A new approach on sharing photos

[martibc16]

How the system works from my understanding
There are two options when it comes to sharing:

1. The "partner" feature, where all the gallery is shared
2. The album mode:
   The photos are first uploaded into the gallery. At this point only me and my partners can see the photos
   If I want to share photos with someone else I have to create an album, select the photos an share.

My use case
I have several collection of photos:

• Family photos
• Friend group 1 photos
• Friend group 2 photos
• etc.

Each of these collections is independent and it is mandatory that no one from either group can see other libraries.
This requierement deletes the possibility of using the partner function. Since this would mean that anyone (my family, my friends etc.) could see any photo, even if it wasn't of their interest.

I could use the album function. But from my point of view it has some disadvantages:

• The albums don't have the subfolder (or subalbum feature). So if I want to order photos by event (niece's birthday, friend group 1 trip etc.) I would have to create one album for each event and share each album with whomever it may concern
• If I did so my album page would be a mess of multiple albums shared with several groups of the same people
• My friends wouldn't have the option of seeing a carousel of all the photos in /photos

The temporary, not ideal, solution
I could spin up a server for each of my collection of photos. This means that I would have a immich image for the family account, another for the friend group 1 etc.

From my point of view this is not ideal in terms of optimisation and scalability.

My proposal
Implement something in the lines of what InfluxDB and Grafana does: Organizations

They are basically what the temporary solution would be but embedded in the app functionality.

I the would create an organization for each collection of photos (Family photos, group friends 1 photos etc.) and to each organization I would add the people (my family, my friends etc.) with the partner sharing feature.
This way everyone could upload photos and would see them in /photos page directly. Moreover, everyone could create albums and, if necessary, share it with aditional people.

[alextran1502]

Can you create an account for each friend so that they area user of your instance? So that you can choose album group 1 to share with relevant people and so on?

[martibc16]

So I do this:

Then from the demo account I create two shared albums:

I can in fact see these albums from their respective accounts:

But this doesn't solve this:

The albums don't have the subfolder (or subalbum feature). So if I want to order photos by event (niece's birthday, friend group 1 trip etc.) I would have to create one album for each event and share each album with whomever it may concern

nor this

If I did so my album page would be a mess of multiple albums shared with several groups of the same people

Moreover (and this is probably something else), my friends would have a album-centric photo system. Meaning that they would have to see all the photos orderes by albums. The /photos page would show empty. I understand this has been done intentionally but to me it complicates things.
Because in /photos I will only see photos uploaded by me. So, for example, my mother will see her photos in /photos (and in the shared album if she chooses to put them there) but she will not see the ones I have shared with her.

This means that there are photos that may end up orphans. Meaning that my mother has uploaded them but has mistankenly not shared in a specific album.

[bnigh]

Sharing Options

For sharing, there seems to be the following options:

• partner sharing
  • photos default to shared
• album sharing
  • photos default to not-shared
  • manual action is needed to share them

If a given user wants to share with different photos with different groups

ie:
- photo1 is not shared
- photo2 is shared with family
- photo3 is shared with friend group
- photo4 is shared with both family and friends

then you would need to default to not sharing and take manual action to share

I the would create an organization for each collection of photos (Family photos, group friends 1 photos etc.) and to each organization I would add the people (my family, my friends etc.) with the partner sharing feature.
This way everyone could upload photos and would see them in /photos page directly. Moreover, everyone could create albums and, if necessary, share it with additional people.

Partner sharing could be utilized if you want a user to share all photos

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Current Patterns

Given the current features (per my understanding), you could follow the pattern discussed in this comment.

If you want to default to share everything, then that user could use partner sharing.

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Improvements

The albums don't have the subfolder (or subalbum feature). So if I want to order photos by event (niece's birthday, friend group 1 trip etc.) I would have to create one album for each event and share each album with whomever it may concern

Some opportunities that could simplify the above pattern:

• allow creation / management of user groups (organizations), so that album sharing / partner sharing could be done with the group rather than individual
  • to my knowledge, there is not and existing feature request for this
• support nested shared albums
  • there is an existing feature request for nested albums ([Feature]: Nested albums #2073), although I'm not sure if the scope of that feature request covers shared albums
  • this could potentially allow users specify sharing for a parent album (and nested albums could inherit shared settings)

Note, that there are also other feature requests for interacting with shared content (partner sharing & shared albums) in other parts of the app:

• share facial recognition / people
  • ([Feature] Facial Recognition Enhancements #2472)
  • ([Feature] allow use of explore features for shared albums #3176)
  • ([Feature] Ability for search to search against partner shared files #2703)
• timeline
  • ([Feature] View consolidated gallery #2846)
• search
  • ([Feature] Ability for search to search against partner shared files #2703)

[martibc16]

Partner sharing could be utilized if you want a user to share all photos

Really?
Because if I upload a photo my other user (which is a shared partner) doesn't see that photo in its timeline (in the /photos page).

allow creation / management of user groups (organizations), so that album sharing / partner sharing could be done with the group rather than individual
to my knowledge, there is not and existing feature request for this

This would help. But it would still requiere for me to create the album and share it with the group.

support nested shared albums
there is an existing feature request for nested albums (#2073), although I'm not sure if the scope of that feature request covers shared albums
this could potentially allow users specify sharing for a parent album (and nested albums could inherit shared settings)

This would definitely solve the problem for me.
Because then I would have an album for family and group friends and I would create an album for each event.

However (and this probably should be in another thread) I still don't understand partner sharing:
As I understand it if me ([email protected]) and my partner ([email protected]) have enabled partner sharing everything I upload (even if it is not in an album) should be placed in the timeline for both of us (in the /photos page) but this is not what happens. Only the albums are automatically shared.

[steve-builds]

+1 “support nested shared albums” - i imagine this is how google would do it, you have a shared album at a top level, and any sub albums would simply inherit the Same share permissions, their permission would just be “inherit” - done. Friend group logs in and see all albums in that tree branch, and not other branches, etc. this seems easy to understand and might be easier to implement without over complicating.

[SalmonSays]

Groups/Organizations definitely sounds like my preferred long-term solution to this, but in the short term and as an addendum I'd love the very simple ability to "share all" on an album. Not just all current users, but all future users as well.

If I have family trip albums ready to go for example, it would be really nice if new family members joining the instance had immediate access to them without my having to manually authorize them.

[AngelaDMerkel]

I agree. Access control for shared albums should be on a per album rather than a per user basis. This makes more sense for the user and is much more intuitive and consistent with the way commercial photo sharing services manage this problem