Photo Station 6.0, surely not tested in real life

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jgveill
Starting out
Posts: 33
Joined: Mon Oct 01, 2018 6:23 am
Location: Quebec

Photo Station 6.0, surely not tested in real life

Post by jgveill »

I tried to use Photo Station to manage my photos. I knew I would experience some learning curve but never taught I could face so many limited features that make this software very difficult to use for managing photos. This software is made to manage photos and I really suspect the builders never used it in real life to classify their photos and never used filters to see them. Too many things just don’t work as they should and too many required features are missing or very well hidden somewhere.

- Photo Station 6.0 HAS to have a user manual … First major problem as we only have access to a very limited user manual with version 5.0. So basic that you learn nothing ...
- In a photo management software we should be able to change photo’s name. No mention about that.
- Smart album does not always show all the pictures included in folder from it’s Album Settings. Set Album Settings and it will work as long as you do not close Photo Station. At creation, a smart album includes 1078 photos. Close Photo station and open it again and the numbers of photos shown in the small picture icon is 19, clicking on the album shows 100 photos, no way to see all of them or even know that some are not shown. The only way to recover the is to do album settings again.
- Pictures shown in Photo Station can appear quite differently in Photo Station compared to Windows File explorer. In fact, I corrected pictures with a specialized software and they appear like uncorrected in Photo Station. Taht's a major problem ! Photos in Photo Station may not be What You See … First time I see a software not appropriately showing photos. See Added photo
- In Smart Albums settings, we can click to select folders and subfolders but ... selecting does not work. We have to select ONLY ONE folder per Add. To include many folders/subfolders we have to do multiple ADD by including one folder/subfolder at a time.
- When looking at pictures In Smart Album, if you move the information window over the next photo button, we still can see the button but it’s no more working.
- When looking at pictures In Smart Album the top and bottom transparent ribbon does not allow to select face in these transparent areas.
- If you remove the transparent areas you lose the previous / next photo button.
- Empty albums are automatically created for each face and some faces get more than one album, all of them with 0 pictures. I got 378 empty albums. Deleting them is very time consuming. It’s not worth having empty albums, they should not be created them by default or should be set by preferences.
- Each time we open Photo Station the Album / smart album filter is reset to both on (Album which is 378 empty ones and Smart Album). Impossible to save a filter to Smart Album only.
- Advanced search is anything but advanced … we should at least be able to do “and” tags. Now multiple tags are considered as “or” no way to make AND tags.
- In People, Suggested submenu may identify multiple photos associated with a face (shown in the bottom picture icon with a number.) In clicking on the small icon we can only see one picture. In Tagged in clicking on this small icon we can see all the identified pictures . If multiple faces are wrongly suggested as one face, we can mix faces quite easily.
- People menu does not allow to review all photos to validate that faces were properly identified in photos. I did that in creating a smart album and then I could check face identification for all photos.
- Folder in the left pane gives a different folder than the one I set in Setting, Content management. I could not find a place to set folder(s) in Folder menu (under Shared Photos).
- In Shared Photos, the total number of photos (1038) differs from what I have in Windows file explorer for *.jpg in the same folder (1078). 40 are missing in Photo Station ???

So ... it could be a QNAP nice feature but right now, Photo Station is very very limited in functionalities and settings and this make this software almost unusable.
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dolbyman
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Joined: Sat Feb 12, 2011 2:11 am
Location: Vancouver BC , Canada

Re: Photo Station 6.0, surely not tested in real life

Post by dolbyman »

QNAP does not come here and most users that frequently visit these forums do not use photo(video/music) station.

Best to open a ticket with your suggestions
Theliel
Know my way around
Posts: 124
Joined: Tue Jun 12, 2018 4:52 am

Re: Photo Station 6.0, surely not tested in real life

Post by Theliel »

jgveill wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 3:21 am

In my opinion, I think PS is great software, but it is approached in a different way, if you take this into account, QuMagie or PS can be extremely useful. It is true that both have many aspects that could be improved, but I still think that they never really focused on being a manager (for real use) of photos, but rather a system to easily view / share your photos. I have a huge collection of photos (over 200k), and I use QuMagie / PS on a regular basis, but obviously I don't use them to manage the collection, for this I use DigiKam (Label Editing, AI, Date setting, small edits ... .)

About Tittle: You can add a Tittle Tag in Exif info, but yet, by default PS use the filename. I'd disabled photo tittles, its completely useless
Smart Album: Work fine for me, maybe a bug in some systems?
Photos different: Its appear you The problem that the photos are original/edited, I would say that you have edited the photo externally and the browser or the NAS is caching the old one. I have never had that problem either, whether they are edited from Photoshop or even modifying the metadata, the NAS updates them correctly, both in QuMagie and in PS. Check that your NAS generates the thumbnails automatically
Smart Albums Subfoloders: Im tested, only selecting a parent folder, add subfolder automatically too
Smart Album, if you move the information: Work fine for me, maybe a Browser issue? FF in my case.
Smart Album the top and bottom transparent ribbon: I dont understand... faces in the small transparent area?
Empty albums: My PS dont create face albums. I can tag faces and group with others faces, but... In the only circumstance that I have "empty" albums is using QuMagie and when limited users try to see photos inside some albums, obviously, without access permission
Album / smart album filter is reset: Work fine here. I' created a new Smart Album, select a Folder (with a lot of subfloders), and add a filter by specific Tag, Sarah for example (I use Digikam for AI face). Save, Album show all 100 Sarah Photos in that folder/subfolders. Close PS, Opened again, and the Smart Album its the same, filter is working fine.
Advanced search: Yes and No. Search use AND for different Filters, but you can't use AND for the same filter. So you can search for specific tag and specific date, but you can´t search photos with Sarah AND Petter together
People: You must spend a lot of time correcting wrong ppl, I dont recommend you to use PS/QuMagie for Face tagging. It's one of the big reasons I use DigiKam. PS/QuMagie stores face tags in a separate database. This implies that if at any time you have to recreate the database, you will lose ALL the work you have done. Until PS/QuMagie can uses the EXIF ​​standards to insert the facial region information and the tags into the file's own metadata, it is not recommended to use it like this, it is very valuable time that you can lose at any time. The best thing as I said is to refer that work to a good management software like DigiKam, and write that information in the metadata of the files. It is true that QuMagie / PS is not going to interpret it as "people", because it is not "compatible" with the Exif reading of the facial regions, but at least if it interprets it as tags, with what although it is not a perfect association, Is almost perfect. The great advantage is that since this information is added in this way in the metadata, you can take the collection anywhere that the changes will continue to be made, the work will last forever.
Folder in the left: Work perfectly for me. In Console Management you can choose your source folders, in Folders should appear your selected parent folders.
Missing Photos: Maybe a Permission issue, some corrupt photos or some small photos (some small images can be excluded if Console Manager dont create thumb for them)
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