Synology Photos — A powerful photo management tool for your NAS

Synology Photos is a free and powerful media management software tool for your Synology NAS.

It allows you to upload, manage, and share your media – and is ideal for photographers and content creators.

Synology recently provided us with a DS920+ NAS DiskStation so that we could test this software, and we go through our excellent experience below.

First impressions

Once we had our DS920+ set up, all we needed to do was navigate to the Package Center in DiskStation Manager, search for “Synology Photos”, and hit install.

Moments later Synology Photos was up and running, and we were greeted by a simple interface that comprised three main sections – Photos, Albums, and Sharing.

Uploading photos was a breeze with the “+” button in the top right corner, and before we knew it, we had a gallery full of images that Synology Photos had automatically arranged by date.

Its smart media management contains several automatic sorting features that allowed us to easily organise our photos and is a feature that both amateur and professional content creators will enjoy.

Photos, Albums, Sharing

In the Photos section, you can use the Timeline View which displays all your media by order of creation, or you can switch to Folder View to find media from specific projects.

You can alternatively use the Albums tab at the top of the page where your media is automatically sorted into several categories, including People, Places, and Recently Added.

This allows to you view photos with certain tags or those captured at specific locations – and this includes a “Map View” with pinned locations.

The “People” folder automatically groups people using facial recognition so that you can create and share albums for specific friends, family, and colleagues.

You can also create new albums by simply selecting all the photos you wish to add, or you can use the Conditional Album Creation feature to filter images by date, file type, keyword tags, and more.

A “Sharing” tab then shows the media you have shared with other users, and what has been shared with you.

You also have a “Shared Space” that allows you to share media with other DiskStation Manager users – letting you collaborate on projects.

Additionally, in the Shared Space section, you can give users different levels of access. This allows them to download, upload, move, edit, and create, depending on their restrictions.

Along with the privacy settings, you can set link expiry dates and select specific invitee lists within your NAS.

Synology Photos App

Synology Photos also comes with a companion app for Android and iOS devices. This allows you to upload media from your smartphone as well as set backups remotely.

You can decide whether to backup all your photos, or just your latest media, as well as choose the backup source and destination, to upload or ignore duplicate files, and skip corrupted files.

Additionally, you can set the media type to “photos only” and restrict the backup to using “Wi-Fi only”.

Final thoughts

The ultimate test, however, was when we took the Synology NAS system and the Photos tool – and gave it to our multimedia team.

Their feedback perfectly summed up our experience with Synology Photos.

“The Synology NAS system, when combined with Synology Photos, completely revolutionised our media management strategy and is perfect for backing up our library,” said one member.

“Synology Photos allows our team to easily share media with each other, which significantly streamlines our workflow,” said another team member.

Get a free Synology NAS

If you would like to try out Synology Photos, there is a competition running that will give you a chance to take home a free Synology DS420+ DiskStation.

Here’s what you have to do:

1. Click here to visit the Synology competition page.
2. Select “Join now” under the “Take a free Synology NAS home” section.
3. Fill out the survey and share your thoughts with Synology.
4. Click “Submit” at the end of the survey.

Winners will be notified by email.

The DS420+ is a high-performance NAS with SSD cache acceleration capability that is ideal for IT enthusiasts and home users.

It is equipped with two M.2 NVMe SSD slots, four drive bays, and a dual-core processor that makes it ideal for data sharing, video streaming, and photo indexing.