How to use Synology Photos and Synology Drive For Photographers - Synology for Photographers Part 2

[@sebastiandomschke51]

Very smart tutorials and focused on the essentiell parts between LR, Synology and Workflow. Big thank you 🎉

[@iAbdulla_AJ]

Thank you for your useful and helpful video. Did Synology bring back the best and the most crucial future, which is subject recognition that give you the power of search in the all photos by a subject in the photos

[@poland153]

nice vid, we end up backing up our lightroom catalogs in syno drive as well while the raws are stored on a mounted share. works pretty good and as long as one person stops using the catalog and lets it fully back up, another user is able to fire it up and see what first user did. works well for a 2 person company lol

[@yankee-in-london]

@spacerex I use Lightroom Classic on my laptop and desktop and sometimes I use the basic Lightroom on IOS devices (primarily iPad Pro). I have put my raw files into a Drive folder with two way sync and then on my desktop I have a local SSD where all folders are synced so whenever I work there I get blazing speed and in the background it's moved to my NAS for backup. When I'm on the road with my laptop I instead use the same Drive share but only allow the current year to sync on my laptop to preserve space and then have a network drive for all other folders when my laptop's on the home network. This way it builds up Smart Snapshots and I can view my entire catalog on the road and even make updates via the Smart Snapshot. Wondering what you think of this strategy. It's quite a new setup for me and I haven't really spent time on the road to test how I like it yet.

[@grawsom]

Congrats on making 100K

[@diegoescudero91]

@spacerx looking forward to part 3! I want to be able to access and export the photos from wherever I am!

[@petermarin]

You mention snapshots for the shared photos folder. My photos follow what you said your personal photos back follow I.e. they go into personal. What’s the protection available for the personal space, if I can’t turn on snapshots??

[@SpaceRexWill]

You can! You can turn them on for the ‘homes’ folder

[@petermarin]

@@SpaceRexWill fantastic!! Would you recommend this? I’d there any issue regarding reliability/ security in using the personal space vs the share location?

[@benjamin_parry]

Hey, so a key take away here is that working locally is a must, because saving anything directly to the NAS from LR could suffer from data corruption? Does that go for any app writing data to the NAS that isnt a copy function?

[@mitchellr199]

@​​⁠​​⁠SpaceRexWill Is there a reason you prefer using Drive vs Photos to share work to clients. I have been using Synology photos the exact same way your using drive. So I wasn’t sure if there is an advantage to using Drive or not. I’ve debated switching over. Photos does offer Zip files on larger downloads. I’m not sure of that cap off hand.

[@lIll0IIIIOIllI0IIIII]

Great! And looking forward the mobile Lightroom part...

[@PatrickBennettphoto]

First, great tutorials. Question, if we are all using Lightroom then we have web access to the pix within LR through sync in collections for simply viewing them, the same way Syn Photos does but with the big exception of the export process. It's cumbersome to export, copy to syn photos, delete off the hard drive and then if you ever make a change to that original photo you'd have to export and replace that photo on Syn photos. Therefore why use Syn photos over LR sync? If that sounds convoluted it's because the process of exporting and making multiple copies of a photo is convoluted. Is there some advantage to using Photos over LR sync that I'm missing?

[@CalvinGrayCat]

I use synology drive to share photos with clients, but every week or two I get a message saying that the client can’t access photos because quick connect relay is not connected. I then have to remotely restart my nas from my phone using Tailscale, then it works again. Why do I constantly have to keep restarting my NAS because quick connect keeps failing? I dried to set up ddns but it didn’t work so I put the setting back that were working, just inconsistent connection to quickconnect. Once the relay goes down it will not come back on unless I restart the nas. Any advice?

[@dozyaustin]

Thanks for a great series - it's super timely for me so following closely. I have some questiions: Is the indexing corruption issue also with syncing exports via SynologyDrive to the Photos folder? Why do you recommend syncing exports to the shared space and not private space like we do with our phone backups ... and then sharing albums, for example And finally - you cover sharing work in Drive ... what are the differences in sharing photos (via a public link) in Photos vs in Drive? Thanks

[@greggeis918]

In a previous tutorial on using symbology to sync Lightroom to multiple computers you warndrd not to use a teams folder for photography because the indexing previews would lock up the system trying to build previews. Is it ok to use it in a teams folder?

[@Jack-it7jy]

Do you have this workflow in a flowchart or PDF?

[@noelscheuner]

Great tutorial! Something I would have been looking for.

[@skystink]

my family members want to access Synology Photos but apparently the sophisticated filter abilities arent available to them unless I grant the full access. How can I prevent that they e.g. delete a photo? This is in my point of view a real-world scenario. My glorious idea was block write access to the Shared folder but that did not do the trick. I assume it is because the application privilege is overruling the plainvanilla folder access restriction. So I gave them the "Downloader" role within Synology Photo under the shared privilege menu but by that the whole filtering capabilities (e.g. select by year, person etc.) is not available. That is exactly not what I want. Any help how to workaround this is appreciated. Thank you.

[@SpaceRexWill]

This is a limitation unfotuanaly. I do not know of a way around this. You can always add snapshots to recover deleted files, but thats it

[@skystink]

@@SpaceRexWill thanks for the answer - Highly appreciated, Will. I cant believe that Synology is not offering this as I fell this is indeed a reals world scenario - The idea with snapshot recovery is basically good. My issue would be more how I could identify a potential file deletion that was not on purpose among the tausends of images ;-) So how are you and all others use Synology Photo in that case? Grant all users full access or restrict access and pass on all filtering techniques?

[@alin.danila]

@@skystink It’s a plain stupid design decision that makes Synology Photos totally useless as a central household photo “archive” read-only solution with multiple family users that can ONLY view photos. They focused on being a google photos replacement for separated, isolated users (aka “self-hosting” your own photos cloud service) …. forgetting that most of us are FAMILIES that store our ENTIRE photos archive UNIFIED. You can’t have a “read-only” user access for shared space without loosing app features. You can’t have your own defined shared folder, you have to use their stupid hardcoded one …. posibble giving the app “ownership” to it. I can go on with the rant but sometimes synology it’s just stupid in their choices and i stopped using their photos solution. 😢 I will keep my nas as a simple and robust file storage solution and maybe build a diy one for running household services (media server serving pictures, family videos , misic etc.)

[@skystink]

@@alin.danila thanks for sharing your view and confirming the limitations of Synology Photo. Have you found another solution meanwhile or just dont have a self-hosted photo archive at all?

[@brianhansen6906]

Good info. Thanks.

[@VictorVedmich]

What's the difference between snapshot and backup? For example if I set up backup for all of my photos and also enable versions of file on NAS, should I enable snapshot?

[@andreaspuyskens]

really great and helpful video series! thanks so much, works like a charm.

[@erbartlett]

Does the macos drive client allow you to sync off of an external drive? I know Dropbox and Google drive have stopped working with external drives so I’m looking for an alternative

[@looppp]

Curious - what's the difference between using Backup vs. one-way Sync? They do the same thing no?

[@ericstevens1198]

Great Video, Thanks! Do you know of a way to run Lightroom Classic on two computers?

[@raynardroopnarine6502]

What’s the difference between backing up photos and videos from a cell using the Synology photos app vs the synology drive app?

[@johannilsson8149]

Thanks Will, how do I use my own domain when sharing a photo with my clients? I would like to have a clean and professional link....

[@asyrafsalman5808]

Hi Will, thanks for the videos - they are very helpful. How do I sync my personal photos folder with Synology Drive? I can only sync /home/Drive but not /home/Photos =( I would like to be able to use windows explorer to manage my media easily

[@martonem]

I backup my complete Export directory into Synology in another shared folder. So this will duplicate my exported files. I hope synology lets us pick any shared folder soon. Thanks

[@marcback1]

Thanks a lot. It is very usefull knowledge. For me, it is activebackup as I have hundreds of GB of pictures each day, so I need to choose when I want to clutter my bandwidth ;)

[@justinmyers1869]

Great videos! I'm curious if you could do one using Capture One. A lot of larger studios and photographers use this instead of LR

[@albiorix9645]

how do I make it only save the new photos

[@patrickdowd2293]

Great video as usual. Do you sync your Lightroom photos to Creative Cloud to process on iPad? If so do you have conflicts with syncing to both Synology drive and CC? Or, is it seamless because Synology sync is one way to the NAS?

[@thewaliiiii]

Thank for this!

[@Obdus]

I have speed issues with this workflow. Whenever I try to download a file (to test it out with a different network to access remotely like a client would) it doesn't go above 500kb/s which is super slow. Even though the client network is about 100mbs and my NAS is connected to my ISP with 200mb/s of upload. If I connect to my local network, however, the download goes fast obviously. More interestingly, if I connect to twingate, again through the non-local 100mbs download network, it does go fast! So I know the NAS is capable of speed but there is some network block when using quick connect alone. Any ideas?

[@Obdus]

I honestly feel like it may be the fact that in Central America most ISPs have clients on CGNAT, which is my case but not sure if that is actually something that can slow it that much or not. Just a guess from my testing with Twingate

[@francescocostantino9619]

excellent video

[@bloong1080]

Important question: if I take a photo on my iPhone (with auto-backup enabled), it will automatically be added to Syn Photos immediately. However, if I later delete that photo, the photo persists on Syn Photos. Is there anyway to change this behavior? Furthermore, if I take a photo, and then add a caption/like it/edit the metadata in anyway, this information does not seem to propagate up to Syn Photos. Ideally, I want my libraries to match each other, both in what photos are present and with metadata.

[@SpaceRexWill]

I do not know of a way to do that!

[@bloong1080]

@@SpaceRexWill Then how do you manage your photos between your iPhone and NAS? Do you simply not touch the iOS photos app and only delete/modify things in the Syn Photos app? It would be a nightmare to duplicate all changes you make in your iOS app in the Syn app, so I imagine this is the only way to deal with having 2 libraries.

[@SpaceRexWill]

For me the Synology photos is a backup (at least for personal space) so I do not worry about having additional files in there. As for metadata, the only time I am editing it is in Lightroom before an export so this is a non issue for my workflow

[@JoshDerGrueneFrosch]

Hi there! Is there any reason not to have all raw files in a syn drive folder? Wouldn’t that enable me to work on them locally (with all the speed) while also having them stored on the nas? What would be the disadvantage in comparison to have the not current files only on the nas itself and only the current raws on the local computer?

[@bearbrown]

I'd say that's just for saving space on your local drive. If you have TB of disk space on your desktop/laptop I'd say have everything local and just sync to your NAS for backup purpose.

[@looppp]

Mostly space. If your RAW folders/collection isn't growing much, and you don't think you will run out of local computer space, then your workflow is fine. For me, even with a 2 TB SSD, I am running out of space, and have to delete previous years to make space for current year, but those previous years are backed up to my NAS so everything is fine.

[@JoshDerGrueneFrosch]

@@looppp thanks for the explanation! wouldn’t Synology drive only keep the files active that are recently used if it runs out of space on the local drive? At least that’s what I thought..

[@mrsietsch]

I used Synology Drive to synchronize my lightroom folder between 2 PCs. But since a few months Adobe changed attributes of their files and synology drive doesn't synchronise not all files anymore.... Do you have a solution for this?

[@SpaceRexWill]

Interesting! I had not heard that, I believe it still works on MacOS, but have not tested with PC

[@mrsietsch]

@SpaceRex On PC it doesn't work anymore because not all file attributes are synchronized

[@socialwithdiogo]

​@@SpaceRexWill i have same problem. Created a lightroom catalog on my MacBook, sincronize with Synology Drive, but appear some erros during the sync process. Please create a tutorial

[@mrsietsch]

@@socialwithdiogo I already made a ticket to Synology and they said it is because of some file attributes. They gave it to the developement team but since(4 months ago) that I never heard something new! Maybe if more people report the problem it becomes important enough. I would like to have an work around how I can sync it. Maybe also without synology drive. A tutorial for that would be really cool!!! This is the feature request: #682419 from synology

[@socialwithdiogo]

@@mrsietsch I already searched in several forums and in Synology, I saw tickets created but still no solution

[@cyberwasp461]

Synology photos lack one feature that would make it fantastic and easier to use. An indicator for each photo to show whether or not it's in an album. Otherwise it's pretty much as useful as folder on a pc!!!

[@pierre1509]

Why not using publishing services instead of export ? It's much more flexible.

[@drwillixs163]

Hi, any one feedback about Synology photo and video being separated app and function. Which user has pure photo or video library these days

[@SpaceRexWill]

So Synology photos is for photos and home videos. Synology video is for watching movies and TV shows

[@drwillixs163]

@@SpaceRexWill It must be my error… I didn’t seem to be able to look at my videos clips on photos. Will check again.

[@xinzhao5858]

Synology Photos Mobile app is suuuuuper slow. It takes 15-30 minutes to upload one photo. I think part of the problem is that Synology is creating a thumbnail behind the scenes, but beyond this, I can't figure out how to fix this problem. Waiting this long just to upload one photo makes the app almost useless. Does anyone know how to fix this issue? Thank you soo much for any thoughts on this.

[@HelberPontes]

Is there a reason to not share with Synology Photos instead Synology Drive?

[@SpaceRexWill]

It comes down to how you want to share them. If you just want people to grab a zip file Synology Drive will be much simpler for everyone to understand

[@viliambena6767]

was excited to get synalogy until figured out that they removed subject recognition

[@oramonteu]

Thanks for your video, very interesting. But unfortunately, Synology Photos is quite useless for professionnal photographers. First, you can't share a folder ! You can only share the pictures inside a folder. Nonsense... Then, if you share a folder with a client as a pro photographer, it's for two purposes : 1/ let him download the pictures. Ok that works. 2/ let him select the pictures he wants to buy/he wants you to edit/etc. For that, you need a way for him to mark, apply a notation or any way to select a group of pictures. Then you need a painless way to get his selection (like copy the list of the name files, because you don't want to waste your time copying every single name file) in order to paste it into Lightroom for instance. Well, none of this is possible with synology photos... Conclusion, they need to work if they want to interest professionnals...

[@rhiggins86]

Have you looked into using an actual client photo sharing system like Pic Time, Pixieset, etc? I think Synology Photos is more of a large file organizing system with a friendly user interface to access photos.

[@theHDRflightdeck]

Who is Neil?!

[@jameskan823]

I need photos app while storage on shared folders I hate sparse files here and there

[@SpaceRexWill]

Thats what Synology Photos does. It is simply a web display for the image files within the photo folder.

[@jonicolton]

🤟🏼

[@TerrenceJonesPhotography]

Synology Drive will not let clients download a whole folder. As easy as it looks on here. Great interface if it worked but It doesn’t work. This is a better interface then just share a folder from the Nas without Drive.