I’m considering setting up a NAS to backup my stuff and replace Google Photos. Currently I’m looking at Asustor AS6704T and Synology DS923+, with the former having more powerful hardware and hardware encoding, and the latter having a better first party software experience.
Some quick comparisons show me that Synology Photos is infinitely better than Asustor Photo Gallery. AI face recognition, content tagging, and reverse Geocoding are features I’ve gotten used to in Google photos, which Synology has and Asustor doesn’t.
I’m also aware of but not really familiar with other photo backup/management solutions, namely Immich, Photoprism, Piwigo, and Lychee. Immich would probably fit me the best, but Piwigo with plugins would support Photosphere photos that I occasionally take with my Pixel.
So I guess I’m asking you guys what your preferred photo backup solution is? I probably should mention that I personally take photos with a Pixel (jpg and MP4 files), but my family uses iPhones (heic and mov files). No RAW photos for now, but for those who do and would edit photos, how would you manage them?
I think I’m going to rely on first party apps built into Asustor or Synology if I ever want to do S3 backups.
What do you mean by “it’s a bit of lock in”? So say you have a photo with the wrong date in the EXIF file, or if you want to manually write in EXIF data to photos without it, does that mean you couldn’t?
if you add meta-data, like the object detection, faces, albums, descriptions, tags etc. They are not written to the file, but stored in a DB.
So if you want to move somewhere, or edit your photos with a different tool, it will not be a pleasant experience.
Note: i love immich, and by far it is the most easy to use photo system i have that fits my needs. I really like the web view and the sharing capability.