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The best way to self-host and manage photos is to put them in a directory on your filesystem and then look at them with your eyes using your operating system fi

The best way to self-host and manage photos is to put them in a directory on your filesystem and then look at them with your eyes using your operating system file manager. Trying to implement this functionality, again, in the browser is just absurd. The best way for other people to look at them is via a static webserver serving static html files generated by some photo gallery tool like jigl. It has no active components to fail or get exploited in the future.

viraptor 4y ago
> The best way for other people to look at them is via a static webserver For some use cases only. Most of my photos are not public and a large chunk of them is being shared with small groups of people only. I'm not going to risk public-but-hidden URLs just in case they'll get indexed by accident. A static site is not usable at all for me.
- superkuh 4y ago
  HTTP basic authentication is very easy to set up and maintain (and keep secure) on pretty much every webserver ever made. A dynamic system PHP like Lychee is very hard to infeasible for an average non-technical user to keep maintained and secure. Even technical web developers have trouble keeping php projects secure over years. A static webserver with http basic auth is more secure now and incomparably more secure over 5-10 years. If you are worried about security then definitely do not give a third party PHP system access to your files.
dewey 4y ago
That might be the "best way" for you, but not for everyone. Personally I have so many pictures that I really appreciate the "memories" that Apple Photos extracts and shows me from time to time. That would be very hard to implement yourself. It always picks good pictures and not random screenshots you have lying around or blurry pictures. A directy listning is definitly not a scalable solution if you are not looking to just go through all pictures of a specific date.
zepolen 4y ago
No. Using a file system to look at photos is absurd. Searching photos using text, handling live images, displaying on a map by gps coords, categorizing people/places/albums automatically. None of this is handled by a filesystem or jigl.
- em-bee 4y ago
  i use kphotoalbum to manage photos. mainly because it has a great tagging interface. what it doesn't have is good folder management. it will read images in whatever folder structure is there, but it is clunky when it comes to browsing photos with that folder structure. i can either navigate folders or i can see thumbnails sorted by time. i can't see thumbnails in the folder structure. to augment that i use a plain file browser. nemo in this case with the cover-thumbnailer extension works great. i could use another image manager, but then i'd be switching back and forth between different image managers to have the features i need. so why should i, when a plain file browser just works
dsego 4y ago
I would love a photo managing tool that would allow me to import photos, do backup and auto-organize by some predefined rules (eg. folders by year, month etc), but also be able to use the current file structure (no proprietary library blobs like iphoto, with no way to export). It wouldn't let me delete photos by accident, or overwrite them, etc. There would be a clear distinction between source and destination when importing. I would be able to lock files for safe keeping. No stupid dialogs like "copying 9999 files, found one with the same name, skip/skip all". Instead it would have a "dry" run, a preview of the result, thumbnails etc. It would allow me to scan for duplicates or find similar images, detect anomalies and corrupt files. For previewing, it would find faces and locations, I would be able to group by date, location, etc. There would be a way to see the photos in a browser and share, but only see the photos, so kids can't accidentally delete theme (unlike Synology's crap software only made to tick boxes, boy was that a waste of money). And it needs a timeline view, like google photos, or what smartphones do.
- acidrainynb 4y ago
  I have many qualms with iPhoto. It sucks. But this comment is so inaccurate I had to comment. iPhoto/Photos doesn’t store your photos in a blob. They are exportable either via the stupid app or by the file system. The library is literally just a folder, and the images are stored by year month and day. It’s not magic.
  - dsego 4y ago
    Fair enough, I might be misremembering then. It was ten years ago, sorry.
    - sosborn 4y ago
      It's one of those comments that was never true but has been repeated so much that people believe it.
      - dsego 4y ago
        Possible, I remember having to use some script to export all of my photos, not sure what the reason was. Perhaps I wanted to export by album, because I know a bunch of old photos from my olympus camera had incorrect timestamps.
RockRobotRock 4y ago
The best way to express your opinion is to do it without being a condescending asshole.

viraptor 4y ago

> The best way for other people to look at them is via a static webserver For some use cases only. Most of my photos are not public and a large chunk of them is being shared with small groups of people only. I'm not going to risk public-but-hidden URLs just in case they'll get indexed by accident. A static site is not usable at all for me.

superkuh 4y ago
HTTP basic authentication is very easy to set up and maintain (and keep secure) on pretty much every webserver ever made. A dynamic system PHP like Lychee is very hard to infeasible for an average non-technical user to keep maintained and secure. Even technical web developers have trouble keeping php projects secure over years. A static webserver with http basic auth is more secure now and incomparably more secure over 5-10 years. If you are worried about security then definitely do not give a third party PHP system access to your files.

dewey 4y ago

That might be the "best way" for you, but not for everyone. Personally I have so many pictures that I really appreciate the "memories" that Apple Photos extracts and shows me from time to time. That would be very hard to implement yourself. It always picks good pictures and not random screenshots you have lying around or blurry pictures. A directy listning is definitly not a scalable solution if you are not looking to just go through all pictures of a specific date.

zepolen 4y ago

No. Using a file system to look at photos is absurd. Searching photos using text, handling live images, displaying on a map by gps coords, categorizing people/places/albums automatically. None of this is handled by a filesystem or jigl.

em-bee 4y ago
i use kphotoalbum to manage photos. mainly because it has a great tagging interface. what it doesn't have is good folder management. it will read images in whatever folder structure is there, but it is clunky when it comes to browsing photos with that folder structure. i can either navigate folders or i can see thumbnails sorted by time. i can't see thumbnails in the folder structure. to augment that i use a plain file browser. nemo in this case with the cover-thumbnailer extension works great. i could use another image manager, but then i'd be switching back and forth between different image managers to have the features i need. so why should i, when a plain file browser just works

dsego 4y ago

I would love a photo managing tool that would allow me to import photos, do backup and auto-organize by some predefined rules (eg. folders by year, month etc), but also be able to use the current file structure (no proprietary library blobs like iphoto, with no way to export). It wouldn't let me delete photos by accident, or overwrite them, etc. There would be a clear distinction between source and destination when importing. I would be able to lock files for safe keeping. No stupid dialogs like "copying 9999 files, found one with the same name, skip/skip all". Instead it would have a "dry" run, a preview of the result, thumbnails etc. It would allow me to scan for duplicates or find similar images, detect anomalies and corrupt files. For previewing, it would find faces and locations, I would be able to group by date, location, etc. There would be a way to see the photos in a browser and share, but only see the photos, so kids can't accidentally delete theme (unlike Synology's crap software only made to tick boxes, boy was that a waste of money). And it needs a timeline view, like google photos, or what smartphones do.

acidrainynb 4y ago
I have many qualms with iPhoto. It sucks. But this comment is so inaccurate I had to comment. iPhoto/Photos doesn’t store your photos in a blob. They are exportable either via the stupid app or by the file system. The library is literally just a folder, and the images are stored by year month and day. It’s not magic.
- dsego 4y ago
  Fair enough, I might be misremembering then. It was ten years ago, sorry.
  - sosborn 4y ago
    It's one of those comments that was never true but has been repeated so much that people believe it.
    - dsego 4y ago
      Possible, I remember having to use some script to export all of my photos, not sure what the reason was. Perhaps I wanted to export by album, because I know a bunch of old photos from my olympus camera had incorrect timestamps.

RockRobotRock 4y ago

The best way to express your opinion is to do it without being a condescending asshole.