Photo Station Album
You as Photo Station administrator can sign in and go to the Photos page to create albums and upload photos via various methods depending on which suits you best, manage albums with different functions, view uploaded files with quality thumbnail for better browsing experience, and edit photos and videos.
For the latest information about photo and video formats supported by Photo Station, visit Synology's website.
Create Albums
If you have Photo Station’s administrative privilege, you can use any of the following methods to upload the new album to the photo shared folder (for the default Photo Station managed by DiskStation admin) or home/photo folder (for Personal Photo Stations managed DiskStation users).
The length of time required largely depends on the size and the amount of files. Of all the methods mentioned in this section, we recommend you use Photo Station Uploader, which utilizes your computer’s system resources for quicker thumbnail generation and video compression before the uploading process starts.
To upload albums, do any of the following:
- Upload Using Photo Station Uploader (Available for Windows and Mac)
You can upload your photos and videos to Photo Station using Photo Station Uploader.
This is the most convenient method because you can easily upload files with the file explorer by right-clicking the files and folders after installing Photo Station Uploader on your local computer. If the files to be uploaded contain videos, select conversion qualities (high, medium, low, mobile) you prefer; videos will be converted to the selected qualities for playback in Photo Station. Follow the onscreen instructions to complete the upload procedure.
- Upload Albums Using Photo Uploader (Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux)
You can upload your albums to Synology DiskStation using Photo Uploader (Synology Assistant), one of the several functions of Synology Assistant.
Before uploading, Photo Uploader will use your computer to compress videos to H.264 format, and generate thumbnails for the photos and videos. For more information about using Photo Uploader, see the Help of Synology Assistant.
- Create Albums Using Photo Station
Go to Photo Station’s home page, choose Add > New Album, and follow onscreen instructions to create a new album. See Manage Albums for more information about uploading photos and videos to an album.
- Upload via File Sharing Protocols or File Station
Select the photos and videos on your computer, and put them in a folder that will become your new album.
- To upload within the Intranet:
If your computer and Synology DiskStation are within the same Intranet, you can upload the album via the file sharing protocols for your platform. For more information about accessing folders within the Intranet, see "Access Files within the Intranet" of Synology DiskStation Users' Guide on Chapter 8.
- To upload over the Internet: If your computer and Synology DiskStation are not within the same Intranet, you can upload your album via File Station or FTP. For more information about accessing folders over the Internet, see "Access Files via FTP" or "Access Files via File Station" of Synology DiskStation Users' Guide on Chapter 8.
- Upload Using DS photo+ (Mobile App)
If you have an iOS/Android device or Windows Phone, you can upload photos from your device to Photo Station with DS photo+. See the DS photo+ Help for more information.
Manage Albums
Manage your albums with the upload, delete, download, and reorder functions. Edit the titles, descriptions, and access privileges according to your need. You can also enable virtual albums in Photo Station.
To upload photos and videos to an album:
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Choose Add > Upload from my computer or Copy from my DiskStation.
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In the window that appears, do any of the following:
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If you want to upload photos or videos to the current folder, choose Upload to the current album.
This option is available only when you are already browsing photos within an album.
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If you want to upload photos or videos to a subfolder, choose Upload to, and name the subfolder. You can choose from the drop-down menu to set the new folder as a public, private, or password locked album if you are browsing albums on Photo Station's home page.
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Click Browse and then select the photos or videos you want to upload. After you've made your selection, the selected photos or videos will be shown in the window. Use the Delete or Clear All button to change your selection.
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Choose from any of the following drop-down menus:
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Options: Decide whether to convert thumbnails that will be uploaded along with the original photos.
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If the file already exists: Decide whether to overwrite or skip files that already exist in the album.
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Click Upload to start uploading, which may take a while to complete. When the upload process is complete, refresh your browser window to see the uploaded photos or videos.
Note:
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You can only upload up to 2GB of contents at a time.
- Only users with the access and upload rights to the album can upload photos and videos. See To edit albums' privacy settings for more information.
To upload files from local folder to an album with drag and drop:
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Find the album which you want to upload files to on the Photos page. Click the album cover to enter the album.
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Choose the photos and/or videos you want to upload from your local folder, drag these files to the destination album, and drop them. The upload will start immediately. Uploading progress will be shown in the window that appears.
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When the upload process is complete, click the Close button and refresh your browser window to see the uploaded files.
Note:
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Files to be uploaded with drag and drop must be less than 1GB.
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Following browsers do not support drag-and-drop uploading function: Internet Explorer 9 or previous version, Opera
- Files to be uploaded will be renamed automatically if files with the same name already exist.
To edit album details:
- When you are on Photo Station's home page, click an album cover to enter its thumbnail page(s).
- Click Add description, and then edit the album's information in the text field.
- Click OK.
To change album cover:
- When you are on Photo Station's home page, click an album cover to enter its thumbnail page(s).
- Choose More > Set album cover.
- In the window that appears, choose a thumbnail you want to set as album cover.
- Click Save.
To edit albums' privacy settings:
- Go to Settings > Photos > Basic Settings.
- Click Access Permissions and tick the checkboxes under any of the following headers:
- Public Album: The album can be seen by all viewers.
- Private Album: The album can be accessed by user accounts with proper access permissions.
- Password Locked: If you select this option, enter a password under the Password header. The album will be locked unless viewers enter the correct password to unlock the album.
- Click Save.
To delete or move albums:
- When you are on Photo Station's home page, choose Manage > Delete or Move.
- Select the albums you want to delete or move, and then follow on screen instructions to delete the selected albums or move them into another album.
To customize album order:
- Go to Settings > Photos > Basic Settings.
- Do any of the following:
- Choose the number of albums per page from the Albums per page drop-down menu.
- Choose Ascending or Descending from the Sort by folder name drop-down menu to sort albums in ascending or descending order.
- Choose Sort by preference, click Rearrange, click OK, and then drag any album to change its order.
- Click Save.
Download Albums
You can allow users to download albums via Photo Station.
To allow users to download albums:
- Go to Settings > Photos > Other Settings.
- Tick Allow users to download album, and click Save.
To download an album:
- When you are on Photo Station's home page, click an album cover to enter the album's thumbnail page(s).
- Choose More > Download.
- In the window that appears, do any of the following. Your selections will be downloaded as a zip file.
- Choose Download all to download the entire album as a zip file.
- Choose Select items to download, select the items you want to download and click OK. (Press and hold Shift or Ctrl while making multiple selections.)
Enable Virtual Albums
Photo Station allows you to display the most recent photos and videos in "virtual albums", which will be listed in front of all the other albums on the Photos page.
To enable virtual albums:
- Go to Settings and click the Photos tab.
- Click Virtual Album.
- Tick the checkboxes to enable any virtual albums according to your preferences.
Note: If you have ticked People tag, a virtual album containing unconfirmed people tags will appear with the album name: To-be-confirmed Album.
- Choose from the drop-down menus to specify the number of photos or videos that will be displayed in the selected virtual albums (not applicable to People tag, Geotag, and Descriptive tag).
- Click Save.
Set Thumbnail and Video Settings
When you upload photos or videos for use with Media Server or Photo Station, thumbnails will be created for better browsing experience. You can set the thumbnail quality and monitor the thumbnail creation progress. Meanwhile, if you would like to view videos in the photo shared folder of Photo Station on your mobile devices, you can enable video conversion and view the conversion progress as well.
To set thumbnail and video settings:
Log in to DSM, and go to Main Menu > Control Panel > Media Indexing Service to set the thumbnail quality and monitor the conversion progress. For more information about setting thumbnail quality and monitoring thumbnail creation progress, click the Help button (with a question mark) at the top-right corner.
View and Edit Photos and Videos
After the album is created, you can log in to Photo Station and go to the Photos page, where you can see the albums you uploaded. Click the album cover to browse photos or play videos within the album.
To manage a photo or video, click the following links:
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Information: See the metadata information of the photo or video.
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Slideshow: Start a slideshow of the album.
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Map or Geotag: See where the photo is taken (for Map) or set the photo's geotag information by right-clicking on the map and setting the coordinates (for Geotag).
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Share > Blog it: Embed a photo or video into a new blog post.
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Share > Link to > [social networking websites]: Share the photo or video’s link to the social networks.
- Share > Upload to [social networking websites]: Upload the photo or video to the social networks.
- Share > Get photo link: Share the link of the photo by pasting it to email or instant message.
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Edit: Choose a web-based external photo editor to edit the photo.
Note: Before sharing a link or editing a photo, make sure you have configured port forwarding of Photo Station on your router. If the public HTTP port is not 80, set the router port number at Settings > General.
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Add Comments: Add comments to the photo or video.
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Download (video only): Download the video to your computer.
Note: This option is available only if you have ticked Allow users to download album and Allow users to download video files at Settings > Photos.
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Set as Album Cover (top-right corner): Set the photo or video as the album cover.
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Rotate (top-right corner; photo only): Rotate the photo.
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Delete (top-right corner): Delete the photo or video.
Customize Album Layout
You can go to Settings and click the Photos tab to customize album layout.
To customize layout:
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Click Theme, click Template at the top-left corner, and then edit the following layout options. You can see a preview of your layout adjustment in the lower half of the browser window. If you want to reset the layout options to default settings, click Reset to default settings.
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Template: You can choose to have a dark-colored or light-colored template, and adjust the transparency of the template.
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Background Image: This could be a pattern or photo provided by Synology, or an image uploaded from your computer.
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Background Color or Font Color: Choose from the drop-down menus to find your favorite background or font color.
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Logo Image: This could be the default image or an image uploaded from your computer, or you could choose to hide the logo image.
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If you know how to use CSS codes to fine-tune your layout, click CSS Customization at the top-left corner, enter your CSS codes in the text field, and then click Preview to see a preview of your adjustment in the lower half of the browser window.
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Click OK to save the changes and return to the Settings page.
To customize thumbnails within any albums:
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Do any of the following:
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Specify the default thumbnail mode by choosing either of the following:
- Simple mode: Display square-shaped photo thumbnails by cropping the edges of photos.
- Detail mode: Display photo thumbnails by showing the full photos and displaying the titles beneath the photos.
For each mode, you can specify the default thumbnail size in the Default thumbnail size field.
Note: When you are browsing photo thumbnails within an album, you can also specify the default thumbnail mode and size using the slider at the top-right corner and the More > Layout menu.
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Choose the number of thumbnails per page from the Thumbnail per page drop-down menu.
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Choose from the Sort by drop-down menu to determine how thumbnails are sorted, and then choose from the Sort order drop-down menu to sort thumbnails in ascending or descending order.
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Click Save.
Manage Tags for Photos
Photo Station allows you to tag your photos with people, locations, and descriptions, and manage people tags, geotags, and descriptive tags with the add, edit, delete, and confirm functions.
To add a people tag, descriptive tag, or geotag, do the following:
To batch edit or delete tags:
- Go to the Settings page, click the Photos tab, and click Tag in the Basic Settings section.
- Select any people tag, geotag, or descriptive tag from the list, and do the following:
- Click Edit or double-click the selected tag. Edit the item in the pop-up window, and then click Save to save or click Cancel to discard the changes.
- Click Delete to remove the selected tags. Press and hold Shift or Ctrl while making multiple selections. Click Yes to confirm or click No to cancel the changes.
- Click Close to close the window.
Perform Face Recognition
You can go to the Settings page and click the Photos tab to try out Photo Stations' experimentally groundbreaking feature: face recognition.
By enabling this function, not only can Photo Station be configured to detect faces and perform auto recognition for photos, but you can identify faces yourselves manually.
To enable face recognition:
- Go to the Settings page
and click the Photos tab.
- In the Face Recognition section, tick Enable face recognition to enable the face detection function.
- Click Save.
You can now ask Photo Station to identify people for you by clicking Face recognition from the Tag drop-down menu while browsing one single
photo within an album. However, before you perform this action, make sure you have created a few people tags; otherwise, no item can be retrieved to match up from Photo Station's database of people tag.
Note: If this option is not enabled, you are not allowed to configure Photo Station to auto recognize faces for you.
To activate auto face recognition:
- Go to the Settings page
and click the Photos tab.
- In the Face Recognition section, tick Perform auto face recognition for new photos. Faces appearing in the newly-added photos will be detected and people tags will be created accordingly. These tags generated by system search will be displayed with dotted lines, indicating that they have not been confirmed yet. To confirm the dotted-line people tags, you must hover your mouse over the face, enter the name of the person in the text field, and click the "v" next to the field or press Enter. The dotted lines will become a solid line, which means that the person found by the system is officially verified.
Note: The name you input in the name field will be collected into the database of Photo Station, and will be retrieved and displayed on the drop-down list as a suggestion later whenever a people tag is created.
- If you want to find people appearing in all photos, click the Find people for all photos button to scan all photos. Tags will be generated after the scan is finished, and name fields will be auto-filled in from your people tag list for the people you chose to tag. Refer to here for tag management.
Note: If faces on the photos cannot be recognized, they will be circled in dotted lines with a question mark and no suggestions will be provided on the drop-down list. You need to identify them one by one.
- Click Save.
Browse Photos and Videos with Timeline
Browsing photos and videos with Timeline is intuitive and easy. You can navigate the files by scrolling up or down the mouse wheel to quickly find photos or videos of a specific period of time, and simultaneously view where they are taken or recorded with Google Maps displayed below.
To enable Timeline:
- Go to Settings and click the Photos tab.
- In the Basic Settings section, tick Enable Timeline function.
- Click Save.
To configure Timeline settings:
- Go to the Timeline page and click Settings at the top-left corner.
- Do the following to determine how you want your photos or videos to be presented with Timeline:
- Click the drop-down menus to choose in what order items are to be displayed on your preferred time scale.
- Tick the checkbox to restrict displaying tags on Timeline to people tag only.
- Click Save to apply the changes.
To play with Timeline, do the following:
- To change the Timeline scale, click the magnifier with "+" or "-" at the bottom-right corner of Timeline to display items by week, month, or year.
- To preview photos of an album, hover your mouse over the photo set and its photos will be played like a mini slideshow for quick navigation.
- To view photos of an album in full screen, click any photo set and its photos will be displayed in full screen.
- Click the photo you are viewing or the forward/back arrow to browse to next/previous photo.
- Click the double arrow at the top-right corner on the right side to collapse or expand the information panel.
- Click anywhere outside the image composed of the photo and information panel to return to the Timeline page.
Create Smart Albums
Photo Station allows you to create smart albums in which photos and videos matching specified search criteria are stored. Smart albums will be listed in front of all the other albums on the Photos page.
To create smart albums:
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Go to the Photos page, and click Add > New smart album.
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In the window that appears, enter the name of smart album, select a file type, and set any of the conditions below. You must select at least one file type and set one condition.
- Keyword: Enter keywords (not case-sensitive) in the field and use space, comma, or semicolon to separate keywords. Words appearing in file name, title or description will be searched. Maximum length is 50 characters.
- All of these words: If you enter "a, b, c", files containing all of these three units altogether will be listed.
- Any of these words: If you enter "a, b, c", files containing any of the three units will be listed.
- The exact phrase: If you enter "a, b, c", only files containing the phrase in the exactly same order will be listed. For example, if you want to look for a file including words cba, you will fail to find any result by selecting this option because the sequence is not "a, b, c".
- Date: Specify the time period photos were taken or uploaded.
- People Tag: Enter existing people tags in the field, and choose to include all or any of the tags. Maximum number of people tags is 20.
- Geotag: Enter existing geotags in the field, and choose to include all or any of the tags. Maximal number of geotags is 5.
- Descriptive Tag: Enter existing descriptive tags in the field, and choose to include all or any of the tags. Maximal number of descriptive tags is 5.
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Click OK. Photos and videos matching the specified criteria will appear in the new smart album.
Note:
- Tags must be created before you specify conditions for people tag, geotag, and descriptive tag. Otherwise, no result can be retrieved to display on the drop-down menu.
- People tag is not available for videos, so the condition of searching people tags will be ignored when videos are searched.
To modify search criteria for smart albums:
- When you are on Photo Station's home page, click the cover of smart album to enter the album.
- Click Manage > Modify search criteria to modify the search conditions set before for the album.
- Click OK. Files matching the revised criteria will be shown in the album.
To delete smart albums:
- When you are on Photo Station's home page, click the cover of smart album to enter the album.
- Choose Manage > Delete this album, and click OK.
Note: Delete smart albums will not delete the physical files.
Search Albums, Photos, and Videos
Photo Station provides the search function from general to advanced for albums, photos, and videos. With the advanced search, you can save the files found by search criteria as smart albums.
However, the search function is not available for any kinds of virtual albums, including smart albums.
To perform a general search:
- Enter keywords in the search field at the top-right corner of Photo Station’s home page or any album page.
- Press Enter on your keyboard or click the search icon to start searching. Albums, photos, and videos matching the search criteria will appear.
Note: If you search inside an album page, only items in the album will be searched.
To perform an advanced search:
- Click the downward triangle to the right of the search filed at the top-right corner of Photo Station’s home page or any album page.
- Follow the same instructions given for creating smart albums.
- Click OK. The search results will appear.
Note: If you search inside an album page, only items in the album will be searched.
To create smart albums with advanced search:
- Follow the steps for performing an advanced search, and click Save as Smart Album.
- Enter the name of smart album in window that appear, and click OK.
Note:
- Only files of level one and level two can be found and displayed in the search result.
- Only by entering the advanced search view on Photo Station's home page can you save your search result as a smart album. This function is not available when you enter an album's thumbnail page.
- Albums appearing in the search result will not be shown in the saved smart album.