I really really want to be able to use Plex for Photos and I’ve been bending over backwards to make it work the way I’d like and there are still some things that Plex does that I can’t get around in any sane way. I’ve been reading through a lot of the photo complaints here and I think that there are a few relatively small changes that would help out with a lot of the complaints people have. I think it would also make Plex more consistent in its behaviour across media.
Albums: make them work like TV Series
I understand there’s a history here and probably some artifacts leftover in the UI that causes some confusion. Leave Playlists as they are and as we expect them to be. What I’d like to suggest is that Plex treat Photos more like TV in that there is an additional level in the hierarchy:
Library -> TV Series | Albums -> (Seasons | Subfolders -> ) -> Episodes | Photos
It’s not really any different than how it is now—it’s just that the top level folder gets special status and is labeled “Album”.
Sharing Through Albums
When I restrict what content my daughter can see in her profile, I share the TV library and then use sharing labels to restrict her to just her shows. Make it the same with Photo Library. Share the library, and add exactly the same label-sharing functionality to the Albums.
De-dup on Albums Not Libraries
This is the issue that is make-or-break for me and that I have complained about before. Plex eliminates duplicate images across the entire library based on hashes of the photo ignoring the fact that duplicates may very well be intentional. If my family goes on a trip I’ll usually end up making two albums—a big one intended for my family’s consumption and a subset “Best of” album for other people. And then some of those photos I’ll add to generic Albums like "Best of ". But because of Plex’s super-aggressive de-duplication, the photo will only ever show up in the first of those that it was found in.
The above would be enough to satisfy me and I think a lot of other people that are confused about “Albums” and want to be able to share photos with their users.
In general though, it seems to me that Plex is attempting to pull in too many “Photo management” features. Plex philosophically is about presenting media not managing it. In my opinion Plex should not be trying to replace something like, say, digikam. Camera Upload, I’m sure is genuinely useful for people, but even that is pushing what I think Plex should be considering part of its domain.
I already extensively tag, categorize and rank my photos; I don’t want to redo that all in Plex. In fact it would be delightful if Plex used all the metadata I already painstakingly add.
