Photo Album Features

[thibaudeaunine 0]

Hi Luke

I hope this message finds you well! I'm a passionate user of Emby and have been thoroughly enjoying the platform's capabilities. I recently came up with ideas to enhance the Photo Album feature by improving organization and front-end UI management.

Here are a few potential updates I’d love to contribute toward:

• Custom album organization with hierarchical folders and tagging for better structure.

• Advanced sorting and filtering options to refine browsing.

• Front-end UI improvements, like drag-and-drop functionality, interactive previews, and better search tools.

I’d be delighted to start developing these enhancements and would love to discuss how these ideas align with Emby’s roadmap and development process. Let me know if there's an opportunity to collaborate—I’m eager to contribute to making Emby even more exceptional!

Looking forward to your thoughts

[CasaAtardecer 27]

Hello fellow photo enthusiast,

While we all await the development of photo album features, please do consider some of the hacks I have gone ahead and implemented to bend Emby's current functionality in Home Video & Photo libraries:

1) Consider pooling your photos into mini-slideshows and posting them as videos, which immediately opens the door to the coveted details view for video where your photo metadata can finally see the light of day in meaningful and functional ways. There are some great online resources using ffmpeg for joining photos into videos here,
https://shotstack.io/learn/use-ffmpeg-to-convert-images-to-video/

2) Consider converting single photos into short, few second duration videos, which also will allow you to access the coveted details view for video and allow you to caption your own photos and/or write your own NFO personal photo details metadata, while the photo captioning feature request remains benched on the sidelines, waiting for its turn at bat. There are some great online resources using ffmpeg for captioning photos here,
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17623676/text-on-video-ffmpeg

3) Consider tagging your photos with an Album metadata name that can be coded into your photos and read by Emby for grouping into Collections. The developers at Emby have recently crafted a new metadata tag, called 'embycollections', that you can add to your photos so they are automatically grouped into Collections (I want to rename them "Albums"). There are some great online resources using exiftool for editing photo metadata here,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jt_Qia8E64

There does not seem to be a lot of us photo album enthusiasts in these forums and it has been proved a great many times that the largest group of consumers get the most attention from the developers and the administrators.

Thank you for being here and for talking about PHOTOS! 

Cheers!

[CasaAtardecer 27]

On 4/23/2025 at 3:39 PM, CasaAtardecer said:

Collections (I want to rename them "Albums")

Hello friend,

I hope this note finds you well.

In the world of Emby’s Home Video & Photo library server, whenever the ROW view is activated as the media display, for about 1 or 2 seconds, the LABEL for the videos reads, “Movies,” before it changes to read, “Videos.”

This is NOT a complaint NOR a criticism; indeed, I am okay with it. In fact, it helps to illustrate the inner workings of Emby’s programming and sets the stage for some remarks about the LABELS that are currently used for the header menu tabs.

The MOVIE menu header tab is renamed to VIDEO for the HV&P library type because of a design choice that aims to differentiate commercial “movies” from home “videos” and that makes sense. However, the header menu tab label COLLECTIONS does not make as much sense for this library type.

A far superior term for this tab is ALBUMS. This term describes thematic groupings of photos, home videos, and mixed media types in the most common sense of the word, completely differentiating this library type from the others.

Were it to be renamed, as an added bonus, a change in the header menu tab name to ALBUMS will lend itself to greater clarity in discussions about its features and functions in the forums. When one mentions “albums“ in the forums, it is clear that one is discussing a niche users’ library type rather than your core users’ library type.

It is worth mentioning now that the header menu tab GENRES persists in the structure of all library types, without any meaningful usage or practical utility for Home Video & Photo libraries. Whether GENRES remains or is hidden is of no consequence to me, personally, I only bring its presence to the conversation to illustrate the point that a bit of housekeeping might be considered to clean up the look of Emby’s header menu tabs.

Moreover, to state the obvious, the audience for this HV&P library type, as has been pointed out again and again in other threads, is minuscule as compared to the audience for movies, TV episodes, and music. Although, one does imagine that the term “albums“ is better suited for a grouping of music, as well. Since I do not use Emby to serve music, and have not established a library dedicated to serving music, I do not know how the header menu tabs for music are named.

In view of all these comments and observations, would you consider perhaps making this tiny alteration?

Thank you for the opportunity in this forum to share ideas that increase the functionality and user enjoyment of Emby.

Cheers! Ta!