How to manage photos with Photo Station
Overview
The Photo Station(4.0) is an online photo album used to organize your multimedia content (photos, videos) on the Turbo NAS and to share them with your friends and family across the Internet. With the Photo Station, users can ”literally” drag & drop photos in a virtual album without moving/copying their physical files and save storage space. Besides, a smart album can automatically collect contents that match your search criteria and help manage your photos effortlessly.
Starting Photo Station
Importing photos/videos to the Turbo NAS
Creating an album
Creating a smart album
Sharing albums
Advanced Management (Media Library)
Starting Photo Station
1. Please make sure that the Photo Station has been installed and enabled in the App Center (QTS 4.1 and later versions only.)
Importing photos/videos to the Turbo NAS
In the Photo Station, the contents are displayed according to shared folder permissions. For example, if a user has read/write, or read-only permissions to a certain shared folder, that user can see all the photos and videos in the shared folder. In other words, you can upload them to a shared folder, such as “/Multimedia”, “/home”, or a new shared folder, that you are granted the write permission with. To create a new shared folder, please go to “Control Panel” > “Privilege Settings” > “Shared Folders”.
A user's home folder will be shown in "Private Collection" inside the Photo Station and all other shared folders will be shown in “Shared Photos”. In some cases, your photos might be mixed with undesirable images from other folders. At time like this, you can use the content filter in “Settings” to show only desired contents.
To import a large number of files or folders, please follow the instructions provided in the table below. You can also upload files through the Photo Station, File Station, FTP, or Qfile from your mobile device.
Note: Thumbnails of those multimedia files will be generated automatically to enhance your user experience. The duration may vary based on NAS models and the total number of multimedia files involved. Please be patient.
Windows Users
Mac Users
Install the QNAP Qfinder utility on your PC and set up a network drive. Then, you can quickly upload files to your preferred shared folders.
Run Qfinder for Mac and select "Go" > "Connect to Server" (or use the shortcut keys "Command + K" on your keyboard) to establish a connection with the QNAP Turbo NAS via SMB or AFP.
Creating an album
An album is a virtual folder used for to collect photos/videos, and you do not need to worry about where the files are stored on the Turbo NAS. If photos/videos have already been organized in the folders, you can right click on a folder that you prefer (in the folder view) in “Shared Photos”, “Private Collection”, or “Qsync” and select “Create New Album” to turn the folders into an album.
You can also drag photos/videos to “Album” on the left panel to create a new album and drag more photos/videos from different folders to the newly created album for your customized collection.
Creating a smart album
A smart album automatically displays the photos and videos that match the search criteria defined for you and can save you a lot of efforts on photo management. To create a smart album, please click the “+” button next to “Smart Album”. In the album creation window, you can configure the smart album with different search criteria such as “Today in history”, “Random”, “Tag”, or “All files”.
If “Today in history” is chosen as the search condition, photos taken today in history will be displayed to give you some surprises about what you have done in the past. Besides, if you often take photos on certain, important days such as a wedding anniversary or birthday, you can specify a date to show these special occasions immediately from the smart album.
Sharing Albums
In the album creation window, you can also set the album for personal use, sharing with NAS users, or sharing with the public. To change the album settings, please right click on an album and select “Album Settings”. As a Photo Station administrator, you can even share a public album on the NAS login screen. (The photo-wall style login screen can be set in “Control Panel” > “General Settings” > “Login Screen”.)
If an album is set to share with the public, you can click the “Share” button to email its slideshow link, publish the link on social networking sites, or paste the link on your blog, forum, or instant messenger programs. You can still edit the album content later, and the updated slideshows will be presented when viewers click the same link again.
To share photos with your friends on Facebook, please bind your Facebook account with the Photo Station in “Settings”.
After the account is bound successfully, your Facebook friends can log into the Photo Station (
http://NAS_Name_or_IP/photo/) with their account to browse photos from shared albums.
Advanced Management (Media Library)
The Photo Station is an application developed from a database known as the Media Library. You can manage its settings in “Control Panel” > “Applications” > “Multimedia Management”. The Media Library can scan multimedia files, such as photos, music and videos, from the designated media folders and index them. To scan multimedia files by schedule or manually, please set up the scan method under the “Media Library” tab.
To set the Media Library to scan for certain folders or media types only, please specify them under the “Media Folder” tab.
Note: As the media folders in the Media Library are shared by the Photo Station, Music Station, Video Station and DLNA Media Server as the source of their contents, the contents will be affected in those applications if new media folders are added or existing media folders are removed from the Media Library.
