Sharing: Multi-user / multi-library support with private and shared photos/albums

[rkkoszewski]

It would be great to be able to share a PhotoPrism server between several people, each having their own private pictures/albums, and pictures/albums that could be shared with other users on the same server.

This would probably increase the complexity of the project quite a bit as a whole session/login/profile system would need to be implemented and also handle how to manage the pictures (All pictures in a single folder and assigned to different users by Database, a special folder structure, etc), most likely not compatible with how it works now.

I was not able to find out from the Wiki about what kind depth is PhotoPrism aiming at regarding photo management. Any input on this from the Devs?

[lastzero]

@rkkoszewski This is something we want to do, but also not for the start.

[lastzero]

Related Gitter chat log for future reference:

Michael Mayer @lastzero 14:26
For multi user, we basically just need to add a users table to the db... what gets tricky are ACLs, roles and layered permissions - which is what people often mean with "multiple users". This won't be a free enterprise solution.

Ferdinand Mütsch @n1try 14:26
What I primarily meant by sharing is to have photo albums that are owned by multiple users (friends, family, ...) and are read + write for all of them. Probably a bigger feature

Michael Mayer @lastzero 14:27
I've done all of this for Deutsche Telekom ("Mediencenter") a couple of years ago, so I know what's needed.

Ferdinand Mütsch @n1try 14:29
Yep and user registration logic would probably be handy as well. I get your concerns regarding the free enterprise solution problem

Michael Mayer @lastzero 14:30
I'm all for making progress and adding cool features, especially sharing will be very important when the foundation is implemented in good quality.

Ferdinand Mütsch @n1try 14:31
May I open GitHub feature tickets for multi-user support and shared albums?

Michael Mayer @lastzero 14:31
There should be tickets already
As mentioned, just adding multiple logins is easy but if you don't do it right it can easily end up being a performance and security nightmare
The database should be able to hold the index in memory which is tricky with many users and much more photos, especially when you start to use sharding. This is not done in one or two days like the login itself.

Ferdinand Mütsch @n1try 14:37
I agree...

Michael Mayer @lastzero 14:39
So for a family with not as many photos and no security concerns, it can be done later after thoughtfully thinking about the tradeoffs and implications. This needs to be documented very well too with big warning signs.
However, it would be better for performance to simply run multiple instances and use P2P sharing for albums.
For this, we might provide a central identity service with unique user name.

[renothing]

maybe ActivityPub support is better than multi-user.

[lastzero]

@renothing ActivityPub support looks like a great feature for a later release 👍

Anyone experience with https://github.com/pixelfed/pixelfed?

[mcombalia]

I agree just being able to provide multiple login accounts (with the same roles etc) is already a good step forward.

[muety]

Any news on this? 🙂

i'd like to one day see something like google photos where you can link an account with user/pass to view only selected albums they are assigned to

[lastzero]

Working on link sharing next, except you don't create a new account every time you share. You can set a password and expiry date though.

is that a per photo things??
i like to add photos to an album and that album just gets bigger and bigger for the grand parents to view photos that get added to it.. just a nice simple "old person" proof way of letting them view all photos in the album