Can you upload folders of photos into Photo Station?

[gannugood]

Hi Guys
I am new to Synology and am setting up my DS218Play. Primarily taking advantage of the COVID situation to sort my files.
I decided to use PhotoStation as I fell it gives me more control.
The folder structure on my PC is well organised and I have now moved (using USB Copy) all my photos into/volume1/homes/JohnSmith/002 Photos
I see there is another folder /volume1/photo
I understand that photos need to me under this folder to show up in "Photo Station" and the "DS Photo" Mobile App.
I see there are only options to 1) create a folder in Photo Station and move select pictures into the folder.
Do you know if there is a way I can move all the pictures into Photo Station under the same folder structure? I have too many photos and albumns and it will be painful to manually create that structure.
Thanks in advance folks.

 

[fredbert]

Photo Station uses two locations for its libraries:

1. Shared library between Photo Station users: the /photo Shared Folder (that's the /volume1/photo folder when accessing at file system level)
2. Personal libraries, accessible only to that user: /home/photo

Longtime non-user of Photo Station (use Moments) but it should be that you add folders into these locations and Photo Station should see them (once indexed). Maybe you have to add an album first as set access permissions, then add your photo folder or subfolders into the album's folder.


Are you accessing the NAS using an administrator account for doing normal day-to-day activities. My standard user account doesn't see '/volume1/homes/...' but only /home which is mapped to /volume1/homes/<myaccount>/. Like other devices, it's best to only use a privileged account to perform administrator tasks, when needed, and to use a standard task for your normal login (like you would do for Windows, Mac, and Linux).

 

[gannugood]

Thank you very much for your response.

I am using a user acount associated with the "administrators" user group. So, I think that is as good as an administator. Nevertheless, I am now using the admin user account which is also associated to the "administrators" user group.

I have tried using the "Copy To../Move To.." function you get when you right click a folder on File Station, to "move" a folder to Photo (/volume1/photo/012 ABC) as you had suggested. I assume, that this folder "012 ABC" should automatically show up on Photo Station. But, it did not.

1. Then I went to /volume1/photo/
2. Action -> Shared Link -> Enable Secure Sharing -> Share with DSM Users -> "select all DSM users you want to share"
3. After I did this I can see the folder 012 ABC in Photo Station

This seems to be the approach to make it work.

Now I have another confusion. Now that I have "moved" the desired folder, I sense this is the master of the data.

If I do "copy" I guess I have two copies of the same file, one in /volume1/homes and another in volume1/photo. I The only value in maintaing a copy is to have a backup, if at all I want to use another application other than "PhotoStation". Is my understanding right? I was hoping there would be some synchronisation of data between volume1/homes/custom and volume1/photo.

 

[Telos]

volume1/photo ... shared folder, typically used for photos all users can access
volume1/home/photo (not homes... don't use your admin login for personal activities) ... typically used to hold "personal" photos, others cannot access.

 

[fredbert]

I am using a user acount associated with the "administrators" user group. So, I think that is as good as an administator. Nevertheless, I am now using the admin user account which is also associated to the "administrators" user group.

Both these are administrators of the NAS: an administrator is a member of the 'administrators' group (see Control Panel -> Groups).

The more secure approach is to create your own admin user and then disable the default admin user (everyone on the Internet knows the default is called admin).

You would then create a standard user (not in 'administrators' group) and use this for all you actual NAS usage, e.g: Photo/Audio/Video/File Station, Drive, etc etc. You use our administrator user to create shared folders, package install/configuration/updates, DSM configuration and update, security, etc etc.

I have tried using the "Copy To../Move To.." function you get when you right click a folder on File Station, to "move" a folder to Photo (/volume1/photo/012 ABC) as you had suggested. I assume, that this folder "012 ABC" should automatically show up on Photo Station. But, it did not.

1. Then I went to /volume1/photo/
2. Action -> Shared Link -> Enable Secure Sharing -> Share with DSM Users -> "select all DSM users you want to share"
3. After I did this I can see the folder 012 ABC in Photo Station

Well done fixing this

Just be careful you haven't opened up too much access for users, also check public/guest access is what you want. You administrator user has the ability to configure Photo Station and who can access it and what. But you should be using you standard user to really use Photo Station.

Now I have another confusion. Now that I have "moved" the desired folder, I sense this is the master of the data.

Yes.

'Move' moves the files/folders from their current location in the the NAS (be it within the same volume, between volumes, or from USB to the NAS volume).

'Copy' copies the files/folders and creates a second instance of the data.

I was hoping there would be some synchronisation of data between volume1/homes/custom and volume1/photo.

You could use Hyper Backup to create a one-way synchronised copy from one place to another, or a versioned copy.


BTW how are you accessing the NAS? Normally the /volume1/homes is hidden unless you're using a file transfer service like SFTP, or connected via SSH.

 

[realaaa]

thanks guys! I had the same issue today - nothing was showing up in the Photo Station after moving some folders to /photo which were originally in my volume under Picture folder. I have done this move via File Station, without re-uploading them to my DS920+ so this move was quick

Permissions should have been OK, as those files were uploaded as my user account (not admin or root)

Anyway it worked OK after triggering index re-build as per Synology — How To Fix a Frozen Index Process - McLean IT Consulting

by the way Re-Index before doing that was not clickable (grayed out), therefore I started searching for how to force this