Photo Station 6.0, surely not tested in real life
Posted: Sun Aug 01, 2021 3:21 am
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.
- 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.