I need to put some order with the photos I take and I receive with my android phone. Just now I use Nextcloud sync client to upload and Photo/Memories Nextcloud Apps to manage photos.

However, I am not very happy with this setup because of the lack of one Android Application for photos and, thus, the photo gallery of my phone is totally different to the Photo/Memories timeline. And photos are not deleted from my mobile phone when I delete them in Photo/Memories. Which selfhosted photo manager do you think is better to backup and manage photos in sync with the phone?

A second question, is it better to manage the photo gallery with a folder structure or with the album functionality of the Photo application? Which is the best interoperable solution? If I use albums in Memories then I can export those albums to Immich, Librephotos… ? Or I would have to create all the albums again after the export?

  • ayaya@lemdro.id
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    1 year ago

    I wanted to try Immich but I quickly found out you can’t simply point it at an existing folder structure like say Plex or Jellyfin. You have to “import” all your files via a client and if you’re like me and already have thousands of images in Nextcloud then even with their bulk upload CLI tool it is too much of a hassle.

    Plus I don’t want to be locked into their format, I want to be able to switch if the project goes under or I find something better later on. Nextcloud’s photo management is not great but I am willing to sack some speed and usability for using raw folders rather than a database.

    • Chaphasilor [he/him]@feddit.nl
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      1 year ago

      Immich actually organizes your photos in a simple directory structure, which is customizable (want to group by year? year+month? by day? not at all?). The images are right there in your file system and have the original file name.
      The directory is “read-only” though, for the same reason as there is a need to import existing libraries: database synchronization.
      Immich offers many features that require a database or pre-processing of files, which makes it fast and feature-rich. If you modify files outside of Immich, it cannot know what changed and loses track of where your media is.

      As I said, the (read-only) file structure is always there in case you want to switch.

    • MangoPenguin
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      1 year ago

      I didn’t see any unique format for how Immich stores photos, they’re just on the filesystem as images.

      • ayaya@lemdro.id
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        1 year ago

        From what I understand (I could be wrong) all of the images get imported into a single folder and albums are done via the database. I currently have my albums in individual folders. So not only would I have to recreate dozens of albums but I don’t think there would be any way to export them in the future. But if that isn’t how it works maybe I will give it another go.

        • dubba@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Storage Templates. Photos are stored in subdirectories categorized by date.

          CLI Import. It looks like you may be able to import your albums with the cli and --album flag, not sure about exporting though.

          • ayaya@lemdro.id
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            1 year ago

            Interesting. Being able to import them using the folders as albums is fantastic, although it seems like there is no {{album}} variable for the storage template so the problem still persists. Once I’m using it there would be no easy to way to export the albums out.

    • Opeth@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I switched from nextcloud to immich and the cli import was super easy and had a nice progress bar which made me feel productive. The images are just in directories on the filesystem unlike seafile.

      10/10 would recommend. Shit feels premium as well.

    • Chewy@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      It’s planned to allow pointing immich to a directory as a read only gallery. This wouldn’t import the images, but still show them.

      Can’t find it atm on my phone though.