cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/47534332
I have spent a long time at Synology Photos, along with my family. We have tags and albums. Is there a good way to migrate? I’m even open to migrating manually (album by album) if I could trust the process.
I am a fan of Immich but know nothing about Synology. Does Synology have a subscription or something? Immich has done a much better job at tagging things and putting them in to albums than Apple’s Photos ever did for me, it took the stuff that Apple had tagged and than did a much better job.
a lot of the posts about Immich are a few years old. has it improved?
Synology is not a subscription, and comes w/ Synology device. It is fine but is missing some features. Moving is a bear though so maybe I should make sure it’s really worth it.
Just stand it up and copy over a sample set. It’ll take like two hours tops. Play around and see if you like it. I did it and had the fancy features working right out of the box.
If you’ve used Google Photos, it’s almost an exact clone.
Moving should be fairly simple really.
Make a docker container and point Immich to the photo directory.
If I’m not mistaken, Immich copies the photos and sorts them, so you should be able to run both setups simultaneously without touching the Synology setup.
Some Synology devices aren’t capable of dealing with docker containers. Just to keep that in mind.
If you have all of the photos, then you could use a tool like Immich Go, which would automate much of the tagging and album creation. I don’t know if Immich Go accounts for metadata from Synology. However, Synology might be able to export everything.
I would also recommend putting Immich remote access behind Tailscale (I.e., pointing the remove access server to your tailnet and using that domain name and the Immich port to login).
Thank you! Can you ELI5, where is immich-go installed? On my new Immich server (unraid), on my Synology? On an intermediate device?
Madness it would be best to put Immich on my Synology for the transfer, then move to Unraid?
I’m trying to change 2 things - moving photos from Synology Photos to Immich and also moving the while operation from Synology to Unraid, but maybe it’s a 2 step process?
Can you ELI5, where is immich-go installed? On my new Immich server (unraid), on my Synology? On an intermediate device?
Shouldn’t matter, as long as the device running immich-go can access your photos (locally or over a network share) and the web api of your immich instance.
Madness it would be best to put Immich on my Synology for the transfer, then move to Unraid?
I don’t see how this would be easier as it later adds an extra step, where you have to move immich from your Synology to Unraid. However, if you have to deal with a slow or unreliable network between those two hosts, it could make sense.
I’m trying to change 2 things - moving photos from Synology Photos to Immich and also moving the while operation from Synology to Unraid, but maybe it’s a 2 step process?
Yes, do yourself a favour and split these tasks. Migrate your photos to immich first, shut down Synology Photos and test that everything works as expected, then go on with your remaining migration to Unraid.

