I got here through a rabbit hole of wanting to understand how upgrading to Synology DSM 6.x to 7.x would affect my familyās and my DS Photo experience and in amongst the various Reddit topics there were a few mentions of PhotoStructure. I thought it would help solve my other (common) problem of many photos, some organised, some haphazardly, some in various places.
Iām quite tech savvy and can work with tech easily but it doesnāt mean I can see the wood for the trees
Iāve read the majority of the PS website info and several topics on the forum. Although I applaud the developer, Matthew, on his passion, achievements, and ethos I, personally, wouldnāt agree that PS is intuitive (at least pre-installation).
And so I find myself creating this post. Sorry for the verbose intro.
I initially thought I could and would use PS as my System of Record/Trusted Source. From what Iāve read it seems this is not the intended function. Iām getting the impression that itās for collating various sources into a more friendly usable-source. This includes the actual files (a copy) and a database. Also (something Iām excited about) the search and browsing capabilities.
A thing Iām not certain about is auto-organisation and not, and the impact to file copying. I thought that files were always copied from the source (unless considered dupes) but then I read in one of the forum posts that files are copied only on auto-organisation. So does that mean that PS references the source files when not auto-organised? ie. no files are copied?
If I was to use auto-organisation what would happen if I then edited the metadata on the copied, PS versions? Would metadata be over written on next sync or could I use the PS versions as the updated versions while keeping the originals as baseline?
Lastly, Iād to invite members to share their use cases and how they are organised as I suspect there are quite a few variations and Iād love to get inspiration from others before I start.
As far as your question about PhotoStructure making copies of your photos and videos, know that I support both not copying or moving anything from their original locations, as well as copying all unique file SHAs into a single deduplicated folder hierarchy. This is a question asked at installation time (and can be changed at any time). More information is here:
As far as how Iām personally using PhotoStructure, I wrote this up here:
Just to be clear, there was no implied criticism just my honest impression pre-install, after reading much of the site and several posts (before creating an account to make my post). Iāve definitely read the posts you refer to. Iām sure how PS works is easier to understand once itās installed, which is something I hope to get to on a free weekend soon.
Making documentation sucks and one day hopefully AI will take that chore away. That said, imho youāve taken on an ambitious goal and come so far, alone it seems, and written a ton of informative posts that Iām in awe.
edit: Iāve re-read the Auto Organisation article and youāre absolutely right, the 2 questions and the impact are stated. In my weak defence: I read so much afterwards that not having installed yet, that info dropped out of my memory.
I have noticed a āmissingā 3rd option: copy all but leave the source folder naming intact (rather than the auto folder naming). Perhaps thatās already possible in some setting that Iāve seen but not remembered!
This is doable, but youāll have to set an āadvancedā setting.
In an effort to not overwhelm users too much, I only have a handful of settings available via the welcome flow, but there are several hundred settings you can use to tweak almost everything within PhotoStructure. More details are here:
The setting that retains parent and grandparent folder names is available in the āprealphaā build, which is actually pretty stable on Linux/Docker, but that build isnāt yet validated on Windows or macOS: it will be soon.
Here are details of the prior assetSubdirectoryDatestampFormat setting and the new assetPathnameFormat:
the developer, Matthew, on his passion, achievements, and ethos I, personally, wouldnāt agree that PS is intuitive (at least pre-installation).