Flickr wants to remind you that it's a photo site.

Photo: Flickr

"Everything that we've done in this new redesign has been about putting the photo front and center," says Flickr VP Brett Wayn.

For a photo site, Flickr looks like it was designed in 1997. That ends today with a site redesign that removes all that icky whitespace and meta-data that only your photographer cousin cares about and creates a giant mosaic of color. Or shades of gray if your photos are all artsy and dramatic.

Flickr is also offering users 1 TB of space for free. According to Adam Cahan senior vice president of mobile and emerging products at Yahoo, if you took a photo every hour of every day, it would 65.5 years to fill that space. An ad-free option is available for $50 a year and a pro version of the service will set you back $500 for 2 TB of storage.

The photo-rific update also extends to Android. The Android app has lagged behind the iPhone until now. Android users can now taunt their iOS-owning friends with the new photo-centric UI.

Taking a design page from the Explore section of Flickr, the new UI fills the activity feed with a dynamically resized layout. Flickr looks at the photos in the feed and arranges them to create a solid wall of photos. The good news is that none of the photos are cropped from their original aspect ratio to achieve this effect.

If someone uploads a group of photos, a key photo lands in the feed with thumbnails for other uploaded photos right below it. Those photos can be viewed via the lightbox that we've come to expect from Flickr, or with a slideshow that has Ken Burns-style photo movements.

The same UI experience is present on the updated Android app. The glaring white space is gone and replaced by photos with thin borders and backgrounds. The photo app looks like a photo app and not a collection of square images. Both the site and the app feature infinite scrolling so the photo party doesn't stop no matter how far down you scroll.

Photo: Flickr

Comments are now inline below photos. Favoriting and sharing photos is also inline. So you can quickly comment and share the photos you like.

Before you freak out that Groups has disappeared, relax. The Groups section of the site has been changed to Communities. Which sounds a little less like something that meets at the local Y over sugar cookies and bad coffee.

"We want to make Flickr awesome again," Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said during today's event. From the look of the updated Android and site, it looks Yahoo is on its way to achieving that goal.

You can download the Android update and view the updated site now. No word on when iOS will get the fancy new Flickr.