Apple Photo Library

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sanfrancisco
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Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2015 1:12 pm

Apple Photo Library

Post by sanfrancisco »

Hi All

I am always hesitant to start a new thread.. but for the life of me, I can not find anything on line to address my situation... If you could point me in the right direction, or offer any advice, I would greatly appreciate it. So, thanks in advance.

Like any "normal" computer person - one of the first things I find myself doing, is try to push the limits of my hardware and software- - often asking it to do things it wasn't necessarily designed to do... In this case - Photo Management.

I'm not in love with PhotoStation, or QuMagie, or even Plex as much as I am in "like" with Apple's native Photos app for Photo Management - especially the "Memories" offer... Let's say for this purpose - I wish to use the Apple Software in conjunction with my QNAP - - - - for read/write speeds, I'm connected by ethernet.. but would consider upgrading to a Lightning connection if need be.

My hope is, store all of my photos on a shared directory on the QNAP, launch Photos on a network connected Macintosh, create a new Library and store that Library on the shared directory where the photo files reside (to keep it clean and simple)... (if you're still following me, I would NOT import the photo files into the Library file - they would just be referenced).

I imagine that like many of you, I'm nearing more than 20 years of digital photos... and I want a solid photo management tool to give me 'everything' I want in terms of management... QNAP for file serving and storage, and Apple Photo for presentation and sharing, appeals to me most... and gives me pretty much everything I'm looking for... Does anyone agree? Do you have a better system? Any advice? Constructive (and gentle) criticism would be appreciated.

I have done an initial test of this setup with jus a handful of files... and it seems to work fine... but before I jump in head first, and load a TB of data, I thought I'd run this by you all... if you have any input, I'd love to hear it. Does anyone have a 'best practices' setup for what I'm trying to accomplish?

Thanks again in advance - best wishes.
sanfrancisco
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Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2015 1:12 pm

Re: Apple Photo Library

Post by sanfrancisco »

Too much detail? Too specific for comments?

OK, how about this... Does anyone have any experience using their QNAP with Apple Photos App - like the following:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201517

Can anyone point me in the right direction on how to us the QNAP to interact with the Apple products?
https://www.qnap.com/solution/apple-users/

I'm looking to upgrade my QNAP system and I'd love to learn more - but I'm finding it hard to find details/specifics.

Again - any advice is appreciated.
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dolbyman
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Joined: Sat Feb 12, 2011 2:11 am
Location: Vancouver BC , Canada

Re: Apple Photo Library

Post by dolbyman »

probably not many apple users here...contact qnap and/or apple and check if and how it works with smb shares
sanfrancisco
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Re: Apple Photo Library

Post by sanfrancisco »

Thank you - I appreciate the response.
Theliel
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Re: Apple Photo Library

Post by Theliel »

The workflow in photos is something extremely particular for each one, so that each user who is habitual in it, possibly would give you their own solution.

My personal opinion is that your approach "makes waters". First of all, and leaving aside other points that we can detail later, Apple Photos is quite deficient software and very limited in functionalities. It may be fine for "home made" solutions where really not much more than a viewer is required. Photography lovers (not editors) generally require much richer software not only in functionality, but also in versatility, something that is contrary to the Apple philosophy. This is essential, because regardless of the management program that we are going to use for the photos, the best way to use it in conjunction with a NAS will also vary.

Returning to the main issue, if the library is of a "decent" size, it is a huge mistake to store the database on the NAS (aka library if you want), the latency and access is very high, and that always speaking in the best case, that is, if the library is stored correctly in a solid database (MySQL, MariaDB ...), sqlite would not be suitable.

For small libraries, it may be manageable to store everything on the NAS (10k-20k photos), but once the library is a big library, the latency would not be adequate at all. Of course, "adequate" is what everyone is willing to put up with. That is why those of us who work with large libraries have two options:

a) The first, keeping the library on the computer, and the photos on the NAS, this is the safest and fastest option, but of course it "prevents" that other computers can simply access it, since they would have to a copy of the bookstore itself. It is still the recommended mode, for performance reasons.

b) The second, who prefers to have a worse performance but the ease of being able to open the DB wherever it is, use an M2 SSD in the NAS for the DB and an HDD for the content of the photos (conventional if you want), that should of improve access times, of course the database stored in a competent engine, today I would use MariaDB and some tweaks. Access to the NAS is equally important, SMB is easy and multi-channel give us a big boost, NFS is generally faster, but properly configuring security is nearly impossible. If security is also important, SMB with at least two channels (which requires two Ethernet adapters).

And you will understand that all this collides with the Apple application again. For all this to be possible, the Apple application should let you work with external databases and be optimized to work that way, which I am afraid it is not.

Take a look at what Digikam can do it for you, a much better solution, and you can always move your Digikam library (not recommended in most of cases) to a MariaDB in your NAS
colemanjeffrey
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Re: Apple Photo Library

Post by colemanjeffrey »

Thank you, very nice
sanfrancisco
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Re: Apple Photo Library

Post by sanfrancisco »

Great advice.. thanks so much for your time - - it is all truly appreciated...

I have to admit, that I feel kind of silly, now - - my suggested proposal of even using the Photos app with the Qnap, now seems downright amateur, given the other options out there... I have done a little bit of research during the last few days... YouTube has been a big help in learning how others work... Here is a link to one of my favorites, so far, if anyone is interested. I love the pace and presentation of his advice - direct and straight to the point...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cp4tvNi ... wbTDRvBR1V

In short - I now think the idea of purchasing some software to help my process, even though I was originally dead set against it, is the way to go... I mean, after investing so much money in cameras, lenses, time, effort, travel, life experiences, etc... why skimp on this last step...

I think the Adobe Photography package at $10/month is a good deal to start with...
  • Photography (20GB)
    US$9.99/mo
    Lightroom, Lightroom Classic, Photoshop on desktop and iPad, and 20GB of cloud storage (1TB available).
It has also helped a great deal that I was able to get QuMagie working correctly with the help of a QNAP help ticket... That softare does an amazing job (if i can just keep it up and running and if updates don't break it)

Anyway - I don't post very often - but I do read a great deal of your posts for help - - Thank you all.
sanfrancisco
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Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2015 1:12 pm

Re: Apple Photo Library

Post by sanfrancisco »

@ Theliel - - thank you for sharing - great and thought provoking input
lmaillot
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Joined: Mon Nov 07, 2022 5:58 pm

Re: Apple Photo Library

Post by lmaillot »

Hi There,

I'm using the Apple's native Photos app with a quite large library (> 50K photos, 500 GB) on a shared folder of the NAS (TS-453BT3 with M.2 SDD cache connected in Thunderbolt 3)

It is working pretty well with no latency browsing all the photos, and could not see much difference (in term of performance) as using the photo library on the computer.

The only issue I found, is as the photo library is on external storage device, which is not in APFS format or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format as recommended by Apple (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201517) it is not possible to activate the Photos iCloud "iCloud Photo Library is not available if the System Photo Library is located on a network file server" error ! I haven't find a way to overcome this is anyone know, I would be interested ! Not really looking for iCloud backup but more the iCloud photo stream between devices.

Thanks in advance.
ripley2022
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Re: Apple Photo Library

Post by ripley2022 »

lmaillot wrote: Mon Nov 07, 2022 6:19 pm Hi There,

I'm using the Apple's native Photos app with a quite large library (> 50K photos, 500 GB) on a shared folder of the NAS (TS-453BT3 with M.2 SDD cache connected in Thunderbolt 3)

It is working pretty well with no latency browsing all the photos, and could not see much difference (in term of performance) as using the photo library on the computer.

The only issue I found, is as the photo library is on external storage device, which is not in APFS format or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format as recommended by Apple (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201517) it is not possible to activate the Photos iCloud "iCloud Photo Library is not available if the System Photo Library is located on a network file server" error ! I haven't find a way to overcome this is anyone know, I would be interested ! Not really looking for iCloud backup but more the iCloud photo stream between devices.

Thanks in advance.
I seem to have seen a post introducing a method before, because the NAS itself is not an APFS system, so the library file bundle copied to the NAS will have some recognition problems. The solution is to first create an empty DMG with the disk management tool, then map this DMG to a drive, and then move the picture library you want to move to the NAS to this empty DMG. In this way, the local Photos app will think that this library is stored in an APFS format drive disk, and there will be no error prompt.

But such disadvantages are also obvious. The picture library file is wrapped with a layer of DMG on the outer layer, so once the DMG file package has an error, the entire library file may be damaged.

And, in order to make the picture library files accessible at any time, you need to always let your Mac hang this DMG file as a mapped drive, which means that in addition to the NAS itself being mapped as some drives(i.e. Disk X,Disk Y, Disk Z), you also need to always make this DMG file available and keep it mapped as another drive ( Disk M).
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