Problem: How to keep family photos synced?

[zimon]

Hello,
I am trying to solve a long existing problem and I am looking for any advice or input.

My GF and I take a lot of pictures all the time. I have a well organised photos (mac) library which should be the "truth" meaning this should be the place where all photos should be (since it gets backed up several times).
The Problem is that my GF has her own photo library which is basically a well organized folder structure (on linux) where she sorts her photos in which come from her smartphone and several other cameras.
Of course when she adds new photos she does not always tell me so her photo lib is not in sync with mine.
On the other hand she also wants to have sometimes specific picture I have in my photo library.

So there are 2 different Problems. + 1

1. How do I get all photos added to a folder structure into my photos app (via freenas maybe?)
2. How to I provide someone over the network access to my photolib (via freenas maybe).

Since the 1. Problem is the most important one ( for me at least :) ) I am trying to tackle it first.

I first thought of something like bitorrent sync. So that her library is synced to the freenas and I have a folder which syncs them to my mac where I can manually import them.
The problem is that I only want to import pictures I do not have in my library (since it will take ages if I do import all of them every once in a while). And I also do not want the risk that I accidently delete some pictures on the server and then there are "synced" back to the pc of my GF (does not matter if I can restore them just having them magically disappear for a second is something I do have to avoid ;) )

The other approach would be to have rsync (or use deja dub) all picture from my GF to the server and then somehow rsync them to my mac but keep a list of the pictures who were already synced to that folder (even if they are deleted).
Not sure if that is possible with rsync.

Well not really good solution so I appreciate any input (or maybe there is already an solution for it? )

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

There are software solutions that will sync photo libraries between machines running the same software, e.g. two Macs, but I think what you need is a human behavior solution, since your setups are so different.

However, giving one of your machines read-only access to a BitTorrent Sync folder might be part of the solution. Also, the Photos app (and iPhoto previously) can be told to import only new photos when importing from a camera. Maybe it can also do this when importing from a folder.

One more thing - in Spotlight you can search for files created since a specified date. If you were to keep track of the last time you imported, you would be able use Spotlight to find only new files, which you could then select, drag and drop into Photos.

 

[zimon]

Interesting thought, does bittorrentsync keep track of the files synced to a machine? (the one with readonly access?)
Since I would delete them on my mac because I do not wanna have redundant files there (only have a small ssd) and only
import them into photos app. This would also avoid that photos app needs to determine if pictures were already imported ( I guess this would also take a while given huge amounts of photos)

I actually did not know that this was possible, if so, this could already be my solution. This would mean that on my GF's pc and on the FreeNAS all pictures would be present and only the "new" ones are synced to my mac where I import them and delete them (without having them synced ever again)

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

does bittorrentsync keep track of the files synced to a machine?

The way read-only access works with BitTorrent Sync is that any changes made on a peer that has read-only access are not synced back to other peers. A common use case for BTSync is to set up an always-on peer (e.g. FreeNAS) with read-only access to all folders, as a replacement for cloud storage. This allows other peers to stay in sync without always having to be on at the same time.

I'm not sure I would want to rely on deleting files from a read-only peer after import as the solution, though that might work. I was thinking more along the lines of avoiding the risk of syncing unwanted changes back to the Linux machine. I'd be more inclined to rely on a search for files created since a given date combined with keeping track of the date of the previous import.

 

[ser_rhaegar]

Why not agree on a format and method (something that can be done on any platform) of storing and organizing the photos, then use an open source file sync app like ownCloud, Seafile, Syncthing, etc to sync your photos between the two client computers and a server that is backed up like FreeNAS?

 

[zimon]

hm well I had a own cloud running but I am not a big fan of it tbh and I think it is too bloated for only syncing photos.
Besides I really wanna keep my photos app library since it is really well organised and porting all the photos including all the meta information to any other platform might be possible but is way too much work.

 

[m0nkey_]

I've recently started to use BitTorrent Sync, keeping a BTSync node in a FreeNAS jail which has read-only access to the shares for backups. Seems to work fairly well for me so far.

 

[pirateghost]

I find syncthing to be the best option for me. I keep around 30GB of data synced among a desktop, 2 laptops, and my FreeNAS

 

[zimon]

Thanks for all the feedback.
I tried it with bitorrentsync and as far as I can tell it seems to work pretty good.
My mac (where the photos lib is on) has a read only sync folder like the freenas.
So far I was able to delete all synced folders after I imported them and was still able to get "new" one, added by my GF on
her machine.