiny as some may be, make a lot of sense. Especially the tag preview feature is a godsend, as it allows me to block unwanted posts on my Facebook wall.

Let me know what you think of the changes.

Users who want to migrate usually want to take their photos hosted on another service to the new service. Flickr or Facebook users can make use of the excellent Fotobounce to do that. Melanie reviewed FotoBounce’s face recognition capabilities recently. The photo organizer is versatile and supports downloading of all photos hosted on either photo hosting service.

Please note that Adobe Air is required to install Fotobounce. Photographers who only want to migrate their accounts can install the program, download all their photos and uninstall it again when the migration completed successfully.

Options to log in to Facebook and Flickr are displayed on the left sidebar after application start. A click on login launches a new window where you are asked to enter your login credentials for the selected service and to allow the application access to it.

A click on the account name after authorization displays all albums of that user on the screen. It is alternatively possible to switch to a photo preview mode instead.

It is possible to download individual albums one after the other, or all photos at once. A right-click on an album or photos displays a context menu with options to download the selection to the local computer system.

There does not seem to be an option to download all photo albums on Flickr or Facebook at once. This could be problematic for users with many photo albums, especially if they want to retain the folder structure on Picasa.

Still, it is a one time operation and the downloading is fast and straightforward. Users who prefer a software that is able to download all photos in one go can take a look at the previously reviewed Downloadr that can backup Flickr account.

Fotobounce can be downloaded from the developer website. The software weights in at an astonishing 70 Megabytes. It is available for Windows and Mac computer systems (inspiration taken from Caschy)

The tagging suggestions are enabled by default for all Facebook accounts. If you are like me, you probably do not want those suggestions to automatically appear in your friend’s account, and later on if the suggestions are accepted, for all your other friends to see.

Here is how you disable the automatic photo tagging suggestions on Facebook:

Go to the Facebook website and log in if you have not done so already. Locate the Account link on the top right and select Privacy Settings from the options that open up.

Locate and click on Customize Settings. This opens a list of privacy settings. Scroll down to the Things others share section.

The Suggest photos of me to friends setting handles the photo suggestions on Facebook. Click on the Edit Settings button and change the feature from enabled to disabled. A click on OK saves the new setting.

If you disable the suggest photos of me to friends feature your friends will no longer see tag suggestions when they upload photos to Facebook. That does not keep them from adding the tags manually though. If you prefer not to be tagged at all, you may want to modify the Photos and videos you’re tagged in feature as well.

Select Custom and then Only Me from the list. Please note that this does not seem to disable tagging completely, it just blocks others from seeing the tags.

Facebook has been notorious in the past to enable sharing features for all accounts, instead of giving users an opt-in option. The reasoning behind it may be simple. If the feature is on for all accounts, it will be widely used. If it is opt-in, most users will probably never take note of it or enable it.

What’s your take on photo tagging on Facebook? Let me know in the comments. (via)

But how do you upload those photos to the social networking sites? The majority of Facebook users upload them directly on Facebook.com, which can be a tedious process as it requires the user to visit Facebook, log in, locate the photos link on the site, click the upload photos button, fill out photo album information and pick the photos from the local computer system.

What if there would be a way to speed up the uploading of photos to Facebook? Easy Photo Uploader For Facebook is an application for the Windows operating system that does just that. The program integrates a “send your photo(s) to Facebook” option into Windows Explorer making the uploading more comfortable in the process, especially for users who upload photos regularly to Facebook.

It begins by selecting one or multiple photos in Windows Explorer. A right-click on the selection opens the context menu with the new option to send those photos to Facebook.

At least one account needs to be linked to Facebook. This is done by logging into Facebook and allowing the application access to required data on Facebook. Each account needs to be linked once, it becomes automatically selectable in future photo uploading sessions.

Once the account has been selected the list of albums for that account is retrieved from Facebook and displayed in the application window.

Here it is possible to select an existing album or to create a new album for the photos.

New albums can be configured by adding a name, location and description. The privacy level (e.g. friends only) is configurable in the menu as well.

All selected local photos are then uploaded to the selected album. They are immediately accessible on Facebook based on the privacy settings of the album. The upload is listed as a new entry on the Facebook wall.

Easy Photo Uploader can also be executed directly, either from the Windows start menu or the program installation directory. It opens a file browser where photos for the upload can be selected. The remaining steps stay the same.

Advanced users may want to take a look at the photo uploader’s options. They can be opened by clicking on the button in the lower right corner of the screen. Here it is possible to configure connection specific settings, like proxy server connection settings and photo resizing options.

Easy Photo Uploader actually does not resize photos. It supports however the conversion of raw photo files like CR2, NEF or MRW to JPG, and the compression quality can be configured in the the resizing options. This basically means that users can upload RAW images directly to Facebook without having to convert them first into a compatible format, as this is done by the photo uploader.

Easy Photo Uploader is available for direct download at the developer website. The program is compatible with all 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Photo zoom is immediately active after installing the add-on. Hovering the mouse over any photo on Facebook will display a larger version – if available – next to it on the same page.

It is still possible to click through to visit the linked page on Facebook or view an entire photo album.

The Chrome extension can be temporarily disabled by pressing the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Shift-Z. The same shortcut will also enable the extension again.

Facebook Photo Zoom for Google Chrome can display a larger version of any image displayed on Facebook including wall photos, likes, fan photos, photo albums and Faceboook profile photos.

The extension is one of the most popular Google Chrome extensions and can be directly downloaded from the Chrome extension repository.

Firefox users can install Facebook PhotoZoom which provides access to a similar zooming option for Firefox users. Moving the mouse over a photo on Facebook will display a larger version of the image in a tooltip.

Update: The add-on has been discontinued and is no longer available. There is a different add-on available called Facebook Zoom Picture which works very similar.

The plugin should be installed when Windows Live Photo Gallery is not running. During first usage a Facebook account has to be linked to the Windows Live Photo Gallery application. This simply involves logging in to Facebook when the Windows Live application asks you to. A few other options will pop up during that process. An album has to be created if none is currently available. There is also the option to automatically accept images that get uploaded this way or to manually approve them instead.

Manually approving the images would mean to accept them on the Facebook website after transferring them from Windows Live Photo Gallery to Facebook.

Using the uploader is simple after creating the first account and album on Facebook. Images that should be uploaded are marked by the user who then selects Publish > LiveUpload To Facebook option from the main menu. Afterwards its simply a matter of selecting the account and the album to upload the images. It is always possible to link another account to the application or to create another album for an already existing account.