Should I Resize Before Photo Station Uploader?

Photograph StatLr (Lightroom plugin)

Version 7.2.0
Notes for migrating from Photograph Station to Photos

Important annotation for updating to V5.0 and in a higher place
[Important note for updating to V3.vi.x and higher up]releases/tag/v3.6.0)

Changelog
Releases
FAQs

Forum threads:

English Synology forum
German Synology forum

Support Page
Donate to a practiced cause
Get involved: Let Photo StatLr speak your language

Overview

Photo StatLr is a Lightroom Publish and Export Service Provider Plugin. It adds a new Publish Service and an Export target called "Photo StatLr" to the "Publish Services" console / "Export" dialog. Both the Publish service every bit well every bit the Export service enable the export of photos and videos from Lightroom directly to a Synology Photo Station or Synology Photos. It will not only upload the selected photos/videos but besides create and upload all required thumbnails and accompanying additional video files.
Photo StatLr also supports the Lightroom "Get Comments" and "Get Rating" feature which will download comments and ratings from Photo Station to the Lightroom Comments panel (Library mode: lesser correct panel). Besides that Photo StatLr can do a real two-mode synchronization of various metadata, including championship, description/caption, tags/keywords, color label, rating, person tags/faces regions and GPS info.

Synology Photo Station and Synology Photos

This plugin supports Synology Photo Station and Synology Photos. Some of the plugin features are non supported on both systems. Throughout this document we use the term 'Photo Station' (for historical reasons), fifty-fifty if the description applies to both systems. If there is a restriction to Photo Station, it will exist marked with an asterisk (*).

Requirements

OS (Windows or Mac Os Ten):
- Windows 7
- Windows 8.0, eight.1
- Windows x
- MacOS X: 7.five - 16.0
- MacOS xi: 0.1 - 6.two
- MacOS 12: 0.0 - 1.0
Lightroom:
- Lr 4.0 - vi.14
- Lr Classic 7.0 - 11.1
Synology Photo Station: Photo Station 5, Photo Station half-dozen, 6.5, 6.6, 6.7, 6.viii
Synology Photos: Photos 1.0, 1.ane
For local thumbnail generation and for video upload, nosotros need the following tools (not included, check the links under Credits). Alternatively, you may utilise the Synology Photo Station Uploader, which includes the required components:
- ImageMagick/convert(.exe) 7.x
- ffmpeg/ffmpeg(.exe) 4.x
When uploading RAW (original) photos with locally generated thumbnails:
- ImageMagick/dcraw.exe (Win) or dcraw/dcraw (MacOS)
For metadata translations (east.1000 Lr/Picasa face regions, ratings and color labels):
- exiftool: Version eleven.x (tested) and later should be fine

Installation

Description

Consign vs. Publish Service - general remarks

Exporting in Lightroom is a simple former processe: y'all define the photos to export past selecting the photos or folders to consign in library view and then choose "Consign". Lightroom does not go along track of exports, thus if you want to re-export changed or added photos or remove deleted photos form the target (e.thousand. a Photo Station anthology) later, you will have to go on track yourself for those changes, addtions or deletions.

Publishing in Lightroom on the other hand is meant for synchonizing local photo collections with a remote target (eastward.m. a Photograph Station album). To publish a photo collection you have to do two things:

define the settings for the Publish Service
define the Published Collection and the settings for that Published Collection

Equally soon as you've done this, Lightroom will go along rails of which photo from the collection has to been published, needs to be re-published (when it was modified locally) or deleted. Too that basic functions, some publish services can likewise re-import sure infos such every bit tags, comments or ratings back from the publish target.

Export vs. Publish Service - Photo StatLr

The main functionality of Photograph StatLr is basicly the aforementioned in Export and in Publish manner: uploading pictures/videos to a Synology Photograph Station. On meridian of this the Publish way too implements the basic publishing function, then that Lr can go on track of added, modified and deleted photos/videos.
As of V5.0.0 Photograph StatLr also supports downloading of certain metadata, and so that changes to photos in Photo Station can be synched dorsum to Lightroom.

Due to the different handling of exporting and publishing in Lightroom the Export and the Publish dialog of Photo StatLr have some merely not all of their settings in common.

Export Dialog

The Export dialog includes settings for:

Target Photo Server and Photograph Expanse:
- Server Version: Photo Station or Photos
- Server Address:
  - Protocol: http or https
  - Servername:
    - Photo Station:
      - <IP-Address_or_Hostname>[:<port>]
    - Photos:
      - <IP-Address_or_Hostname>:5000|5001 for access via Standard DSM ports or
      - <IP-Address_or_Hostname>:<alternative_port> for access via an alternative port equally divers in DSM->Control Panel->Login Portal->Applications or
      - <IP-Address_or_Hostname>/<alternative_path> for access via an alternative path as divers in DSM->Control Panel->Login Portal->Applications
  - Timeout
- Photo Surface area:
  - 'Shared Space'/'Std Photograph Station' or
  - 'Personal Space'/'Personal Photo Station'
Target Album within the target Photo Server, Upload method, Renaming options
Quality parameters for thumbs and additional videos
Metadata Upload options

Publish Service Dialog

The Publish Service dialog on the other paw includes settings for:

Target Photograph Server and Photo Expanse
-- No -- Configured in Published Collections
Quality parameters for thumbs and additional videos
-- No -- Configured in Published Collections

Drove Settings

The Album settings ( b) ) are not stored within the Publish settings but within the Published Collections settings. Therefore, you don't need to define a unlike Publish Service for each Published Drove you want to publish. In most cases yous will but have ane Publish Service definition and a bunch of Published Collections below it. An additional Publish Service definition is only required, if you want to upload to a different Photograph Station or if you want to employ different upload quality settings.

Export Funtionality

Upload to the Standard Photo Station or to a Personal Photo Station (in Photos: Shared Infinite or Personal Space)
(make sure the Personal Photo Station feature is enabled for the given Personal Station owner)
Definition of a secondary server address
Y'all may want to publish to your Photograph Station from at home or via the Internet. Therefore, the Consign/Publish Service dialog lets yous define two server addresses, with 1 of them being active. This eases the consistent definition of the Export/Publish settings for both access paths.
Definition of the file timestamp for the uploaded photo: photo capture date (good for sorting in File Explorer/Finder) or upload date (good for backup tools)
Two different upload methods:
- Flat Upload:
  This method uploads all selected pictures/videos to a named Album (use the folder name, not the Album name) on the Photo Station The named Album may exist on the Photo Station or may be created during export The root Album is defined by an empty cord. In general, Albums are specified by "<folder>{/<binder>}" (no leading or abaft slashes required)
- Tree Mirror Upload:
  This method preserves the directory path of each photograph/video relative to a given local base of operations path on the Photo Station below a named target Anthology. All directories within the source path of the picture/video volition be created recursively. The directory tree is mirrored relative to a given local base path. Example:
  Local base path: C:\users\john\pictures
  To Album: Test
  Photo to consign: C:\users\john\pictures\2010\x\img1.jpg
  --> upload to: Exam/2010/10/img1.jpg
  In other words: <local-base of operations-path>\<relative-path>\file -- upload to --> <Target Album>/<relative-path>/file
Dynamic Target Album definition by using metadata placeholders:
Metadata placeholders are evaluated for each uploaded photo/video, so that the actual target album may be different for each private photo/video. Metadata placeholders can be used to define a metadata-based Photo Station anthology layout, which is completely independent of the local directory layout. Metadata placeholders tin can also be used to define a Photo Station anthology layout, which is identical to an existing Collection Set hierarchy. Metadata placeholders look like:
- {Date %Y} - {Date %Y-%m-%d} - {LrFM:cameraModel} - {LrFM:isoRating} - {LrRM:uuid} - {Path:5} - {LrCC:path ^Yearly Collections} - {LrCC:name} - {LrPC:name}
To acquire more well-nigh the use of metadata placeholders and how they work, accept a look at the Metadata Placeholdes FAQ
Rename photos in target album using metadata placehoders:
Rename photos to a unique naming schema in the target album
Photo-plus-Thumbnail Upload (default) for faster Photograph Station fill-up and to minimize load on the diskstation
Photograph-only Upload (optional) for a faster Upload:
This upload selection makes sense, when you lot have a fast diskstation and you lot desire the diskstation to do the thumbnail generation. It also makes sense to upload w/ Photo-simply option when yous don't need the thumbnails on the diskstation (e.g. upload photos for fill-in purpose) and y'all upload to an un-indexed folder, so that no pollex conversion volition be washed on the diskstation. Important notation: It is non possible to keep already uploaded thumbs and but upload the photo itself. When you apply the photo-but pick, any belonging, already existing pollex on the diskstation will be removed! (Sorry, I wish I could do better)
Upload of photo metadata including title*, description, keywords and GPS info* (from Lr or video header)
Metadata translations on upload:
- Translation of Face up regions generated by Lr or Picasa confront detection to Photo Station Person tags*(useful for Photograph Station beneath version half dozen.five)
- Translation of Star Rating (* to *****) to Photo Station Full general tags (useful for Photo Station below version 6.five)
- Translation of Colour Label (xanthous, cerise, etc.) to Photo Station Full general tags(+yellow, +scarlet, etc.)
- Translation of Location Tags (land, city, etc.) to a single Photograph Station Location tag* (via additional Metadata Upload laissez passer)
Upload of original or processed videos and accompanying videos* with a lower resolution__
For more information on video processing with Photo StatLr read the Video upload and conversion FAQ
Upload of video metadata including title*, clarification, keywords, rating, label and GPS info* (both from Lr or video header)
Different video rotation options:
- Hard-rotation for soft-rotated videos for better player compatibility:
  Soft-rotated videos (portrait videos) are typically stored every bit as landscape video marked w/ a rotation flag in the mpeg header. Most player do not support this kind of rotation, so y'all will see the video unrotated / landscape. Photo Station supports soft-rotated videos merely by generating an boosted hard-rotated wink-video. This may be OK for small-scale videos, just overloads the DiskStation CPU for a period of time. Thus, it is more desirable to hard-rotate the videos on the PC before uploading.
  Difficult-rotated videos with (and so) potrait orientation piece of work well in VLC, only not at all in MS Media Player. And then, if y'all intend to apply MS Media Thespian, you should stay with the soft-rotated video to see at least a mis-rotated video. In all other cases hard-rotation is probably more feasable for you lot.
- Soft-rotation or Difficult-rotation for "meta-rotated" videos:
  If you have older (e.grand. .mov or .avi) mis-rotated videos (like I have lots of from my children's start video experiments), these videos typically have no rotation indication in the video header. Thus, the described hard-rotation support won't work for those videos.
  To overcome this, the Uploader supports rotation indication via metadata maintained in Lr. To inidicate the desired rotation for a video, simply add one of the following keywords to the video in Lr:
  - Rotate-90 --> for videos that demand 90 degree clockwise rotation
  - Rotate-180 --> for videos that need 180 caste rotation
  - Rotate-270 --> for videos that need 90 degree counterclockwise rotation Meta-rotated videos may exist soft-rotated (by calculation the rotation flag in the uploaded mp4-video) or hard-rotated.
    Please notation, that if y'all use meta-rotation, the (soft- or hard-) rotated video will be uploaded as MP4 video, instead of the original video, which may have a different format/coding (e.g. .mov/mjpeg).
Configuration of custom video conversion presets to ascertain your prefered video quality, conversion methods and/or GPU accelaration to be used by the ffmpeg converter
Processed RAW+JPG to aforementioned Album:
Most cameras support RAW+JPG output, where both files have the same basename, just unlike extensions (eastward.thousand. .rw2 and -jpg). If for any reason you wish to upload candy versions of both files, both files would map to the same upload filename (*.jpg) and thus override each others during upload. To circumvent this collision, this pick will rename all non-jpg files to .jpg.

Publish Functionality

All Export functions are also supported in Publish fashion
Support for Published Collections and Published Smart Collections
Support for Published Drove Sets
Different Publish modes (Published Drove dialog):
- Upload:
  Upload unpublished photos to target Album in target Photograph Station. This is the expected normal publish method.
- MetadataUpload:
  Upload only modified metadata (title, clarification, rating, color label, keywords/tags, GPS coords, face regions) to Photo Station. This publish style is useful when photos accept been tagged, simply non edited after the terminal publishing, because uploading of metadata is must faster than uploading of a photograph plus its thumbnails. Notation, that the plugin cannot identify whether the photo was edited (has modified development settings) or just tagged. So, if you use this publish style for an edited photograph, only the modified tags will be uploaded to Photograph Station, but not the changed photo itself.
- CheckExisting:
  Unpublished or To re-publish photos will not be uploaded, but will be checked whether they already be in the target Album and if and then, ready them to 'Published'. This operation fashion is useful when initializing a new Published Drove: if you have exported the latest version of thoses photos earlier to the divers target but not through the newly defined Published Collection (eastward.m. via Export). CheckExisting is approx. l times faster (__~ 15 photos/sec__) than a normal Publish, since no thumbnail creation and upload is required. Annotation, that CheckExisting can not determine, whether the photo in the target Album is the latest version.
- CheckMoved:
  Bank check if any photograph within a Published Collection has moved locally and if and then, mark information technology 'To re-publish' If your Published Collection is to be tree-mirrored to the target Album, it is important to discover when a photo was moved locally between directories, since these movements have to be propagated to the target Album (i.e., the photo has to be deleted at the target Album at its old location and re-published at the new location). Unfortunately, Lightroom volition not mark moved photos for 'to Re-publish'. Therefore, this way is a workaround for this missing Lr feature. To employ it, yous have to set at least one photo 'To re-publish', otherwise you won't be able to push button the "Publish" button. CheckMoved is very fast (>100 photos/sec) since it only checks locally whether the local path of a photo has changed in comparison to its published location. There is no communication to the Photo Station involved.
- MovePhotos:
  Unpublished and 'To re-publish' photos will not be uploaded, but will be moved within the Photo Station in case their current upload path is dissimilar from the upload path that would employ if they would be uploaded at present. This way is good for various scenarios:
  a) Afterward uploading photos to a specific target album (flat re-create) you determine to modify the target anthology for those photos
  b) Later on uploading photos using the tree copy mode yous make up one's mind to move those photos locally to a dissimilar directory (you may use CheckMoved to find those photos)
  c) After uploading photos to a dynamic target anthology (using metadata placeholders) any of the referenced metadata has changed.
  Photos not nevertheless published will remain Unpublished. The MovePhotos mode avoids re-generating and uploading of thumbs and thus is faster than a normal upload.
- Convert:
  This mode is used to catechumen photos in a an old-style (e.g. <5.0.0) Published Collection to Published Collection which supports comments and ratings (v.v.0.0 and above)
- Ask me after:
  This is non a publish style itself just allow's you lot postpone the publish way determination to the point in fourth dimension where the actual publish action is started (eastward.g. when you lot click the "Publish" button)
Impose sort guild of photos in Lr Published Collections * in Photo Station:
Sort guild is but supported on Published Collections west/ Custom Sort Order when uploaded as Flat Copy
Deletion of published photos, when deleted locally (from Collection or Library)
Deletion of complete Published Collections
Deletion of empty Photo Station Albums later deletion of published photos or complete Published Collections
Settings of a Default Collection will serve as default for new Published Drove within the same Publish Service
Using the Default Collection you can define your ain drove setting defaults instead of using the plugin's defaults.
Notation: When you lot create a new Photo StarLr Publish Service Lr will create a first Published Drove called "Default Collection". The Default collection is typically shown in italics. Yous may rename the Default Drove and use it for normal publishing. Default Collections in Publish Services created with Photo StatLr before v5.8.0 nevertheless volition non exist shown in italics and may have been moved to a Drove Set or fifty-fifty accept been removed completely. To place the Default Collection, just edit an existing Published Collection: the name of the Default Collection will exist shown in the header section of the dialog. If the Default Collection has been removed before (this was possible in Photograph StatLr befor v5.8.0) at that place is no way to create a new Default Collection for that Publish Service.
Manage Photo Station Shared Albums * via Shared Album keyword hierarchies in Lr:
Ascertain Shared Album keywords nether "Photo StatLr" | "Shared Albums" | "<Publish Service Proper name>" and assign them to photos you want to link to Photo Station Shared Albums. Equally before long as you publish the corresponding photos (using Publish mode "Upload" or "CheckExisting") via the given <Publish Service>, they volition be linked to or removed from the given Shared Albums.
You lot may define whether a Shared Album should be public (default) or individual (using keyword synonym 'individual')
You may define a password for a public Shared Anthology (using keyword synonym 'password:<AlbumPassword>') (requires Photo Station 6.6 or to a higher place)
For more infos please read the Shared Albums FAQ.

Download / Sync Functionality:

Support for download of Comments
- Download of individual and public comments* from Photo Station
- Lr plugin metadata for comments: search and filter photos with comments
- Metadata Tagsets to view comments in the Metadata panel
  For more than infos delight read the Comments FAQ.
Download and 2-mode sync of various metadata for photos and videos:
- title*, description/caption
- rating (for Photo Station half dozen.v and higher up)
- general tags (Keywords)
- GPS info* (added via Location Tag)
- sync PS keywords with Lr keyword hierarchies and synonyms
- support for adding hierachical keywords (format: {|}keyword) from PS to Lr
- Translation of Star Rating tags (* to *****) to Lr rating (useful for Photo Station below version 6.5)
- Translation of Colour Label tags (+yellowish, +carmine, etc.) to Lr colour label
- Translation of Person tags * to Lr face regions (requires reloading of photo metadata from file)
Different Download modes:
- Yep:
  Download of the configured metadata items will start immediately later a publish activity or when you lot click "Refresh Comments".
- No:
  Download of the configured options will be suppressed. This fashion is good to temporarily disable the download of the configued metadata items while keeping the download option configuration itself.
- Enquire me afterward:
  This is non a download mode itself simply let'due south you postpone the download mode decision to the indicate in time where the actual download action is started (e.chiliad. afterwards a publish activity or when you lot click the "Refresh Comments" button). This mode is useful if you lot exercise not want to download metadata afterwards every publish action, but merely occasionally.
For more than detail, please read the Metadata Two-way Sync FAQ

Additional Funtionality

Checks for updates in background when Exporting, Publishing or opening the Plugin section in the Plugin Managing director no more than once per day. If a new version is bachelor, yous'll get an info message after the Export/Publish and also a note in the Plugin Manager section. The update check will ship the post-obit information to the update server:
- Photo StatLr plugin version
- Operating organisation version
- Lightroom version
- Lightroom linguistic communication setting
- a random unique identifier chosen by the update service

This helps me proceed track of the different environments/combinations the plugin is running in.

Important annotation

Passwords entered in the export settings are stored unencrypted, then they might be accessible by other plugins or other people that have admission to your system. So, if yous mind storing your countersign in the consign settings, you lot may go out the password field in the export settings empty and then that you will be prompted to enter username/password when the export starts.

Open up issues

Generic issues

due to missing Lr SDK support for confront region handling, face up regions downloaded from Photo Station will be written to the original file (or xmp side-auto file in case of RAW photos) and wil take to exist manually re-synched west/ Lr. Face up regions can't exist downloaded for cropped photos, since Lr won't take the face region metadata if the "AppliedDimension" are non equal to the original photo dimension.
Face regions added via XMP re-import are not properly synched w/ Lr's database: if you lot modify or delete one of those in Lr, it won't be reflected in the XMP of the photo file.

Synology Photo Station

if video attribute ratio is dissimilar from video dimension (i.due east. sample aspect ratio [sar] different from brandish aspect ratio [dar]) the galery thumb of the video will be shown with a wrong aspect ratio (= sar)

Synology Photos

tbd.

Copyright

Photo StatLr is free software: y'all can redistribute information technology and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License equally published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your pick) any later on version.

Photo StatLr is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT Whatever WARRANTY; without fifty-fifty the unsaid warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or Fitness FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You lot should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with Photo StatLr. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

Credits

Photograph StatLr uses the following phantastic free software to practise its chore:

catechumen past ImageMagick
dcraw by David J. Coffin
ffmpeg past ffmpeg.org
JSON.lua by Jeffrey Friedl
exiftool by Phil Harvey
Optional: Synology Photo Station Uploader by Synology

Thanks to all you folks providing these existent valuable software gems. This plugin would be nothing without information technology!

Thank you for contributing lawmaking to the project: - Filip Kis (metadata placeholder {LrPC})

Thanks for the amazing, astounding, boooor-ing quotes from: http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0000704/quotes ;-)