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Knowledge Center

Manage Albums

The albums in Synology Photos are virtual: they contain not the actual files of your photos and videos but the reference to them. As albums allow for great flexibility, any user with sufficient permissions can access albums to add and view the contents.

There are different types of albums in the Albums tab:

Automatically Created Albums

The upper section contains automatically created albums with the following album names:

  • People: Includes the photos grouped together based on similar faces and sorted by names and the number of photos.
  • Subjects: Includes the photos grouped together based on specific objects or themes.
  • Places: Includes the photos grouped together based on where they were taken. Albums are categorized by locations and listed by the number of albums in descending order.
  • Tags: Includes the photos and videos grouped together by the same tags (tags can be edited when photos are viewed in full screen).
  • Videos: Includes all the videos.
  • Recently Added: Includes the photos and videos uploaded to Synology Photos over the past 30 days.

Note:

  • Automatic face and object recognition and tagging faces may consume more resources. To control whether users can enable the People and Subjects album in their Personal Space, go to Settings > Global to enable or disable Allow users to enable the People/Subjects album.
  • To view the contents added from Shared Space to the automatically created albums, users must have Full Access permission in Shared Space.

Manually Created Albums

The lower section contains manually created albums. Since these albums are virtual, you can add the same photos and videos to multiple albums without duplicating the files and occupying additional storage space. This prevents data redundancy.

Note:

  • Albums are not arranged according to the folder hierarchy. To view photos and videos organized in folders, you can go to Photos and switch to Folder View.

To create an album:

To create an album, do either of the following:

  • In the Albums tab, click > Select photos to create album, select items to add, and click OK.
  • In either the Photos or Albums tab, select one or multiple files, click from the appearing action bar, and click New album.

Note:

  • If a user's Shared Space permission is changed from Full Access to Custom or completely removed, the items they added from Shared Space to albums will be removed as well.
  • If a user's permission of a Shared Space folder is changed from Downloader or above to Viewer or completely removed, the items they added from the folder to albums will be removed as well.

To create a conditional album:

Several properties of your files can be set as conditions to create auto-adding conditional albums. Both existing files and items added in the future that match the selected conditions will be included. To create a conditional album:

  1. In the Albums tab, click > Set conditions to create album.
  2. Name the album and set the following properties:
    • Folder source: Choose between Personal Space and Shared Space and select folders within to collect files.
    • File type: Determine whether to include all types of files, photos only, or videos only.
    • Date taken: Use the calendar to specify the time range.
    • Rating: Select 0 to 5 stars to include the photos of the specified rating.
    • Conditions: Enter the keywords of your target properties to set one or more conditions. Supported conditions include file names and descriptions, named people, general tags, locations, cameras, lens, focal length, exposure time, aperture, and ISO.
  3. Click OK.
  4. After the album is created, you can always open the album and click to modify the conditions.

Note:

  • To set Shared Space as the folder source and select conditions from Shared Space, users must have Full Access permissions in Shared Space.
  • If a user's Shared Space permission is changed from Full Access to Custom or completely removed, the conditional albums they created with Shared Space set as the source space will be removed as well.

To add items to an album:

To add photos and videos to an album, do either of the following:

  • In a manually created album, click from the upper-right corner and select items. You can also click Upload from my computer.
  • Drag and drop photos from your local computer.

Note:

  • If you enable Shared Space only, items cannot be upload to albums.
  • To add items from Shared Space to albums, users must have Full Access permissions in Shared Space or Custom - Downloader permissions of the selected folders.
  • When users upload items to an album shared by others, the files will first be saved in their home folder "/home/Photos/PhotoLibrary" and then added to the album.

To change the item order and sequence in an album:

Go to any manually created album and click the icon in the upper-right corner to select the sorting basis you prefer: file name, file size, file type, date taken. You may also switch the order to either ascending or descending.

To change the album cover:

Go to any manually created album and do either of the following:

  • Select the photo you want, click from the appearing action bar, and select Set as album cover.
  • Browse the photo you want in lightbox mode, click from the upper-right corner, and select Set as album cover.

To change the album title:

Go to any manually created album, hover your mouse over the album title on the main banner, and click the title.

To delete an album:

Go to any manually created album and click > Delete album.

Label and Edit Faces/Subjects

Similar faces in the People album are grouped together, while similar objects and themes are grouped together in the Subjects album.

To label and edit the faces in the People album:

  • Name a person: Click Who's this to name the person.
  • Merge similar faces: Click from the upper-right corner and click Merge people. Next, select at least two faces and click Merge. The person can be renamed at this step. Please note that this action cannot be undone.

To show or hide certain objects or faces:

Enter the People album or Subjects album and click  in the upper-right corner. Select Show/Hide people or Show/Hide subjects, and all the faces or objects, including the hidden ones, will be displayed. Click on the face or object you want to hide or show. Then, click Done at the bottom to save the change. Alternatively, you may enter a specific Subjects album and click  in the upper-right corner to hide the object.

To remove or reassign recognition results:

For People albums:

  1. Go to a people album, select a photo to remove, and click > Remove or reassign this photo.
  2. Do either of the following:
    • Select Remove the selected faces from... if you want to remove the selected photos from the facial recognition results. The removed photos will remain in Synology Photos.
    • Select Reorganize to a new or existing People album if you want to move the selected photos to an existing or newly created People album.
    • If you've chosen multiple faces, you may click See more to see all the photos you've selected. Click on the face again if you want to unselect it.
  3. Click Remove.

For Subjects albums:

Go to a Subjects album, select a photo to remove, and click  > Remove from album. The object recognition result will be removed from the Subjects album. The removed photos will remain in Synology Photos.

To set the cover photo of a people album:

  1. Go to a People album and select a photo to use as the cover.
  2. Click and select Set as cover photo.
Automatically Created Albums
Manually Created Albums
Label and Edit Faces/Subjects