Flickr, the Yahoo-owned photo-sharing site so many people love, announced an important deal today as it named HP's Snapfish its preferred photo printing and gift creation partner.  Thanks to the arrangement, printing pictures is about to become a lot easier for some folks, and for others, this will even be the first time a certain printing option has been available at all.

Flickr's international members are set to get their first opportunity to print photos directly from photostreams due to this partnership.  That represents a significant step in making Flickr more user-friendly, and should pay off in terms of time spent on the site.  Perhaps, once word spreads a little, in terms of unique visitors, too.

As for what else is going on, a formal statement outlined lots of perks.  "Flickr and Snapfish have worked closely to develop a fully integrated and intuitive experience, combining Snapfish's printing capabilities with Flickr's online photo organization features, such as Organizr, Sets and Photo Page," according to the release.

Furthermore, "Flickr's partnership with Snapfish will allow members more flexibility in shipping photos - not only can members print photos from anywhere in the world, they can also ship photos to anywhere in the world."  And "members in the U.S. can opt for local pick-up of their prints in-store at any of Snapfish's retail partners, including Walmart, Walgreens, Staples, Duane Reade, and others."

Flickr users have been pushing for something like this for quite a while - check out a 21-post discussion started in May of 2008 if you want evidence.  Count on more than a few people applauding Yahoo and HP for sealing the deal.

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