I'm looking for some photo software to share images across my small company. Apple Photos has all the features I need, but unfortunately is linked to a single Apple ID. We need to access a unified photo library from Mac's with different Apple ID's. More importantly, staff want to be able to upload photos they take from their personal phones, largely iPhones, but there are a few Android phones in the mix. Being able to tag images is important for organization.

I looked at Mylio, which would work except that it seems to want to automatically upload all photos on any device it's installed on. There is a work-around, but it's too complicated for all staff to implement with every use. Google Photos doesn't do tags.

Basically my hope is that there is an app where you can open it and choose select photos to upload to the app/service. We can't be the only people with this need! But most of what I can find is photo editing software, very little DAM options.

Thanks!

Not sure if it satisfies all, but did you look at Synology photos? From the description it satisfies at least large fraction of what you ask for. You would need to buy the hardware for this, but it may be worth it if it works for you.

Wait, what? I already have a Sinology Drive. I will definitely look into it Thanks!

ArisaemaDracont said:

I'm looking for some photo software to share images across my small company. Apple Photos has all the features I need, but unfortunately is linked to a single Apple ID. We need to access a unified photo library from Mac's with different Apple ID's. More importantly, staff want to be able to upload photos they take from their personal phones, largely iPhones, but there are a few Android phones in the mix. Being able to tag images is important for organization.

I looked at Mylio, which would work except that it seems to want to automatically upload all photos on any device it's installed on. There is a work-around, but it's too complicated for all staff to implement with every use. Google Photos doesn't do tags.

Basically my hope is that there is an app where you can open it and choose select photos to upload to the app/service. We can't be the only people with this need! But most of what I can find is photo editing software, very little DAM options.

Thanks!

Click to expand...

Does a Shared Library with Apple Photos not work for you? You can add keywords, captions, etc. The library can be viewed from icloud.com too.

philstubbington said:

Does a Shared Library with Apple Photos not work for you? You can add keywords, captions, etc. The library can be viewed from icloud.com too.

Not everyone has an Apple account. Several people have Android phones.

ArisaemaDracont said:

Not everyone has an Apple account. Several people have Android phones.

When the dust settles and you find that ideal set up, please let us know what you came up with and the pros and cons. I admit I am quite curious as to what a good solution would be and also about the suggestion of the NAS repository.

ArisaemaDracont said:

Not everyone has an Apple account. Several people have Android phones.

Yes I read that, but they’d still have browser access I think?

I have to say, I am absolutely flabbergasted with how bad Adobe Lightroom is. I decided to give it a go since we're already paying for it (I have a Adobe Photography account), and surely it will be able to handle the very basic needs we have to keep photos tagged and organized. Unfortunately not! I have been using Lightroom Classic for my personal photos, it's crude and clumsy but functional. Lightroom (Creative Cloud) is just useless! You can't edit a keyword list. Keywords and metadata are on separate panels, so you have to jump back-and-forth to input data for each image. These are completely basic DAM functions and the software that is supposed to be the industry standard completely fails in these tasks.

My short list is down to:

• ACDSee
• Capture One Pro
• Synology Photos

I already know that Capture One doesn't handle photo gps/location data well (no location view function), but other than that it's pretty good. ACDSee has a crude interface, but was functional and I guess is worth another look. I will have to talk to my tech support folks about how to set-up Synology Photo since their website doesn't have much useful info.
This shouldn't be so hard!

philstubbington said:

Yes I read that, but they’d still have browser access I think?

The browser access is slow and lacks many functions. The biggest issue is that staff need to be able to upload from their own phones that either have other Apple ID accounts on them or are android users and don't have an Apple ID, nor have Apple Photos on their phone, at all.
... not to mention that you can't tag photos on Photos on your phone, you can't tag things as you upload, the software has limited batch tagging and processing abilities, and the info panel is pretty limited, you can't customize it... and so on.
Apple tried to sell us on Photos when it came out by saying that many Aperture functions would be added in time. However, I can't think of a single functional improvement to the software since it was launched!