Hey, I’m wondering what everyone’s solution is for self hosted “cloud” storage of photos? I’ve been running a PhotoPrism server on my Synology for a while but it’s missing some features I’d like to have. While we’ve set up auto-uploading from different phones to the web server, I haven’t found an easy way to share read-only access to the pictures or specific albums. There is an admin login, but no way (that I’ve found) to create multiple users with different permissions.
So SelfHosted lemmy, what’s your solve for photo storage, sorting, and sharing?
Currently just using Synology photos but with an eye on immich, as others have mentioned and plan to switch now that it has facial and object recognition. At this point it can do everything I want and has the benefit of being open source.
You have a Synology and Synology photos will do the features you mentioned (multiple users, different permissions). While I wouldn’t recommend it now over Immich I’m curious why you went with photoprism initially?
Pretty simple here, directory with my phpto’s, which I renamed to show the subject, date and an id for that day. Simple script to show the images when on a website, manual viewing from disk when archived.
I pull them off the phone via a cable and adb pull command. All photo’s are read only for my wife. (And by default for all when on the website)
No need to use software when you can write some small scripts, devise an ordering system and run Linux. ;)
No need to use software when you can write some small scripts, devise an ordering system and run Linux. consign yourself to not having any of the modern QoL features everyone enjoys ;)
No need to use software when you can write some small scripts, devise an ordering system and run Linux. consign yourself to not having any of the modern QoL features being forced to buy/be locked into products everyone enjoys hates. ;)
Everything is a choice, for me, “one size fits somebody, hopefully, and the rest has to adapt” doesn’t work at all.
I started with MSX, then Atari ST, used a PC 1 game, went via OS/2 (BBS) to Linux in '94 and stayed there after a clash with Windows 95 during an internship. My current employer gave me an iPhone to use and after running rooted Android and Cyanogenmod/Lineage since 2012 I hate it with a passion, to restricted for me.
Some will be totally happy to dump all their photo’s on photobucket, google photo’s,… it just doesn’t work for me, as for one, my photos come from DLSR, compacts, scanned analog photos and a few from the phone. I have 24y worth of photo’s on local disk (229G), I make almost no photos with the phone and when I do I usually want to put them online for own reference pretty quickly. For me, with almost no photo’s on the phone (max 10), this works like a charm. (and once I made a few scripts, it costs me less time then trying to get my photo’s back from all those apps)
I suspect we’re all a tad weary of companies offering ‘free’ storage for your data and then use it for other means or charge you when you want your data back. It’s an option that works, but requires a tad more knowledge and time to setup. That free storage feels more like ‘legal ransom ware’ then anything else. When your not paying, you’re the product being sold. (which doesn’t guarantee that when you are paying you’re not sold as well)
When you want something you either have to:
find the perfect product
adapt the product to make it perfect for you
adapt yourself to make you perfect for the product
create something yourself
The 1st is near impossible, 2nd costs time, sometimes to much, 3rd is most of the times a no-go here and that leaves 4. When you have the skills, 4 will become the option you use more and more. (Especially when you enjoy making your own solutions)
Yeah, seems like Immich is kind if taking over. It really is an excellent one stop solution for automated multi-user backup. Ive been using it for a few months and its solid.
The other option that I really like is a combination of software: Nextcloud + Les Pas. Nextcloud is the server where images are stored in a flat folder system, and Les Pas is an android photo album app that organizes and manages the albums. Its super nice and has some really advanced organization features. Worth checking out if you want to use nextcloud as the storage server.
I’ve never heard of this, but what happens if it shuts down? How is this really self hosting vs getting an generic we hosting service and storing files there ?
I installed immich thinking I could use it to access my entire pictures collection that I had stored on my hard drives only to learn it currently does not support that.
Luckyly I saw the other day there is already a PR in the official repository trying to implement that, so I may wait for a bit to Immich to have this importer.
Followed that guide. Got redis and postgresql14 installed. When installing immich I get an error in the log that says "error:password authentication failed for user “postgres”. I’ve trirled every combination of changing password, no passwords whatever. It never works.
I’m not sure how I would do that. What sort of application would I use? Postgres doesn’t have a webui to log in through. So not sure how else I could test it.
I recently started dumping all my photos at Immich. WIth every release it becomes greater and greater. I donated to the developer to keep it going. And I need to make a script to automate the DB backup
I’m planning my homelab, and from the research I’ve done, Immich is the best but not ready for production and it can’t use an already existing photo library. NextCloud memories is the next best alternative, and supports already existing libraries.
I think it’s pretty new, in the last month or so. It’s currently something you have to run manually with the CLI to do an import, but they should eventually have it added into the web interface and run automatically.
The important thing is the --import flag which adds files without copying them.
Personally I run the CLI command inside the immich-server container, here’s the full command to make life easier since this took me a bit to figure out, make sure the directory is mounted into both the immich-server and immich-microservices containers. You can mount it as :ro if you want (I did) to make sure Immich can only read the files and not change them.
A PR was opened last week to add the biggest first element of external library support. Hopefully in the relatively near future it’ll be merged. I’ll be giving it a shot when it merges.
I hadn’t heard of Memories before. I’ve just set up an Immich server and I’m not super impressed with it, if I can shut that down and use my pre-existing Nextcloud server instead that’d be great!
What’s the development pace been like for Memories?
Immich. I recently set it up after having bounced around trying a few others, such as PhotoPrism and Synology Photos. Immich is truly excellent. I’m excited to see how it develops further!
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Haven’t looked into sharing read only access, but you can look into this list
https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted#photo-and-video-galleries
Currently just using Synology photos but with an eye on immich, as others have mentioned and plan to switch now that it has facial and object recognition. At this point it can do everything I want and has the benefit of being open source.
You have a Synology and Synology photos will do the features you mentioned (multiple users, different permissions). While I wouldn’t recommend it now over Immich I’m curious why you went with photoprism initially?
Had the photoprism container set up before I moved to the Synology. That’s really the only reason…
Pretty simple here, directory with my phpto’s, which I renamed to show the subject, date and an id for that day. Simple script to show the images when on a website, manual viewing from disk when archived.
I pull them off the phone via a cable and adb pull command. All photo’s are read only for my wife. (And by default for all when on the website)
No need to use software when you can write some small scripts, devise an ordering system and run Linux. ;)
No need to use software when you
can write some small scripts, devise an ordering system and run Linux.consign yourself to not having any of the modern QoL features everyone enjoys ;)FTFY
No need to use software when you
can write some small scripts, devise an ordering system and run Linux.consign yourself to nothaving any of the modern QoL featuresbeing forced to buy/be locked into products everyoneenjoyshates. ;)Everything is a choice, for me, “one size fits somebody, hopefully, and the rest has to adapt” doesn’t work at all. I started with MSX, then Atari ST, used a PC 1 game, went via OS/2 (BBS) to Linux in '94 and stayed there after a clash with Windows 95 during an internship. My current employer gave me an iPhone to use and after running rooted Android and Cyanogenmod/Lineage since 2012 I hate it with a passion, to restricted for me.
Some will be totally happy to dump all their photo’s on photobucket, google photo’s,… it just doesn’t work for me, as for one, my photos come from DLSR, compacts, scanned analog photos and a few from the phone. I have 24y worth of photo’s on local disk (229G), I make almost no photos with the phone and when I do I usually want to put them online for own reference pretty quickly. For me, with almost no photo’s on the phone (max 10), this works like a charm. (and once I made a few scripts, it costs me less time then trying to get my photo’s back from all those apps)
I suspect we’re all a tad weary of companies offering ‘free’ storage for your data and then use it for other means or charge you when you want your data back. It’s an option that works, but requires a tad more knowledge and time to setup. That free storage feels more like ‘legal ransom ware’ then anything else. When your not paying, you’re the product being sold. (which doesn’t guarantee that when you are paying you’re not sold as well)
When you want something you either have to:
The 1st is near impossible, 2nd costs time, sometimes to much, 3rd is most of the times a no-go here and that leaves 4. When you have the skills, 4 will become the option you use more and more. (Especially when you enjoy making your own solutions)
Yeah, seems like Immich is kind if taking over. It really is an excellent one stop solution for automated multi-user backup. Ive been using it for a few months and its solid.
The other option that I really like is a combination of software: Nextcloud + Les Pas. Nextcloud is the server where images are stored in a flat folder system, and Les Pas is an android photo album app that organizes and manages the albums. Its super nice and has some really advanced organization features. Worth checking out if you want to use nextcloud as the storage server.
Saw recently that Shadow, the cloud PC company, has now a next cloud based storage offer: shadow.tech
I’d be interested by any feedbacks if somebody gives it a try !
I’ve never heard of this, but what happens if it shuts down? How is this really self hosting vs getting an generic we hosting service and storing files there ?
Oh my bad, didn’t see this was on self hosted. Then yeah, it’s a hosting service like any other one
Piwigo looks nice.
I’m trying to get it to run (in docker), but I can’t get it to connect to my MariaDB
I installed immich thinking I could use it to access my entire pictures collection that I had stored on my hard drives only to learn it currently does not support that.
Luckyly I saw the other day there is already a PR in the official repository trying to implement that, so I may wait for a bit to Immich to have this importer.
So, what, it only lets you upload pics remotely but not view? I do not understand.
I was thinking of trying it out but the huge banner saying not to trust it for anything important makes me hesitate every time.
Sorry, my explanation was not very clear. Check this thread: https://github.com/immich-app/immich/discussions/1006 this is what I was talking about
Followed that guide. Got redis and postgresql14 installed. When installing immich I get an error in the log that says "error:password authentication failed for user “postgres”. I’ve trirled every combination of changing password, no passwords whatever. It never works.
Have you tried logging in with a simple postgres client?
I’m not sure how I would do that. What sort of application would I use? Postgres doesn’t have a webui to log in through. So not sure how else I could test it.
Are you comfortable in command line? There’s psql or there’s https://www.pgadmin.org/
It doesn’t have that feature you linked but you can do a bulk upload if you wouldn’t mind them hosted then in 2 places on your storage.
https://immich.app/docs/features/bulk-upload
I recently started dumping all my photos at Immich. WIth every release it becomes greater and greater. I donated to the developer to keep it going. And I need to make a script to automate the DB backup
Immich is pretty great. I used to use Nextcloud, but it isn’t nearly as good for photos.
I’m planning my homelab, and from the research I’ve done, Immich is the best but not ready for production and it can’t use an already existing photo library. NextCloud memories is the next best alternative, and supports already existing libraries.
Immich can use existing libraries, either by importing (copying) existing files, or just by adding an existing folder of files in place.
Importing is another thing. But using an existing folder is exactly what I want. Is this feature new ?
I think it’s pretty new, in the last month or so. It’s currently something you have to run manually with the CLI to do an import, but they should eventually have it added into the web interface and run automatically.
https://immich.app/docs/features/bulk-upload#importing-existing-libraries
The important thing is the
--importflag which adds files without copying them.Personally I run the CLI command inside the
immich-servercontainer, here’s the full command to make life easier since this took me a bit to figure out, make sure the directory is mounted into both theimmich-serverandimmich-microservicescontainers. You can mount it as:roif you want (I did) to make sure Immich can only read the files and not change them.immich upload --key apikeygoeshere --server http://localhost:3001 --recursive /some/path/to/existing/photos --importAmazing ! Thanks for sharing!
A PR was opened last week to add the biggest first element of external library support. Hopefully in the relatively near future it’ll be merged. I’ll be giving it a shot when it merges.
I just use Samba for now. I don’t care much about viewing photos. also, I have an underpowered old server that overheats easily
I use samba and digikam
Same but NFS over Btrfs.
Test driving NextCloud Memories. Looks nice, works inside Nextcloud (no need to set up and maintain one more service).
Main con so far - no mobile app
I hadn’t heard of Memories before. I’ve just set up an Immich server and I’m not super impressed with it, if I can shut that down and use my pre-existing Nextcloud server instead that’d be great!
What’s the development pace been like for Memories?
Nextcloud itself does have an app, though. Don’t know if you’ll still be able to use those additions or not through it.
No, you can’t
Thank you for checking! I don’t have a readily accessible server yet.
You can “install” it while it’s open in your browser - good enough for me
Yeah, that’s what I’m using too
Another person using Immich.
It supports importing existing photos, so I pulled in all my old folders of stuff.
Also has multi user with album sharing and all that.
Prism is my go to …it’s allright but I am still looking for new options. Have heard good things about Immich so might look at that
Immich. I recently set it up after having bounced around trying a few others, such as PhotoPrism and Synology Photos. Immich is truly excellent. I’m excited to see how it develops further!