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Since this is upvoted so much, I wonder what people's complete setup is for something like this to replace, say, Google Photos. So once the photos are on a "ser

Since this is upvoted so much, I wonder what people's complete setup is for something like this to replace, say, Google Photos. So once the photos are on a "server", what do people recommend for albums, sharing, metadata, geotagging, search, etc?

bombela 3y ago
I personally still use and pay for Google photo. Mostly because I am lazy finding a better solution. As google photo UI is becoming worse overtime, I wouldn't mind an alternative though.
hiisukun 3y ago
I'm not sure it covers all your features listed, but I use PhotoStructure [1] for the 'album' side of things. It's been mentioned a bit on HN, which is where I found it. Sharing is very open for me since I'm just sharing wholesale with family, but when I need to share specific images or albums to people, I usually do it via some other way that suits them -- so if they use messages, email, google drive, dropbox, or just want to download from a webpage (eg. caddy), I'll enable that. I want an easier way to edit the comments on photos (as embedded metadata) that I haven't found yet. Any image browser where I can hit a convenient hotkey, type "Summer 2023 at the river with cousins X and Y" and move on would be great. If anyone has a suggestion I'm listening keenly! If this is built in to something on MacOS or a linux default desktop (like KDE or something I'm less familiar with), or is a small paid non-subscription app, I would buy it. [1] https://photostructure.com/ https://photostructure.com/
scarface_74 3y ago
I have absolutely no desire to manage my own backup. When I take a picture with my phone, it automatically gets backed up to iCloud, Google Photos, OneDrive, and Amazon Photos (free with prime). When I had a personal computer, photos would sync to my computer and get backed up to BackBlaze also.
- crossroadsguy 3y ago
  It gets backed up to all of these? On iOS I have tried all except Google and they are all finicky. Even iCloud/Photos.app seems to have a brain of its own. And on the Mac Apple engineers have made sure the photos are not synced in a simple easy folder hierarchy that can be backed up elsewhere.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    Yes, I have to launch OneDrive to start the backup and Amazon photos.
  - troupo 3y ago
    Photos.app is just atrocious. Google Photos just works.
- Jedd 3y ago
  > When I take a picture with my phone, it automatically gets backed up to iCloud, Google Photos, OneDrive, and Amazon Photos (free with prime). If you delete a photo on your phone, does it automatically get deleted from all those services in near-realtime? Do you have an archive solution in place (distinct from your lack of a backup solution)?
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    I don’t want it to be synced. I want my pictures and videos to be backed up. I have 2TB on iCloud, 2TB on Google Drive, unlimited back up of photos on Amazon Drive and 1TB on OneDrive. When my OneDrive account gives out of space, I’ll just use one of the other 6 accounts that come with an Office 365 subscription. I guess for an archive solution, I would use my personal AWS account that’s only used to store my videos that fell off the back of a truck once I took my Plex server off line. I have 2TB of videos stored in AWS S3 Deep Glacier archive. I’m charged like $2 a month for it.
    - Jedd 3y ago
      Yeah, I get your intent, but I think there's some conflation of backup and sync. Here's a hypothetical - imagine you deleted a photo from your phone, and then modified (in place) a different photo. Is your expectation that the first would be deleted from the various places you have it backed-up? (If not, then what's your process for fully destroying a photo?) Would the second be propagated to each of your SaaS storage providers overwriting the existing, or renamed and situated adjacent to the original? And if you modified it in-place a second time? If your phone were then to stop working and needed replacing, would the restoration process restore your phone to before, or after, the above deletions / changes were made? ie. would the deleted photo exist on your phone, would the second photo be pre, mid, or post modifications? (I draw the distinction between backups and archives whereby backups get you to where you were most recently (pre incident), and archives let you restore to something like 'Tuesday afternoon, two weeks ago'. I'm talking here purely about backups vs sync though.)
usbakimbo 3y ago
Personally I keep the last 365 days in my Google Photos Everything else is in Immich Pictures and videos I take get backed up to Google Photos Once a year I do a Google Takeout and import into Immich This way I get the best of both worlds
- cpill 3y ago
  how do you get the photos out of Google Photos (and delete them from there I assume?)? I started on a CLI that could track photos across different accounts and make it easy to move then between them i.e. from GP to s3 or to a local drive etc. Was going to include duplicate detection. But if there is already another tool...?
  - IggleSniggle 3y ago
    Didn't they say Google Takeout?
- venusenvy47 3y ago
  Do you lose the EXIF data in the photos when storing on Google Photos? That's my biggest annoyance.
kodah 3y ago
You don't. I currently run this setup and it's more for people who want to "definitely degoogle" more than they want feature parity with photos. This app is awesome, I intend on contributing if they need it, but it looks solid.
- Roritharr 3y ago
  I don't want to degoogle, but having all my photos hinging on a Google account that can more or less arbitrarily blocked by Google gives me anxiety. Google Takeout effectively destroys your data by stripping all metadata from the photos and putting them into a json file. I haven't found a good solution for regular backups of Photos, has anyone else?
  - dboreham 3y ago
    Call me old fashioned, but I just don't feel confident in placing my valuable data only with a provider like Google. One day there will be an "Ooopsee, we found a bug in our hash function (refactored by summer intern) and um...data for 'a very small number' of users was backed up to the /dev/null shard..."
    - radlad 3y ago
      I think it's much more likely that I make that kind of oopsie long before Google does.
chrismarlow9 3y ago
Photoprism and piwigo seem to be the most used for self hosting. Haven't tried either but slowly making the self hosted move and these were on my research list.
jrm4 3y ago
Big fan of PiGallery3. Looks like pretty much any "native phone" gallery and respects folders, which is pretty much all I need.
- ghgr 3y ago
  I'm very satisfied with PiGallery2. I'd love to try PiGallery3, but I can't find it. Could you share the link for the project, or was it a typo? (hope not!)
  - jrm4 3y ago
    Lol, kind of a typo. For some reason in my head it really was PiGallery3? I do mean 2.
tempestn 3y ago
I use owncloud, though I also use the low-res tier of google photos for easy access and their automated slideshows and such.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jaza 3y ago
I use https://github.com/jpsim/AWSPics https://github.com/jpsim/AWSPics , which takes care of everything. It's great IF you're comfortable with your whole photo solution being cloud-based (but you still own and control it, you're not just handing it all off to a SaaS), rather than being self-hosted. Personally I prefer the former these days, but I know that I'm in the minority here on HN. With AWSPics, sync your photos (just a simple directory tree on your local device) to S3 (I just do it manually from time to time from my desktop, but no doubt it can be done automatically at regular intervals, and/or it can be done directly from a phone), then Lambda functions generate thumbnails and browsable galleries (as static HTML), then you can view it all via CloudFront (password-protected using Origin Access Identity). AWSPics isn't really being actively maintained these days. But it still works fine for me. The setup is cheap, you basically just pay for the S3 storage (currently costing me a bit under $1/month - and I guess you could use a cheaper S3-compatible alternative like Backblaze and reduce your costs further). No server to set up or maintain. Durable backup built-in. Fast reliable CDN built-in.
starwatch 3y ago
I left Google Photos when they included some strangers data in my Takeout backup (and likely put my data in someone elses backup) [1]. Sadly I've not found a self-hosted like-for-like replacement. My photos now move from my phone to a folder that's backed up to s3 via Restic [2]. [1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2020/02/04/google-photos-makes-big-screw-up-and-mayve-leaked-your-videos-to-a-random-stranger/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2020/02/04/googl... [2]: https://restic.net/ https://restic.net/
pricechild 3y ago
https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/memories https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/memories has completely replaced everything I used of Google Photos.
Austizzle 3y ago
I have a Synology NAS and it has a Photos app that is essentially a Google photos clone. It has face recognition, tags, albums, auto backup from phone, etc. Works pretty well, although I wasn't seeking it out or researching other options

bombela 3y ago

I personally still use and pay for Google photo. Mostly because I am lazy finding a better solution. As google photo UI is becoming worse overtime, I wouldn't mind an alternative though.

hiisukun 3y ago

I'm not sure it covers all your features listed, but I use PhotoStructure [1] for the 'album' side of things. It's been mentioned a bit on HN, which is where I found it. Sharing is very open for me since I'm just sharing wholesale with family, but when I need to share specific images or albums to people, I usually do it via some other way that suits them -- so if they use messages, email, google drive, dropbox, or just want to download from a webpage (eg. caddy), I'll enable that. I want an easier way to edit the comments on photos (as embedded metadata) that I haven't found yet. Any image browser where I can hit a convenient hotkey, type "Summer 2023 at the river with cousins X and Y" and move on would be great. If anyone has a suggestion I'm listening keenly! If this is built in to something on MacOS or a linux default desktop (like KDE or something I'm less familiar with), or is a small paid non-subscription app, I would buy it. [1] https://photostructure.com/ https://photostructure.com/

scarface_74 3y ago

I have absolutely no desire to manage my own backup. When I take a picture with my phone, it automatically gets backed up to iCloud, Google Photos, OneDrive, and Amazon Photos (free with prime). When I had a personal computer, photos would sync to my computer and get backed up to BackBlaze also.

crossroadsguy 3y ago
It gets backed up to all of these? On iOS I have tried all except Google and they are all finicky. Even iCloud/Photos.app seems to have a brain of its own. And on the Mac Apple engineers have made sure the photos are not synced in a simple easy folder hierarchy that can be backed up elsewhere.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  Yes, I have to launch OneDrive to start the backup and Amazon photos.
- troupo 3y ago
  Photos.app is just atrocious. Google Photos just works.
Jedd 3y ago
> When I take a picture with my phone, it automatically gets backed up to iCloud, Google Photos, OneDrive, and Amazon Photos (free with prime). If you delete a photo on your phone, does it automatically get deleted from all those services in near-realtime? Do you have an archive solution in place (distinct from your lack of a backup solution)?
- scarface_74 3y ago
  I don’t want it to be synced. I want my pictures and videos to be backed up. I have 2TB on iCloud, 2TB on Google Drive, unlimited back up of photos on Amazon Drive and 1TB on OneDrive. When my OneDrive account gives out of space, I’ll just use one of the other 6 accounts that come with an Office 365 subscription. I guess for an archive solution, I would use my personal AWS account that’s only used to store my videos that fell off the back of a truck once I took my Plex server off line. I have 2TB of videos stored in AWS S3 Deep Glacier archive. I’m charged like $2 a month for it.
  - Jedd 3y ago
    Yeah, I get your intent, but I think there's some conflation of backup and sync. Here's a hypothetical - imagine you deleted a photo from your phone, and then modified (in place) a different photo. Is your expectation that the first would be deleted from the various places you have it backed-up? (If not, then what's your process for fully destroying a photo?) Would the second be propagated to each of your SaaS storage providers overwriting the existing, or renamed and situated adjacent to the original? And if you modified it in-place a second time? If your phone were then to stop working and needed replacing, would the restoration process restore your phone to before, or after, the above deletions / changes were made? ie. would the deleted photo exist on your phone, would the second photo be pre, mid, or post modifications? (I draw the distinction between backups and archives whereby backups get you to where you were most recently (pre incident), and archives let you restore to something like 'Tuesday afternoon, two weeks ago'. I'm talking here purely about backups vs sync though.)

usbakimbo 3y ago

Personally I keep the last 365 days in my Google Photos Everything else is in Immich Pictures and videos I take get backed up to Google Photos Once a year I do a Google Takeout and import into Immich This way I get the best of both worlds

cpill 3y ago
how do you get the photos out of Google Photos (and delete them from there I assume?)? I started on a CLI that could track photos across different accounts and make it easy to move then between them i.e. from GP to s3 or to a local drive etc. Was going to include duplicate detection. But if there is already another tool...?
- IggleSniggle 3y ago
  Didn't they say Google Takeout?
venusenvy47 3y ago
Do you lose the EXIF data in the photos when storing on Google Photos? That's my biggest annoyance.

kodah 3y ago

You don't. I currently run this setup and it's more for people who want to "definitely degoogle" more than they want feature parity with photos. This app is awesome, I intend on contributing if they need it, but it looks solid.

Roritharr 3y ago
I don't want to degoogle, but having all my photos hinging on a Google account that can more or less arbitrarily blocked by Google gives me anxiety. Google Takeout effectively destroys your data by stripping all metadata from the photos and putting them into a json file. I haven't found a good solution for regular backups of Photos, has anyone else?
- dboreham 3y ago
  Call me old fashioned, but I just don't feel confident in placing my valuable data only with a provider like Google. One day there will be an "Ooopsee, we found a bug in our hash function (refactored by summer intern) and um...data for 'a very small number' of users was backed up to the /dev/null shard..."
  - radlad 3y ago
    I think it's much more likely that I make that kind of oopsie long before Google does.

chrismarlow9 3y ago

Photoprism and piwigo seem to be the most used for self hosting. Haven't tried either but slowly making the self hosted move and these were on my research list.

jrm4 3y ago

Big fan of PiGallery3. Looks like pretty much any "native phone" gallery and respects folders, which is pretty much all I need.

ghgr 3y ago
I'm very satisfied with PiGallery2. I'd love to try PiGallery3, but I can't find it. Could you share the link for the project, or was it a typo? (hope not!)
- jrm4 3y ago
  Lol, kind of a typo. For some reason in my head it really was PiGallery3? I do mean 2.

tempestn 3y ago

I use owncloud, though I also use the low-res tier of google photos for easy access and their automated slideshows and such.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

jaza 3y ago

I use https://github.com/jpsim/AWSPics https://github.com/jpsim/AWSPics , which takes care of everything. It's great IF you're comfortable with your whole photo solution being cloud-based (but you still own and control it, you're not just handing it all off to a SaaS), rather than being self-hosted. Personally I prefer the former these days, but I know that I'm in the minority here on HN. With AWSPics, sync your photos (just a simple directory tree on your local device) to S3 (I just do it manually from time to time from my desktop, but no doubt it can be done automatically at regular intervals, and/or it can be done directly from a phone), then Lambda functions generate thumbnails and browsable galleries (as static HTML), then you can view it all via CloudFront (password-protected using Origin Access Identity). AWSPics isn't really being actively maintained these days. But it still works fine for me. The setup is cheap, you basically just pay for the S3 storage (currently costing me a bit under $1/month - and I guess you could use a cheaper S3-compatible alternative like Backblaze and reduce your costs further). No server to set up or maintain. Durable backup built-in. Fast reliable CDN built-in.

starwatch 3y ago

I left Google Photos when they included some strangers data in my Takeout backup (and likely put my data in someone elses backup) [1]. Sadly I've not found a self-hosted like-for-like replacement. My photos now move from my phone to a folder that's backed up to s3 via Restic [2]. [1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2020/02/04/google-photos-makes-big-screw-up-and-mayve-leaked-your-videos-to-a-random-stranger/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2020/02/04/googl... [2]: https://restic.net/ https://restic.net/

pricechild 3y ago

https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/memories https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/memories has completely replaced everything I used of Google Photos.

Austizzle 3y ago

I have a Synology NAS and it has a Photos app that is essentially a Google photos clone. It has face recognition, tags, albums, auto backup from phone, etc. Works pretty well, although I wasn't seeking it out or researching other options