Simplest way to migrate from Synology Photo Station?
I am on Debian server, running Immich in Docker. I have my Synology Photo Station photos saved into folders, with each folder representing an album. All the folders are now copied to the machine where Immich is running. What is the best way to import the files into Immich, so that it creates a separate album from each folder? I've tried the External Library feature but this does not seem to be creating the albums automatically? Thanks!
P.S. I guess the Photo Station variable is irrelevant here and the question can be parsed down to: how to import photos while creating albums based on the folder names the individual photos are stored in.
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Successfully submitted, a tag has been added to inform contributors. :white_check_mark:One thing you could do is set up an external library pointing to the Synology images and then use https://github.com/Salvoxia/immich-folder-album-creator to make an album for each folder
Important to note that the linked tool is not an official Immich tool and isn't guaranteed to work
yes that's one thing but for some reason I feel like Immich could do this natively and maybe I'm just missing something?
^ this works as well but the difference is this copies the images into immich's internal data store (may take longer)
both methods work, just differently
ah ok. now, when I do
immich upload --recursive directory/ the directory needs to be the docker-mounted path (e.g. /mnt/media/Pictures) or the system path (e.g. /home/PaloRup/Pictures)?
nm, seems to be the system path which is great as i no longer need to mount it as external library in Immich 🙂
so the native option seems to be better for my use case, thanks!
just one small thing... let's say I have a folder "Holiday 2025" and inside that I have "photos taken by John" subfolder. is there a way to tell immich upload to treat that subfolder as part of the same "Holiday 2025" album?
FYI now i am using immich upload --recursive --album /path/to/myphotosfolder/
and it treats "photos taken by John" as a separate album
also, while i'm experimenting with this stuff, what's the easiest way to wipe my library clean?I don't think there's a way to change that
https://immich.app/docs/FAQ#how-can-i-purge-data-from-immich
i am seeing some weird behaviour with the
immich upload --recursive --album /path/to/myphotosfolder/ command. this is after I run it. here, the test album was actually a subfolder of 2004 Sumracna ... i can accept that it was treated as an album during the upload. but why does the Albums list on the left not show the 1985 Chopok album? I mean it is shown in the list on the right
only the 3 with last added assets are shown to the left
ah ok. that's bound to throw new users off
so in the end this does seem like the best tool for the job. what's not clear to me ... after I upload the stuff using the script, do I still need the external library (from where the folders/albums were imported) to be mounted inside Immich?
external libraries are never copied over, only thumbnails/metadata etc is generated/extracted
So yes you still need the mount if you use an external library
ok something else is not clear: i have the admin user who can see the uploaded photos. when I create a new user they do not see them. how is family sharing supposed to work with Immich? is each familiry member supposed to sign in with the same admin account?
No
You're supposed to designate users to share with in your account settings
If you make a new user you'll have to add them to the "allowlist" so to speak
For the user whose pictures you want shared -> Account Settings -> Partner Sharing (near the bottom)
On the receiving side, there is a toggle to show those pictures in the timeline
But they need to set that in their settings
ok i see, but this only works for the photos timeline. is there a way they can also see the existing albums easily?
or i need to share with them each album explicitly?
Currently albums are user-only and you'd need to share explicitly
this is kinda confusing
so if i understand correctly, to share the albums created by the script with the family account (for viewing+editing), I need to run the script with
--share-with [email protected] --share-role editor?I'm not sure? This is a third party script so best ask there 👀
ok so my albums (220 total) all have display order set to newest photo first. is there any way to change the display order for all of them to oldest first?
There is no global toggle for this, no
i am now testing the mobile app. is there any way to change the sort order of albums? on desktop this can be done by switching to list mode and then sorting by Title, desc
Tap the sort order
i've noticed on occasions, the app (iOS) won't react to a swipe gesture when you're swiping through photos in an album. is this something that's been observed by others or is it my VPS? 🙂
You might be swiping too close to the screen edge
when it happens it doesn't really matter where I'm swiping
Then I have no idea myself 🙂 might be a bug, might be your VPS
I remember a discord discussion about this some time ago but I wouldn't know what terms to search 🤔
Ah here we are https://discord.com/channels/979116623879368755/994044917355663450/1342770786800369765
Does that seem about right with your experience @PaloRup ?
yep that's it
oops i meant to link this: https://github.com/immich-app/immich/issues/16205
happening in landscape mode too
whoah, new release just dropped and i see it addresses some mobil issues. maybe i'm in luck?
i just realized it might take some time for the iOS app to follow
I recently went through this transition and had to meticulously go folder by folder eradicating the stupid @eaDir indexing directories and files in every.single.subfolder before manually importing all of the assets folder-by-folder into Immich. The import was flawless, but it was necessary to be uber-meticulous cleaning up the old SynoPhotos folder structure.
the 3rd party script someone linked here worked wonders for me. but my SynoPhoto was indexing a regular old folder structure on my NAS so that was what I could work with, fortunately
If only we had --ignore flags or something 🙃
Oh I'm aware, and thank you for that, but it was more about me cleaning up their mess than anything to do with the import.
....and I was too chicken to rm -R @eaDir *
ok this swipe issue looks like a deal breaker. it's especially bad on my iPad
how long does it usually take for the mobile client app to follow a server release?
iOS: a couple of hours to a couple of days, android 2-3 days
The images are built and ready, the delay is purely on the app store side