After GoogleOne messed up the dates on 120,000 of my photos, I store them both on pCloud (EU) and locally (EU). I use digiKam but more importantly I'm working on creating a sustainable process for my photography workflow now.
this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2025
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Isnt Immich still not recommended for serious use due to its early stage in development? I've been waiting to switch to it - currently using Synology Photos for my photo management
I have been using Immich version V1.119.0 (recommended by a friend) and haven't had issues with it.
Idk for photos in particular I don't experience many drawbacks from just using two separate physical external hard drives (every photo is backed up to both).
I believe crypt.ee isn't self-hostable, I haven't found self-hosted options on their site and there is only "web-client" repo in their github (https://github.com/cryptee)
Edit: fixed typo
Immich user. I do miss the memories thing from Google photos but I expect it's coming eventually. All the data is there at the foundational level.
My only real immich complaints are
A. The android app gets chonky slow when you have a huge library.
B. S3-like storage isn't a supported config, meaning you have to manage your storage size somehow. I want to point immich at a Hetzner object storage bucket, arrange mirroring that to another s3 like cloud service, and then forgetting about storage forever.
Is this an ad for Ente? #digikam
I've been using google photos for 13 years, haaalp! Is there an app that could drag everything over, possibly? Plus which supports that level of storage, I don't care if I have to pay. I would rather pay and know I support competitive, but less evil software.
I used google takeout to download ALL of my google data since I am actively trying to de-google. But you can just select to download google photos only for now. immich has a nice import utility. I have not used any of the others.
WARNING: google has removed the file modified date and the file create date so when you extract the files from the takeout zip file, they will show as being created and modified on the date you extract them. This will cause immich to import all of your photos on the same date instead of importing them into the date they were taken, which is less than ideal.
Solution:
Download and install exiftool
Open a command line and run the following commands from the directory where you installed exiftool:
To change image files:
exiftool "-filemodifydate<datetimeoriginal" "-filecreatedate<datetimeoriginal" "drive letter:\path to\your\photos"
To change MP4 files:
exiftool "-filemodifydate<createdate" "-filecreatedate<createdate" "drive letter:\path to\your\photos"
To change AVI files:
exiftool "-filemodifydate<createdate" "-filecreatedate<createdate" "-filemodifydate<datetimeoriginal" "-filecreatedate<datetimeoriginal" "drive letter:\path to\your\photos\*.avi"
If the files are not updating you might need to verify the tags your files have:
exiftool -time:all "drive letter:\path to\your\photos\some.JPG"
This will list the tags on the file and you can update the commands above with the appropriate tags for your situation.
Obviously keep your takeout zip file as a backup and test these commands out on a few test images, but I did these commands to update 20 years worth of google images.
I do not know which provider would be best to host as I am self-hosting immich. I am backing up to external drives and also to Backblaze B2.
Oh, em gosh, thank you so much! I might actually know a work around, your back up sparked a memory for me, I think I've been backing up to some dusty old hdd here and there, I might be able to patch most of it, without google photos! I might see what I can Frankensteins monster outta that, first. That's such a detailed response, I so hugely appreciate your help, all those photos mean so much to me. Thanks friend!!
You are welcome :-) It is the type of information I wish I had when I did this project. It is worth doing the google takeout of your photos anyway even if you just keep them as a backup to a backup.
Fixing the file dates is not as daunting as it might look. It is actually very fast.
Oh thanks! Great idea, back up to a back up. And good to know, I was feeling a little daunted, tbh.
If you need any assistance just send me a message and I will help if I can. :-)
pCloud has a 2tb lifetime plan, and supported client side encryption. I recommend waiting for a deal though.
Immich has memories
And where is OP getting a "one-time fee" from? Maybe counting a donation request?
I would love to be wrong on this, as I think even without this feature, Immich is one of the best options available.
That said, I am referring to this feature: https://github.com/immich-app/immich/discussions/2836
If it has something similar, then I'll happily consider it. To me, this is one of the more advanced (and well-liked) features of a photo app, which is why I have it there to help differentiate.
Immich says it is in very actice development and should not be considered a complete and sole solution
My Immich app/webui does have memories where it groups some photos by time, such as "2 years ago" at the top of the app, but I don't believe it does anything with memories for people or locations.
There's also no fee to use it, just a donation.
Any suggestions for an Android camera app that works nicely with immich?
Any of them, Immich auto upload just picks up the files as they appear in the folder.
I guess we have different definitions of cross-platform but I think it's unfair to leave Nextcloud out of the diagram when it has a memories app as well as one for facial recognition. it meets all criteria except an iOS app.
It is there for facial recognition, but yeah it wasn't included due to lacking iOS and Desktop app. I did make a note there as to what it was missing and that there is one soon to be released.
There's a Files desktop app, which will sync photo folders as regular folders.
I'm doing research on self-hosted solutions as we speak. Here's a comparison table of many different options. I've settled on Immich and am just about to start setting it up now.
Is this Ente adv?
No Ente is paid where a lot of the other options are free. It just so happened that it was the only one that covered all these specific feature sets.
This is the first version, so I expect there to be a few mistakes. Please flag and provide feedback if you notice any improvements.
Discovered some fantastic options through this research. Hopefully this guide can help you!