OS X iPhoto Migration to my NAS

[gbshuler]

So.. thinking of taking the plunge and setting up to run Synology Photo Station.
What is the best way to migrate an iPhoto Library to Photo Station?
Thoughts..

The iPhoto Library directory holds so many things..

1. iPhoto's own thumbnails (will Synology create thumbnails of the thumbnails?)
2. The original images -- unrotated (even if camera auto-rotates), unedited.
3. The modified images -- I spent a bazillion hours cropping, color balancing, etc.
4. Dumb Albums - (I just manually grouped together by dragging them to a new folder)
5. Smart Albums - (Say photos taken by XYZ camera and in the state of Missouri)
6. Events - (Photos taken on Dec 24, 2010 are in the custom event "Grandma Gump hosts Christmas Eve at the swamp shack").
7. etc.

To do the deed of migration I could:

1. Drag and drop iPhoto Library onto my public photo directory on my DS411+II running DSM 3.1 build 1742.
2. Select Photos in iPhoto and press Command-A (selecting all photos in edited form), then do a File->Export, FileExport with Kind=Original, File Name=?)
3. Root around and see if I can build a set of the original photo files on my file system and export those].

Looking at the Photo Station page at Synology.com does not look promising in regards to meta-data. Should I expect to lose all my albums, events, etc?

Bottom line:
What is the best way to migrate an iPhoto Library to Photo Station?
I have read and heard about expectations of days or weeks to build the thumbnails.
One tip I heard is to remove Unix file system soft-links (smart tip if Synology DSM isn't going to recognize them and an infinite loop exists). (I will use "find . -type l" on the mac to identify them in iPhoto Library first)

Thanks for any tips or suggestions.

Brad

[NAS_DS710+]

I have the same question, any help here?

[Duiker]

I'm wondering the same thing. Dragging the whole iPhoto library ends up creating a ton of subfodlers which means rooting through folder after folder to find a pic.

I did find this in a different thread on the forum though.

".....Anyway, in case anyone else (who is as mentally challenged as myself) stumbles across this post from looking for the Uploader Assistant then;-

Synology Assistant is the window that first boots when you start the program, and it's this window that has the blue gearwheel. You would then normally enter DiskStation Manager from Synology Assistant although ignore the DiskStation Manager window for now. There is a blue gearwheel in the top right-hand corner of Synology Assistant that contains the setting for allowing your PC to generate the thumbnails as opposed to the DiskStation. You are then given a new Photo Uploader tab within Synology Assistant. From there you choose your desired destination folder and select either the files or folders you wish to upload.

This feature is hugely important. My DS211+ takes minutes on its own just to create a single thumbnail which is a major issue when you're trying to upload thousands of images and I would say renders the unit useless. However, once Photo Uploader is enabled your PC's processor creates the thumbnails and with my laptop the same thumbnail takes about five seconds to generate and a couple more to upload.

I went out to work yesterday and left my DS to upload 6500 photos and a few videos with my PC creating the thumbnails. By the time I returned home it had uploaded everything perfectly. Not kidding, the DS would have taken weeks to complete the same process.

I would say that for a lot of users this is the single most important feature of this machine and yet it's glossed over in the user guide, and not explained thoroughly enough for us dunces.

Anyway, slowly getting to grips with this machine, and now that I've found the unit's best kept secret I'm pleased to say I love it!

[the voyeur]

Ok thats if you are going to use photo station. Browsing these forums I'm not sure I've found an answer to this:

I have a spanking new mac and a spanking new ds 212J loaded with a mirrored tb of storage. (2 1tb drives)
I have not loaded any media onto the local mac hard disk, thinking that i would use the nas to host all files.
I want to use iPhoto to manage my photo library-I just want the library to reside on the DS.

Is this possible? When I hold option down while launching iPhoto (to select the library location) I can navigate all the way through to the folders where the photos are located on the ds, but iPhoto does not allow me to select any of the folders.

I have not started or installed photo station yet.

Any guidance is helpful...

[Marsocky]

This might be a complete red herring, dead end, cul-de-sac, wild goose chase, what you will but is there any mileage in using iPhoto Manager (Fat Cat Software - http://www.fatcatsoftware.com/iplm/) and creating an iPhoto Library on the NAS itself via cloning or similar? What are the issues if this library is your main iPhoto library? As far as I can see (not tried it yet!) you'd clearly not use Photo Station at all and the iPhoto Library would be a stand-alone folder on the volume of your NAS - presumably a shared folder. Updating would happen as it always would but access would perhaps only be available if your Mac was running too (which kind of defeats one of the purposes of the NAS!). Wondering what access from iPhones, iPads, XBox, PVR's, media servers etc., would be like? As I'm writing this I'm thinking its all a bit too obvious.....

[checkeys]

Ok thats if you are going to use photo station. Browsing these forums I'm not sure I've found an answer to this:

I have a spanking new mac and a spanking new ds 212J loaded with a mirrored tb of storage. (2 1tb drives)
I have not loaded any media onto the local mac hard disk, thinking that i would use the nas to host all files.
I want to use iPhoto to manage my photo library-I just want the library to reside on the DS.

Is this possible? When I hold option down while launching iPhoto (to select the library location) I can navigate all the way through to the folders where the photos are located on the ds, but iPhoto does not allow me to select any of the folders.

I have not started or installed photo station yet.

Any guidance is helpful...

Same story here. I'm trying to find a solution a solution as well.. Does anybody use the iPhoto Manager (Fat Cat Software - http://www.fatcatsoftware.com/iplm/) ??

[phillyman]

Hi,

I can give a little input... I have and used iPhoto library manager to move my iPhoto library to the disk station. My guess is you could probably just drag and drop within the finder or to be on the safe side duplicate it and move that to the disk station.

I set up a separate shared folder called iPhoto library and then using the option+click iPhoto logo changed the default library on both my iMac and laptop. I can now access my library from both computers with all changes, albums etc.

Two caveats:

1. I would try not to run iPhoto at the same time. Most databases get confused and this could potentially be an issue.

2. For me it's not a huge issue but it will take some time to load the pictures in on a wireless connection.

Other than that it works fine. What I REALLY would like would then be able to use photo station, media server DLNA to display the pictures on a TV etc. and especially be able to access my albums on my iOS devices. Sadly as much as I've read this is not possible due to the package structure of iPhoto.

Someone even had a space saving idea of combining the time machine backup (if you have your iPhoto library on your mac still and the time machine back on the Diskstation) and Photostation, which I also find intriguing...

But mostly I would really like to be able to access my iPhoto library through photo station. Again as much as I read that isn't easily possible but if anyone knows of a solution I'd be very interested...

Hope the info on the centralized iPhoto library helps.

Cheers,
Philly

[gd11_be]

Hi Philly,

And so we end up in the same topic again I have the same issue with my Aperture. I am running Aperture on my iMac, and I also haven't found an easy way to get this to the DS. Of course, I make a backup of my pictures to the NAS via the built-in Aperture backup mechanism.

But by doing this: I never have the pictures on my NAS itself or available in the media centre part. Of course, I can export all my pictures to JPG and get them indexed that way, but that is yet another synchronization that I need to start manually, and it is cumbersome.

So anybody who has an idea to migrate OSX Aperture (or iPhoto) to the NAS in an easy way, I am also interested ! Cheers, from Belgium, Geert

[Marsocky]

I've just sold my MacBook Pro and acquired an old but effective Mac Pro. It's got two spare Hard Drive bays. I'm starting to wonder whether I wouldn't just be better off putting the 2 x 2TB drives in the Mac and stream photos to the TV using PLEX, XBMC or just the Remote App with either an AV cable or the Apple TV2! The MP is built to be on all of the time - why am I struggling with this NAS when it's built in software won't talk to my existing databases? I feel like I'm missing something here.

[gd11_be]

I understand your point of view, but the pictures is only a small part of the 'deal' .The fact that your NAS can be used to store all your data, all your MP3's, make them available to all your devices in your home, that is part of the purpose of the NAS, and of course, the power consumption. Anyway, everybody has their own kind of setup & priorities. and BTW: Mac Pro's ! Super tool !

[phillyman]

Hi Geert and Marsocky,

I see both sides. I'm extremely happy with my NAS especially so that I DON'T have to run my computer all the time. But it is very unfortunate that synology cannot find a way to access the databases. It would be extremely impractical to sync on our own and as pointed out by Geert pointless!

As mentioned it would be greatly appreciated by all mac users if this "missing" piece could be added in some form or fashion! Synology has made a real effort in courting the mac business and I/we appreciate that a lot and probably are fairly brand loyal (look what we go through with Apple's tough love)

But I have to say, most users want to put ALL their media on their NAS and then be able to access it and back it up, so there is a REAL hole for that use. Solutions that have been recommended do not really address the issue of being able to have one copy for everything without us having to work/fiddle with it. I'm very interested in the dropbox like solution in 4.0 but would venture that most mac users would prefer on emphasis been made on trying to make iPhoto libraries and Photo station compatible. I hope/think Synology tried but that Apple made it difficult. But they did make Time machine work so maybe there is hope...



At Geert, you use Aperture and some export feature? How does that differ from iPhoto and just exporting the library? Does some of the library data (not files) stay on your mac and as such is faster? My needs are fairly basic for pictures but I was wondering why you chose Aperture over iPhoto and how that related to the NAS.


Cheers,

Philly
And yes, we do end up in similar places.. Mac users with the same goals for their NAS's. I'm experimenting with the VPN option and as such being able to close off all external ports... Next step local screen sharing via VPN over the internet

[effusion_01]

Trying to do a similar thing, wonder if anyone got it working.
Am running my iPhoto on my oimac right now but just got a new iMac and trying to find a way to run it from the NAS now, as just bought a ds212+, would i need to create a folder for iPhoto and upload all images there and than also upload in shared folder for photo station? that would be redundant, is there s impel way to share photos between the two using the NAS and iMac.

[gd11_be]

Dear All,

I am experimenting with the 'referenced pictures' in Aperture, but it looks like it is also possible with iPhoto.

So the idea is the following: Rather than storing the pictures on your Mac, you store the pictures on your NAS, but your iPhoto / Aperture library is on your local Mac. I have tried this with Aperture on a couple of pictures and that seems to work.

And the trick is that you then store / organize your source files on your NAS in the same directories / project names as you use in your Aperture structure. And you put the pictures in a directory that is picked up by the Media Server, in my case Logitech Media Server 7.7, on DSM 4.0.

The advantage: automatically when you add pictures, they get indexed, and that is OK as long you want to source pictures
The dis-advantage:
1. I have not found a way to keep the 'version' in other words the modified/changed pictures on the NAS and still reference those. I also don't think this is possible, as the changed in Aperture or stored in a database, not within the picture JPG or RAW file itself.
2. you miss of course the nice ratings and search features of Aperture.

So my idea that I am going to experiment with
1. store all my source pictures on the NAS via referenced files, and this in directories
2. store some of my best/modified/ pictures (if I have any ) on seperate directory on the NAS.

If you google 'referenced files Aperture' or 'referenced files iPhoto', you can find a lot around this topic. Hope this is of any use.

Cheers, Geert, Brussels

[itbedave]

I just purchased the DS212j and am in the process of setting it up. I had a Buffalo NAS previously and purchased the 212j for it's RAID capabilities and software additional features.

I was able to simply copy my iPhoto library file from my old NAS to the new 212j and then point iPhoto back to the new location for the library. Everything works fine. No complicated folder structure or anything.

Now, I DID NOT put my iPhoto library in the dedicated DMS "photo" folder as I don't want it to screw with iPhoto, at all. I just created a new folder and called it "Photo Libraries" (I have more than one) and put it in there.

With an AppleTV, I can view my iPhoto libraries on my TV. with iTunes, I can synch photos to my iPod, iPad, etc. And iPhoto lets me share with DB, PhotoBucket, Flickr, and other sites already. With AirPlay becoming more available, I really have no use for DMS built-in photo functions, nor do I want to duplicate my library. The iPhoto workflow works too well to mess it up.

I've got over 50,000 photos in my iPhoto library. I feel better now knowing they are on a RAIDed NAS.

[effusion_01]

I tied that too but speed is an issue, have you seen a lot of rely trying to access iPhoto library from the NAS?