YouPic

The Power of Photography
at your fingertips

Simple tools for you to socialise, manage and share high-quality images.

YouPic was founded in 2012 by current CEO Navi Razazi. The company is headquartered in Gothenburg, which is the second-largest city in Sweden. YouPic has over three million users around the world.

In essence, the platform works like a cross between Twitter and Instagram. In addition to the image-sharing nature, users can reshare and like their favorite pictures.

The platform is designed to help photographers not only share their work, but also gain feedback. YouPic also allows users to get hired for client work, while image rights remain with the photographer after publishing.

YouPic is a free-to-use social platform from Sweden transforming photography-sharing by enabling a global community of over 3.7 million users to build an audience, gain insights about their portfolio, and share their passion for photography.

YouPic is the third-largest social photography platform in the world (after Instagram and Flickr) with over 20 million images (by professionals, semi-pros, and amateurs) uploaded since launch in 2012. The platform’s growth as a niche social network has been powered by connecting those with an interest in photography – whether professional photographers or fans, art directors or models, photography brands or content creators – with others who wish to learn about, discuss, and share the best of the artistic medium.

An antidote to a ‘fast photography’ internet culture which sees over a hundred million images uploaded globally each day to photo-sharing platforms (and quickly forgotten), and a beneficiary of the move during lockdown towards self-education and exploration of new careers (users increasing by 100% during March to June 2020), YouPic provides a collaborative space for users of all abilities. YouPic offers access to exclusive courses by experts, and unique insight on their own work – along with providing technical information on factors such as composition, creativity, content, and technique. As the leading niche social network of its type, YouPic enables photographers to reach and create relationships with new followers and clients, and provides a website builder tool to allow users to create dedicated websites to showcase (and help sell) their images. User success stories include a Syria-based photographer capturing poignant macro images of a city left in ruin, whilst another uses YouPic to document the historic protests unfolding in Belarus. These are just two examples of how YouPic is democratising photography by encouraging users to share their stories and explore the world through a lens.

How to Create a YouPic Account

Creating a YouPic account is easy. To do so, you’ll need to follow the steps listed below.

Go to YouPic.com.
At the top of the page, you’ll find a tab called Join Now. Click on this.
On the Join Now page, you can choose to sign up with either Facebook, Google, or email. Make your preferred choice.
If you’ve joined via email, check your inbox and verify your account.
Customize your account and get involved in the community!

What Can You Do With the Free Version?

YouPic has an extensive array of features for free users. Below are some of the best…

Critiquing

In addition to gaining feedback yourself, you can use YouPic to critique other users’ photos. On the platform, you can rate images based on composition, creativity, technique, and content.

Exploring

YouPic’s Explore tab works in a similar way to Discover on Instagram. In this section, you can discover some of the most popular images on the platform from photographers you may not follow.

But its capabilities go far beyond that. You can filter images based on different categories, along with finding content marked as inspirational. Moreover, you can browse through various stories and models.

Another cool Explore feature is the ability to apply filters when browsing through photographers. For example, you can filter photographers based on their expertise or where they’re based.

Resharing and Favoriting

If you’ve ever used Twitter before, you’ll be more than familiar with retweeting and liking posts. On YouPic, sharing and favoriting works in an identical way.

screenshot of feedback metrics on youpic

When you share a post on YouPic, the content will feature on your activity feed. To share a picture, you’ll need to click on the button that looks like a retweet icon.

Favoriting a post will tell the photographer that you like what you see. To do this, you’ll need to press the heart icon instead.

You can also leave a star on users’ photos, which will signal that you found it inspiring.

Insights

Beyond connecting with other photographers, you can also gain insights into how well you’re doing on YouPic.

The free version of the app offers in-depth analytics, where you can see how your feedback scores have changed over time. With this tab, you’re also able to look at how many views, favorites, and shares you’ve received.

screenshot showing insights tab on youpic website

In the Insights tab, you’ll also find an overview of the achievements you’ve unlocked. Moreover, you can see how your posts have performed individually over the past 30 days.

HOW YOUPIC WORKS

YouPic’s platform is an easy-to-use social network, similar in its niche offering, to angling social media app, Fishbrain, and video-sharing platform, Vimeo. More than just an outlet for sharing imagery, YouPic brings together a community of like-minded people who enjoy, partake in, and admire photography.

In addition to the free version, which allows users to browse millions of photos, follow photographers, and upload their work, YouPic offers three paid-for plans, to suit the requirements of its users which range from amateur to professional photographers, including:

YouPic Enthusiast – priced from $4.99 (£3.99) a month, the ‘Enthusiast’ plan includes all of the features available on a free account, but also grants access to a vast selection of online photography courses tailored to a range of photographic abilities, the ability to publish unlimited stories, and access to an advanced search (refining type of photo, camera model, ISO, region, and more).
YouPic Premium – priced from $9.99 (£7.99) a month, ‘Premium’ plans include access to all ‘Enthusiast’ perks with additional features including: unlimited high quality uploads, increased reach and boosted exposure on photos, priority to customers and new clients in the YouPic directory, verified member status, ability to create albums and upload an unlimited amount of videos, and the ability to host workshops for which users can charge attendees.
YouPic Pro – priced from $29.99 (£24.99) a month, ‘Pro’ gives users access to several advanced features which includes the use of the website builder (allowing user-friendly customisation to create a user’s own website, with a custom domain name), enables right-click protection on owned images, and grants the user with optimum speeds on their account (with their websites hosted on YouPic’s own servers powered by Amazon Web Services). The ‘Pro’ account also allows for the user to organise content, both privately and publicly, enabling users to build advanced photo collections for public browsing. YouPic Pro customers can also share password-protected content with clients or family (with a secure and easy link and allows them to see who has viewed their profile), also giving them total control of their own pricing keeping 100% of the markup, commission free.

In addition, YouPic is currently developing a free tool called ‘YouPic Blockchain’ which will allow creators, photographers, and artists to upload images to the blockchain where a price is set in a cryptocurrency, together with the terms for using images. This technology will make it much safer for photographers, journalists, and citizen journalists in dictatorships and less democratic governments, allowing them to receive compensation for their work independently, securely, and with no middle men. To do this, the company has taken the heavily centralised network-based market of today and converted it to a decentralised autonomous licensing database, giving the ownership and profit back to the artists. By creating an image ownership ledger, saved using a blockchain structure, YouPic will create the global standard of claiming ownership and copyright.

WHAT THE PHOTOGRAPHY COMMUNITY THINKS

36% of photographers say Instagram has damaged the professional photography sector. 42% say Instagram has benefitted the photography sector
34% of photographers believe Instagram to have damaged photography as an art form. 40% say Instagram has enhanced photography as an art form
43% of photographers consider selfies to have damaged photography as an art form. Only 11% feel selfies have had a positive impact
Whilst the majority of professionals admit to regularly engaging with Instagram to feed their love of photographs, 27% of photographers claim to have never used Instagram as a platform for displaying and viewing photography, and 14% of professional photographers have quit Instagram entirely (having previously used the platform)
YouPic has an existing policy of forbidding the uploading of selfies onto its platform for sharing and discussing images, and its decision was validated by 76% of respondents believing that selfies should be banned on photo-sharing platforms.

Does YouPic Have Paid Membership Options?

Although YouPic’s free version is pretty comprehensive, you might also want to consider purchasing either a Premium or Pro plan.

Premium costs $19.99 per month. Alternatively, you can choose to pay an annual subscription fee of $119.99.

The Pro plan is the more expensive option and provides the whole YouPic experience. If you pay monthly, this membership tier costs $49.99. As for the yearly option, you’ll pay $359.88.