Thanks Will! Another easy to understand and informative video. A few years ago I switched over from HP DL 350 SBS server to Synology NAS DS918+ and never regretted thanks to you. Your enthusiasm and great technical information has made the transition pretty easy. ... PS like the shirts.

Wow, idk what I would do without these tutorials. Thank you!

My favourite KZfaqr. Seriously, nobody covers any topic as well as you do with NAS topics.

I have so many questions: 1) How is facial recognition saved to a photo? In a separate database referencing the photo? Or is it written to the XF meta-data of the photo? 2) Can Synology Photos identify dups and suggest they be merged or the duplicates deleted? I'd be bringing in photos from icloud, google and amazon and there will be duplicates 3) Can you filter view the web view and the phone app by person, place or year and/or month? 4) I'd be telling family they can view or download photos but I also want them to be able to add photos, but I want to make sure they can't delete them - Does View and Download cover these two aspects? 5) Can you separate the photos from other areas of the NAS via volumes? For example: I want one volume for Document Management and one for vm's and containers for apps I work with and one for photos. 6) Can I backup the NAS to the cloud? Like P-Cloud? 6) If you don't feel that Synology Photos should not be your primary photo storage then what do you recommend?

This is an EXCELLENT summary of not only how to set things up but use cases which is super helpful. Inviting people to upload photos is a great feature. Well done!

I watched several of your Synology Videos and this is really great very professional and fun to watch content. Thank you very much, it made me setup my new ds923+ in no time. Should you decide to upload more Synology videos, I will happily watch them all!

Thank you Will for this easy to understand/follow video! All your knowledge and work put into these videos are a tremendous help!!

This is SOO incredibly helpful!! I was feeling a little overwhelmed and worried I’d set things up incorrectly. You broke this down so well. I’ll definitely be looking at your other videos as well. Thank you!

You're amazing for taking the time to make these videos. Thank you very much!!!

Synology drive and photos make their nas worth it

bro you are a legend. i have subscribed and have to watch lots of video content from you to learn about my new acquired Synology DS223J device

Thanks Will, the only video on youtube that explains the Home and homes folder tipic, which is pretty confuse :)

I'm a digital art photographer and only shoot RAW files. l've listened to three of SpaceRex's well done videos and have found them helpful as I was lost in how to set up a DS223 Snyology. I purchased Snyology mainly to add it as another backup system and to be able to access my photos off site. Now that I've finally learned what Snyology is I'm not sure it's the system I need as a backup to protect my files. I had no idea how complicated this system was but will give it a go since I've already purchased it and it's set for months on my desk because I didn't know how to set it up. Thanks!! for your well done videos.

Great tutorial! Super helpful! Thanks for making this.

Great!! This is the exact video I needed

Thanks Will! A tip to other viewers about 15:01 and that uses folder view like me. If you want to automatically create folders by year/month after importing, use timeline view, not folder. Using folder view, photos will be uploaded to that "specified" folder, i.e the open folder.

A fantastic guide. Thank you 😊

Thank you very much for this, after I migrated from Photo Station, I was not really using Photos correctly. It was eye opening

Thanks for de vid, helps me in the first steps in syn. photos. Thx

Thank you for explaining this app, it's more clear now how it works and how to set it up.

Thanks for this it really helped!

I'm easily confused but your tutorial do make it very easy. Thanks again!

great video, GREAT channel. amazing to learn so much before buying my NAS thanks

Thanks for the video! I've been a google photos person for a while and have been trying out synology photos for a few weeks now. One of the main things I miss though is the ability to search for items that are in the photos, like "outside" to find photos I took outside, or "food" or dialing it in with "steak".

Excellent guide!

Thanks, I attempted to do this by my self and it was imposible, but this video made it easy, sometimes Synology makes things extremely complicated

Just in time for my new camera setup and storage!

Just bought a refurbishe DS1517+ and was surprised that you had one in operation at least one year ago. Very informative video that I also shared with my wife since she has 95GB of video and photo's on her Iphone that she needs to sort through somehow.

Great stuff, cheers!

It was talked about “more powerful” devices for facial recognition. Which Nas devices are best for facial recognition? Thank for everything! Love your videos!

Thanks for the helpful vids! One potentially big gotcha to be aware of when getting started - which frankly makes NO sense to me: the handy, automatic, date-based foldering that happens under the system-generated /photo/PhotoLibrary shared space ONLY works if you drag and drop/upload while in the Timeline View. If you happen to be in the Folder View at the time of upload, it dumps your uploads into the currently-displayed folder, which if you're just getting started, is the root-level All Photos folder. Worse yet, it ditches any sub-folders that might be part of the upload, lumping everything together in one big pile. The software developer in me understands the logic, but it should absolutely have a warning/confirmation when viewing that top-level folder that uploads dropped here will be unsorted when the dust settles.

Love your videos, they are'll amazing.

I am so going to get one of these.

Great video as always. In your intro you summed it up correctly: It's great for family and amateur use. Synology promotes it to this day as an app for professionals (of which I am one) and it isn't. For pro photographers it is unfortunately more or less useless. Just one very obvious example: Only square thumbnails in folder view. Ever looked at hundreds of images of people with the heads cut off...? Like many others I have been in touch many times with Synology but to this day nothing has been done and like others I keep running DSM 6 in a virtual machine to be able to use the old PhotoStation for client interaction. Such a shame as under the hood Photos is such a powerful application but Synology development has moved on and nothing has improved in years.

Because we use Synology Photos primarily as a repository rather than an application for searching and sharing, I configured it quite differently. Namely, I did not enable Home Services but instead created a subfolder for each user (just four) within the Photos shared folder. I then set access permissions and ownership of each subfolder, so each user only sees their own. Granted this is rather simplistic, but it works well for our situation. Again, you have created a very informative video packed with lots of good information. Thank you.

Hey Will! Thank you! I recently got an 1821+ and its going great. Next step is getting everything backed up! Your videos have made this process actually possible for me! I would love to see a video about sharing videos to clients, as I am a videographer. The main issue I'm running into is when clients open share links on mobile browsers with a cellular connection, videos load incredibly slow and sometimes never do. If there was a way to auto-transcode lower quality renders for viewing, similar to dropbox, would be so cool!

Awesome video Will, thanks. However, I don't actually understand the argument about not making a NAS or, in this case, the photo app a primary source for photos. What should be the primary source then? A phone?I thought that people buy NASes to actually use them as a very reliable place for data. So, are you suggesting that we keep all the photos on both the phone and the NAS? I guess not everyone buys phones with, let's say, 512GB storage. To be clear, I understand that we should keep the most important files/photos in multiple places if we want to be really sure that we won't lose them.

I moved to a custom unraid build for my primary server, but I like synology photos so much that I still run that off my synology.

Had a couple of questions. I appreciate the reply of anyone that knows about these things (I’m completely new btw) 1. is there an ARCHIVE feature ? 2. Would you recommend making another user account for my business or is there a way to have different libraries. ( I’m not referring to separating by albums. I’m talking about; is there a way to have ONE USER but with multiple different libraries?) 3. Any info on security ? or does it just depend on how you encrypted your drives. THANK YOU !!

You should make a version 2 of this videos to include all the updates

Hey Will, your videos are great. Couple questions. Once you add a user. What is that users process to get to my NAS from their phone or computer, step by step. Do they sign in from the Synology photo app? If they are on their computer how do they navigate to get there? #2 can they share photos with someone who is not a user on my NAS? #3 what about video files? Any considerations? If my son shoots video and wants to get me that footage, can he go into the Synology photo app and upload it and send it to me? Thanks. Really enjoy your style and no nonsense video presentations! You have a very sincere and humble persona. It’s actually a pleasure to listen to you speak. Big fan! My wife too!

very helpful

Will, great video. The only complaint I have is with personal space and albums. I think there should be an indicator in personal space to show which photos are in albums. Otherwise, you'll be flipping back and forth to see if you missed some. Also, the option to hide photos in personal space that are in albums.

Good informative video. Do you know if this also handles videos and backup of videos? Or is it just for photos?

Thanks for this! Does this work for videos also?

Thanks for the video Will, well explained and really useful. I'm having an issue though; when importing old photos & videos (like 6-7 years old), some of the video's won't play and I'm getting the error: "File cannot be displayed due to a conversion failure". The strange thing is, the format is I believe compatible (like .MOV or .MTS files) and this does not happen for all video's. I tried re-indexing, but this didn't help. Do you have any idea what this could be? Thanks!

Thank you for this video. After 15 years of doing photography using the "drawer full of old portable external drives", I finally made the switch to a NAS and started moving my collection over. The auto face recognition, auto location tagging, and conditional albums are amazing! I've spent the last few weekends sorting and tagging.

Thank you for your brilliant job. I have a question How can I optimize storage on iPhone by uploading photo to Synology, and have a lighter version of the photo on my iPhone?

Hello! I am VERY new to all this, and am considering putting in a NAS for home use.... then you started talking about this photos.... MUCH of what would be put on the NAS is all my photos (JPG, RAW, PDF, et). Would I do the photos separately from the total NAS System set-up? or is this able to "mine" the photos out of the initial data upload in doing the total system "back-up/Recovery" stuff? (I hope this question makes sense....).

Great video as always. I’m wondering if you could make a video about having one HD in a Synology just for backup. So this hd should be ALWAYS sleeping. Just waking up when it would be backup time. Let’s say, once a week. If this is possible, I think I will buy another HD just for backup.

Thanks Will. Always a great tutorial! Quick question on Synology Photos... I'm looking at migrating a heap of old photos on some external HDD's into my new DS923+.. I'm keen to be able to use the Synology Photos display/sharing functions.. What is the best/easier way to copy across 2tb of images... Directly into photos via mapped drive? I've tried a test however when copying direct into the mapped 'photos' drive, they are visible in file manager however I can't see them in the Synology Photos App! Thanks in advance

Thank you for a great guide! Off topic question - what is the iPhone size? Is that the normal version, or the mini version?

Thanks.

Great video! Helped me get started correctly using Photos. One thing I am trying to do and I don't know if you can or not, I was to create a conditional album that uses both a person from the People and a tag. The facial recognition misses about half the faces because they are turned or their face isn't showing. I would like to tag and add them to the album. I've tried setting two condition, people and tag, and the album comes up empty. Is it possible?

This and your video to tie lightroom into my nas has saved me from a right mess. So i cant thank you enough. one question i do have tho is if i have all my files organised for lightroom in my photography folder, is there a way to set the folder to be veiwed in synology photos without dublicating them into the photo folder? thus taking up more space for no reason?

Thanks for the explanation, one question: does the software checks for "similar" photos? Like, when you have small,children and we are trying to get 1 photo but end up doing like 10 ... does the SW help there in choosing the one we want to keep and delete the ones we don't? Thanks.

Great tutorial ! Thanks. Juste a question, what about data migration beetween 2 NAS if I want to copy configuration (albums and other specific data) to another synology NAS ?

Thanks for full comprehensive coverage, just one question regarding phone backup via Photos - is it possible to somehow sync deleted photos? I mean, if I delete a photo on iPhone, it automatically goes to 30-day trash, but such change isn't reflected in Photos, and similarly if I delete a photo in Photos on Synology, it remains in phone and gets synced back onto Synology right? cheers

Hiya Will, thanks for all your useful videos for a newbie. Just one quick question, all my photos are on one NAS (DS1522+) I want to be able to have this duplicated on another local NAS (DS220+). I used to be able to do this with drive sync but it doesn't seem to work with DSM 7.2 ? I used to be able to add or delete on any of the NAS and it would instantly update the other .

Really nice video thanks. I use a folder structure on my synology. Can I just link to this ? Is the upload creating a copy of my already backed up files ? Thanks

This is a great video. I wished I had watched a video like this when I first entered the world of Synology Photos. Two comments I'd like to share with everyone is that: 1) Once you start modifying the metadata using Synology Photos, such as adding/modifying a description, it will work fine for as long as your DSM works and you stick with it. If you like using the DSM to modify the description, as an example, the file itself won't be updated to include the modified description (the image supports the update but Synology won't!). If you save this image or share it in an email or make a copy for someone else to add to their library, the image and metadata shared will be the same image at time of uploading to your NAS. Synology does not provide a means to fully export your photos (including metadata). I want people to bring this up with them. They are hijacking our precious memories. In addition, unless your get your setting correct using Hyperbackup, there is no other means of backing up/ restoring your photos with all the changes you made in the fields you've modified. 2) It is difficult to work with shared photos. Unless you choose to fully share your photos (full privileges), then the experience is very much affected as many, many options are removed.

Thank you for the video! Can you please advise how I can transfer all my pictures from a very old synology nas DS207+ with older DSM to my new synology nas DS415+

Will, great video, extremely useful. Thank you so much. Once I share a photo/video from my personal space to the shared space, does it create another copy of the same photo/video, or is it just a shortcut to the original file? And is there an option to back up family phones staight to shared folder so all family photos are all in 1 place?

Thanks for the great video! One more question; I’m using my Mac to store the originals of my iPhone photos app on the harddrive from my Mac. Can I move the location of the file used by iPhone photoshop app to store the photos on the NAS drive as my Mac as not sufficient diskspace left? Does this work and is it a good idea to do so?

Hello Will, How can i share files from my mobile backup in my "personal space" with the folder i created on my "Shared space" under all photos ? Do i have to copy them there, loosing space on my disk? better to move them ? what should i do ? Thank you !!

Grazie! Questo è proprio un ottimo video. Faccio molta fatica perchè non conosco l'inglese però l'hai fatto talmente bene che riguardandolo più volte arrivo a capire tutto. Grazie complimenti. Ho tantissime foto fatte negli anni, ho vari backup sopratutto di imac che hanno creato un po di confusione nel tempo sopratutto con whatsapp. Vorrei fare pulizia trovando e cancellando anche i duplicati con nome diverso o con estensione diversa, Potresti consigliarmi qualcosa? In ogni caso grazie. ciao

Great video! Thanks! A problem i don't know how to solve: I want yo use a shared album to show photos that are on several family members personal space without them having to copy or moving the photos to another place. Because i don't want duplicates between the personal and shared space. I want to keep the photos on the original personal space for each user, but be able to create one shared album with all photos for example a trip. Is there a simple workflow for the users to do this on their phones in Synology Photos?

thanks for the good video, I followed the insturctions created a shared album, and set other sharer as provider, however she still can only view and download, but not able to remove photos, what have I done wrong?

Hi Will very informative video, is there any way to add audio to slide show

Thanks for a great video. Do you have any thoughts on how to fix an iphone12 when Synology Photo app says "Sign In. The operation could not be completed. (SynoRelayErrorDomain error -1011.)? Thanks.

Will, thanks for posting such great content all the time. I'm a newbie with Synology NAS and I'd love if you could help me with a question that I have. What's the best way to keep a SSD (constantly plugged to my Mac) being backed up (weekly) to my NAS? I'm currently using Synology Drive Client to perform the task every week but I was wondering if there's a better/more reliable method to use. Thank you so much.

First off, fantastic video... I watched the whole thing ( and I typically skip through). Question for you please.... On my computer, I have stored years of photos from my DSLR on there. For now I have manually been uploading folders to my home/photos/computer_backup for the past few years. After watching your video, I want to accomplish two things... 1) share all my computers by placing into the shared space (or share home folder) and 2) find a clean way to push my photos from my computer to the shared folder, and keep track of the updates. I was going to try Synology drive, but it seems like it only wants to interact with your home/drive folder and nothing outside of that, like the newly created photo shared space. Guidance please.

Great video, as usual! I currently have all my photos stored in the Synology NAS as a share folder "PHOTOS" (along with "MOVIES", "DOCUMENTS", and "MUSIC"). I've used a hodge/podge of different folder names to store both jpeg and RAW files. Before I start moving my photos to the new "photo" folder, is there a recommended file name convention that I should be using with Synology Photos? If you've done a video on this topic, please point me in the right direction!

Just setting up my RS822+ from scratch. Couple of differences. When I installed Synology Photos, it did not prompt me to enabled user home services. I followed the link shown in your video to manually enable it from User Groups->Advanced. Second difference is that shared space was already enabled for me. Third difference is none of the user folders including the currently logged in home folder show demo and photo folders. I tried to "Disable Shared Space" so that I could re-enable it and see if that did the trick but it jus complains that at least one space to function. Trying to work through it.

Thanks Will! Just one question. How to create album like gallery with cover on each folder (people, nature, sunsets, ... ) and share it with outside DSM users by one link? If it impossible, then how to create view only user and restrict him to manage photos (upload to private directory )?

Great video. I do have one question regarding an issue I’m having. When enabling mobile phone backup on my iPhone, it begins uploading my 2,000-some photos and videos, but gets stuck on a long (1.5-hour 4K) video. I recognize it will take a while, but I left it for hours on end and it never got past it. Are there often issues with backing up videos through the mobile app or might it just be because the file is quite big?

Hi i have a question: is there an option how to automatically create folder/subfolder/year/month/day same as when you do photos backup (example:\Photos\MobileBackup\S21 Ultra\DCIM\Camera\2023\3 and all existing pictures would be alocated into specificed folder. At the moment I have like 10folders, where I have multiple pictures stored from different sources (phone, camera, 2nd phone, etc) and I would like to have this more structured the way photos backup does it, but I would not like to do this manually as I have over 200k pictures, which I gathered over the course of last couple of years. I would wish that all of those 10 existing folders are combined into a single folder based on creation date, I would than take care of duplicates with storage analyzer (if anything else is better I would like to hear your suggestions). I hope my question makes sense, looking forward to your reply.

HI Will, Brad from Sydney Australia Strange problem I cannot solve. I have videos that I have moved from a shared folder to my personal space. The videos in the shared folder and personal space only show grainy video - However- as I have set up an account with (synology) Mobile Photos app, I now can access the same videos on my Iphone. Strange thing- The ' app' has managed to transcode the same videos perfectly viewing from my Iphone with sound and vision. What am I missing here? Any help will be much appreciated..Brad

Hi Will, thanks for this. Can you share images but not allow downloads? recently set up my 1821 so just getting use to all this set up.

Great video and tutorial, thanks! Slightly off topic, is there an app or a way to similarly backup ones iphone to the NAS in a smiliar way apple icloud does? Would love to stop using other peoples clouds and just use my own. Thanks.

can one have folder and subfolder in photo? I want to have a personal space and then another one for my 2 children so their photo are separated or having other folds where I put photo of the same subject or object I put together? thanks

Once you upload your iphone photos to your NAS via the photos app and delete them from the iphone, I see it retains live photo option in the photos app from synology but is there a way to re-save it back to the iphone native photos folder so you can go in and edit the portrait depth of field options or live photo? If not then I don't see the benefit of offloading them.

Great video. However, my family member does not have the ability to share her photos. On the sharing tab the only option showing is “Shared with Me”. There is no “Shared with Others” or “Photo Request.” I’m fairly confident that I have set things up correctly. Is there some other step I am missing?

Will is The Man! ;-)

I haven't tried uploading my album from my iphone to the NAS yet, I am wondering if I uploaded the photo, and then edit the photo on my phone, would the edited one be synced to NAS after? Or would it create duplicate? Also if I delete the one on the phone, would the one on NAS be deleted too? Because I do like to clean up my phone's photos after a week or so to get rid of the garbage pics...

i switched to completely use synology photo, it works for me, yes ofc. i need a internet connection to view old photos, but usuually i take a photo, edit it with the default app if i want to change something, and then let it auto upload and delete later on, thats the only way for me to prevent buying a 256gb iphone next time. i wish there was an option like, delete photos older than x, or upload only videos (because these are the real space killers for me)

Hi Will, cant find the info how to work with folders (not albums). Dont want to dump all photos just in one place. Do you have content about this or basic description?

2 questions: How much data can one upload/download remotely? Do you have to pay a subscription to upload/download your data remotely? I travel and I want to substitute a NAS for my gdrive.

After setting Up New iPhone and loading Photos app. I had to upload whole photo library again from the iPhone (photos were still on the NAS, so basically the uploaded photos were ignored since they were duplicates) but I had to go through this process. What did do wrong ?

Good video, but you missed one main problem. I followed the steps, but it only download photos stored on the phone (DCIM). So i only have photos in Synology photos from my new phone (2023), but not any that were stored on google photos cloud. So now, if i download all of google photos onto my pc and drop them into synology photos, will i end up with duplicates considering in google the setting was to save space and not original? Or will it skipped if its based on file name?

Hi Will, am a new member of your community, and am really enjoying your videos and commentary. I have a DS412+ running 4x8TB HDs with SHR and am considering upgrading the NAS to a new model. ** Have you reviewed how Synology Apps (company or 3rd party apps) can back-up iPhones (like iCloud) in a similar fashion ? As Synology has a great way to back-up Macs compatible with Time Machine, I am surprised not to have come across such solution, etc. I would like to keep iCloud storage at 5GB and keep all my personal and family shared files away from Cloud services.

Thank you Will.. This was helpful. I have a couple of questions for you.. 1st question. I mistakenly "cleared" space on my phone and found it deleted my icloud photos.. I did it because I got a message that said I had insufficient space to complete the backup. Still getting that message by the way. But I do like keeping icloud photos as well and am not sure how to move my photos back to icloud. 2nd question. I noticed for some reason, that I have duplicates on synology photos.. how do I delete the duplicates? Thank you again for all of your good advice.

20:21 :D exactly every wife and woman I know :D amazing video. I set up my home NAS thanks to you. The only think I am strugling with is Google photos and takeout. How to merge jpg and json files easily? Is it necesarry to merge jpg and json? Any tips?

Hello, Can you do a complete guide for using a Synology NAS to replace iCloud for a iPhone, iPad or Mac?

Very informative! Thanks so much! I’m in the process of just upgrading to DSM 7 and moving my folders around to maximize the Photos app and face recognition. I think I have a better understanding of Shared spaces too. Appreciate it!

Quick question - I was going to use synology as a primary photo backup (then back up to C2 or back blaze), but you mention you wouldn’t use synology as a primary. What do you recommend for a primary?

Hi will- is there a way to add photos manually to "people" facial recognition groups? For example, all photos of a person grouped in those folders, even if it's not a photo that synology regoginzed a face in. Like a photo of that person doing something etc..?

Will, after importing photos (+25,000), a lot of them are not oriented properly and for most of them I need to rotate 3 times manually to get the photo upright. I am 68 years old and I'd like to finish doing that while I am still alive. Any suggestions? Otherwise, many thanks for all your videos which helped me going from a DS218 to a DS923+ and all the great hints and tutorials to help me understand the system. Cheers, Bobby

I've have old smart tv and can use only DLNA feature to watch photos and videos on it, there is any chance to watch kida photos only. Can photos share kids album as DLNA share?

Any way to sync this with iCloud Photos? I like using iCloud in addition to synology for additional redundancy but would love to be able to delete the photos in one place and have them also disappear from the other so I’m not doing the clean up more than once.