You might recall the photo carousel feature we launched a few months ago. It has been incredibly popular with both bloggers and visitors, racking up over three quarters of a billion views since then. Today, we’re happy to announce we’re launching v2 of Carousel with significant improvements:

• Images are served double-resolution (Retina!) for visitors on capable devices, like the iPad 3 or Retina Macbook Pro. (Best, laptop, ever.)
• Comments! Visitors can now comment directly on each photo.
• Likewise, you can now like or reblog every individual image.
• You can now select a light or dark theme for your photos to be showcased on.
• If your camera includes EXIF metadata, like aperture, lens, and shutter speed, we now show that next to the photo. (You can toggle this off under Settings → Media if you prefer.)
• We’ve improved performance so it loads and moves faster on browsers old and new.

Want to see it in action? Here are some photos I’ve taken on recent travel, including some from a Nikon D3S, a Nikon D4, and a Sony NEX-7:

But wait, there’s more! This update is simultaneously being released for Jetpack users, our first time doing a release for both at the same time. WordPress.org users can download the latest Jetpack and try out Carousel right away. On stage at WordCamp San Francisco last year I said I wanted a world where there was feature parity between the WordPress.com service and WordPress.org installs, and I’m glad we’re taking this important first step in that direction, in the future we’ll have more and more of the simultaneous launches.