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:

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:

  1. Choose Add > Upload from my computer or Copy from my DiskStation.
  2. In the window that appears, do any of the following:
  3. 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.
  4. Choose from any of the following drop-down menus:
  5. 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.

To upload files from local folder to an album with drag and drop:

  1. Find the album which you want to upload files to on the Photos page. Click the album cover to enter the album.
  2. 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.
  3. When the upload process is complete, click the Close button and refresh your browser window to see the uploaded files.

To edit album details:

  1. When you are on Photo Station's home page, click an album cover to enter its thumbnail page(s).
  2. Click Add description, and then edit the album's information in the text field.
  3. Click OK.

To change album cover:

  1. When you are on Photo Station's home page, click an album cover to enter its thumbnail page(s).
  2. Choose More > Set album cover.
  3. In the window that appears, choose a thumbnail you want to set as album cover.
  4. Click Save.

To edit albums' privacy settings:

  1. Go to Settings > Photos > Basic Settings.
  2. Click Access Permissions and tick the checkboxes under any of the following headers:
  3. Click Save.

To delete or move albums:

  1. When you are on Photo Station's home page, choose Manage > Delete or Move.
  2. 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:

  1. Go to Settings > Photos > Basic Settings.
  2. Do any of the following:
  3. Click Save.

Download Albums

You can allow users to download albums via Photo Station.

To allow users to download albums:

  1. Go to Settings > Photos > Other Settings.
  2. Tick Allow users to download album, and click Save.

To download an album:

  1. When you are on Photo Station's home page, click an album cover to enter the album's thumbnail page(s).
  2. Choose More > Download.
  3. In the window that appears, do any of the following. Your selections will be downloaded as a zip file.

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:

  1. Go to Settings and click the Photos tab.
  2. Click Virtual Album.
  3. Tick the checkboxes to enable any virtual albums according to your preferences.
  4. Note: If you have ticked People tag, a virtual album containing unconfirmed people tags will appear with the album name: To-be-confirmed Album.

  5. 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).
  6. 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:

Customize Album Layout

You can go to Settings and click the Photos tab to customize album layout.

To customize layout:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. Click OK to save the changes and return to the Settings page.

To customize thumbnails within any albums:

  1. Do any of the following:
  2. 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:

  1. Go to the Settings page, click the Photos tab, and click Tag in the Basic Settings section.
  2. Select any people tag, geotag, or descriptive tag from the list, and do the following:
  3. 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:

  1. Go to the Settings page and click the Photos tab.
  2. In the Face Recognition section, tick Enable face recognition to enable the face detection function.
  3. 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.

To activate auto face recognition:

  1. Go to the Settings page and click the Photos tab.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.

  5. 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:

  1. Go to Settings and click the Photos tab.
  2. In the Basic Settings section, tick Enable Timeline function.
  3. Click Save.

To configure Timeline settings:

  1. Go to the Timeline page and click Settings at the top-left corner.
  2. Do the following to determine how you want your photos or videos to be presented with Timeline:
  3. Click Save to apply the changes.

To play with Timeline, do the following:

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:

  1. Go to the Photos page, and click Add > New smart album.
  2. 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.
  3. Click OK. Photos and videos matching the specified criteria will appear in the new smart album.

To modify search criteria for smart albums:

  1. When you are on Photo Station's home page, click the cover of smart album to enter the album.
  2. Click Manage > Modify search criteria to modify the search conditions set before for the album.
  3. Click OK. Files matching the revised criteria will be shown in the album.

To delete smart albums:

  1. When you are on Photo Station's home page, click the cover of smart album to enter the album.
  2. Choose Manage > Delete this album, and click OK.
  3. 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:

  1. Enter keywords in the search field at the top-right corner of Photo Station’s home page or any album page.
  2. Press Enter on your keyboard or click the search icon to start searching. Albums, photos, and videos matching the search criteria will appear.
  3. Note: If you search inside an album page, only items in the album will be searched.

To perform an advanced search:

  1. 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.
  2. Follow the same instructions given for creating smart albums.
  3. Click OK. The search results will appear.
  4. Note: If you search inside an album page, only items in the album will be searched.

To create smart albums with advanced search:

  1. Follow the steps for performing an advanced search, and click Save as Smart Album.
  2. Enter the name of smart album in window that appear, and click OK.