Photo Diary

Photo Diary is a calendar-based photo gallery platform for self-hosting. The photos are arranged by the date they were shot, in calendar-based views, aimed at diaries and other, date-based photography projects.

Key features include:

• Calendar-based views (year, month, day, photo)
  • Including map from embedded GPS information
• Comprehensive photo statistics (time, gear, exposure settings, etc.)
• Fast browsing – gallery content (apart from actual photos) loaded once at startup
• User management and basic access control

Structure

Photo Diary is split into separate independent modules, each handling its own sub-system:

• react-app – Front-end web app
• server – Back-end API
• converter – Back-end process for pre-processing new photos to be added to the gallery

Basic Setup

• Create a reposity directory structure, separate from the code
  • Must include the sub-directories inbox, original, display, and thumbnail
  • Configure PHOTO_ROOT_DIR on converter and react-app to point to this directory
• Setup server and converter to run as a background process, e.g. using pm2
• Build react-app into server, running in the server directory:
  • npm run build:ui

Features

• Photos are segmented into galleries
  • Each photo can be in any number of galleries
  • Single level – no nesting
  • One gallery view at a time
  • Special galleries for more abstract concepts
    • :all includes all photos
    • :public includes all photos added to galleries
    • :private includes photos not added to any galleries
  • Hostname-based default gallery selection
• SPA view
  • Fast transition between views
    • Pre-load current gallery
  • Fast navigation to previous/next item
    • Left/right arrow keys
    • Swipe left/right
    • Pre-load previous/next photo
  • Year view – Calendar with heat-mapped days
  • Month view – Thumbnails grouped by date
  • Day view – Thumbnails
  • Single photo view – Maximize to visible space, with photo properties
• Statistics view
  • General statistics
    • Summary: total photos, total days, average per day
    • By author
    • By country
  • Time distribution by year, year/month, month, weekday, hour
  • Gear distribution by camera make, camera, lens, camera/lens
  • Exposure distribution by focal length, aperture, shutter speed, sensitivity, EV, LV, resolution, orientation, aspect ratio
  • All distribution values can be used to filter the photos
    • Filters apply to both gallery and statistics views
    • Filter values within a single category are additive, photos matching any are included
    • Filter values across categories are subtractive, photos only matching all are included
• Admin view (TBD)
  • Add new photos
    • Pick up from upload directory on the server
    • Metadata extraction from EXIF
      • Timestamp
      • Exposure values
      • Camera/lens
    • Manual input
      • Galleries to link
      • Author
      • Country
      • Override any automatically extracted values
    • Create thumbnail and display size photos
  • Update photo properties
    • Update photo metadata
    • If original file is still found
      • Metadata extraction from EXIF
      • Create thumbnail and display size photos
• Authentication
  • User login
  • Token-based
    • User-specific secrets for simple revocation
• Authorization
  • Restricted access to galleries and functionality
    • No access restrictions planned for the actual photo content, which may be in a CDN
  • Multiple access levels
    • No access
    • View access
    • Admin access
  • Access levels granted by scope
    • Global scope (:all)
    • Public scope (:public)
    • Gallery scope
  • Default access level
    • Through guest user (:guest), inherited by all users
    • Inheritance may be overridden by broadening or narrowing access

Roadmap

Features planned for a 1.0 release.

• Front-end
  • Global admin view
    • Manage users & ACL
    • Manage galleries
    • Manage photos
    • Manage gallery/photo linking
• Back-end
  • Fully tested Modification API
    • User
    • ACL
    • Gallery
    • Photo
    • Gallery-photo linking
• Hybrid galleries
  • Combine galleries to form new galleries
  • Apply filters to an existing gallery

Backlog

These features would be nice to have, but are too far into the future to put on the roadmap.

• Front-end
  • Gallery view
    • Multiple display sizes, dynamically chosen to match client window size
    • Photo license information
      • Permit/deny original size download by users
  • Gallery admin view (TBD)
    • Manage authorized galleries
    • Manage photos linked to only authorized galleries
    • Manage gallery/photo linking
  • Photo property filter improvements
    • Range filters for continuous variables: time, exposure values
    • Coordinate filter, within a radius
• Back-end
  • Drivers for different DBs; PostgreSQL, MySQL/MariaDB, MongoDB, ...

Version History