Organizing shared photos without duplicates

[UnderTheCarpet]

I cannot assign an individual album to a photo shared with me. In fact, no organisational feature seems to work. This is not only confusing, but IMHO a sever limitation in the user experience. This makes family sharing quite hairy.

I'd like to suggest that photos shared with me should behave just like my own photos.

Perhaps a duplicate of ente-io/photos-app#1401?

[vishnukvmd]

Hey, yes, the underlying issue for ente-io/photos-app#1401 is the same. But I'll keep this issue open as well, since it does a better job of documenting the behavior expected out of shared data.

This is very much on our radar, just that we're currently focused on delivering Search. Once that's done, we'll get back to ironing out the Sharing flows.

[shrkmz]

@willtonkin , absolutely, I wouldn't want to use Ente if it wasn't usable and your exact use case is mine as well. However this seems like a simple addition of role-based permissions to allow certain people more generous access than others.

Although the statement that you quoted actually gives me more pause than anything else. "Privacy but not at the cost of usability" is pretty subjective.

[UnderTheCarpet]

@shrkmz You seem to feel very strongly about this. I understand your viewpoint, a form of defense in depth.

However, I'd like to see collaboration actually work without surprises first (technical breakthrough) and then add the feature you are looking for. Currently, the feature you desire is basically an unintented technical limitation.

So your suggestion to introduce an "ephemeral read-only sharing" is another feature request in my humble opinion.

Another scenario that is sadly limited for now: If a friend would share photos of a trip together with me and shares the photos with me on it and later the friend decides to unshare or even delete the photos, I'd be pretty baffled to have lost those photos. So I'd like to see a copy on unshare feature - which seems to be the exact opposite of what you are asking.

You see, there are many use cases that should not, in my opinion, be hindered by an implementation detail.

[shrkmz]

I wouldn't say I feel "very" strongly about this considering my risk profile is low. However I also don't classify fundamental security and privacy as "features". Ensuring collaboration works before security happens is kind of... Not secure by design.

The second case raised, someone unsharing an album and the recipient losing access to the photos... Isn't that the point? Someone has decided they don't want to share photos with a recipient anymore, they should be able to unshare yes?

If I shared a document and then unshared it, I would expect the recipient to no longer natively have a copy of that document... I wouldn't even expect them to get notified that the document is no longer shared.

[UnderTheCarpet]

However I also don't classify fundamental security and privacy as "features". Ensuring collaboration works before security happens is kind of... Not secure by design.

This feels like a rather extreme stance to me. To exaggerate: What is the safest car in the world? One that does not drive.

The second case raised, someone unsharing an album and the recipient losing access to the photos... Isn't that the point? Someone has decided they don't want to share photos with a recipient anymore, they should be able to unshare yes?

If I shared a document and then unshared it, I would expect the recipient to no longer natively have a copy of that document... I wouldn't even expect them to get notified that the document is no longer shared.

I was sketching a different real world use case. And I disagree with your assessment because I reject this narrow definition of sharing. I think you made your wish more than clear that sharing for you should be more of a borrow in this context.

[mlell]

The second case raised, someone unsharing an album and the recipient losing access to the photos... Isn't that the point? Someone has decided they don't want to share photos with a recipient anymore, they should be able to unshare yes?

Having just stumbled on this discussion as I am in the same situation (cannot collaborate on a shared album with my partner/family), I disagree. There are many reasons why photos are unshared by an individual and many do not mean that they want to revoke access by others. For example:

• Alice meets Bob and his child at a playground, takes some photos of them, shares them, but after a while deletes them because she made them for Bob and does not want them herself
• Alice shares a holiday album to Bob and later notices that there are too many redundant photos inside, so she trashes many. However, she is happy that Bob likes some of them and does not want them gone for him, only for herself
• Alice trashes a photo without remembering all the people she has shared it with.

I think that the "feature" to revoke access is no gain in privacy and security but compromises on usability. It has therefore only downsides. I do not think this is a straw-man argument, as stated earlier. Just because Signal and others pretend to be able to protect data in this way, it does not mean that it is possible. So I think this argument is itself a faulty appeal to authority. Shared photos can be copied by the recipient, and it is even done automatically by ente if the backup feature is enabled.

[uhkeller]

I just stumbled across this as well, as I suspect many will at this time of year. The whole family uses Ente and we have lots of shared albums. Now it's time to pick photos for the annual calendar and I expected Ente to be perfect for this. But to my surprise it isn't. I tried adding a photo shared with me to the Calendar album and… Ente created a duplicate! I now have this photo twice in my gallery. Since if I'm not mistaken Search is pretty much done now, maybe it's time to revisit this?

[nijel]

I'd also like to be able to grant all permissions when sharing. Including removal of photos. We often take photos using multiple devices (and Ente accounts), which are automatically backed up by Ente. These folders are shared within the family. Being able to consolidate photos from multiple accounts in a single album is what we would like to achieve—remove unwanted ones and move wanted ones to an album.