Mobile App Critique - Piwigo (Open Source Photo Management Software)

The app I am reviewing is Piwigo, which is open-source photo management software.  I realized I have taken hundreds of thousands of photos over the years. 

These photos are sitting on my hard drive, and I am the only one who has access to them which isn’t doing anyone else any good- especially friends and family members who have been photographed.

I maintain our family web site and had been seeking a way to integrate all the photos, that was password protected, allowed photos to be tagged so we could easily search for people or places, and had permissions so my immediate family could see everything, yet my father and stepmother only saw relevant photos, and my mother and stepfather and related siblings also only were able to see relevant photos. In addition to integrating into my web site, I wanted app functionality that would allow me to immediately upload photos from my smartphone.  I found all of this and more (for free) in Piwigo.

Usability, Design and Functionality

The app is very easy to use.  Once the user logs into the app, they can immediately browse albums and photos.  They can also create and upload photos.  These functions are dependent on the users’ permissions as they may only be able to view images. The interface allows users to download, share and favorite photos. 

The app is valuable because it allows the user to take their entire photo library with them everywhere. Those photos that used to sit on my home computers hard drive are now just a tap away on my smartphone through the Piwigo app. Users or admin can create albums, and define the parameters of each album: name, description, thumbnail image. Additionally, the app allows users to access to all the details of photos directly from the Piwigo mobile application. It’s easy to batch upload photos with titles, descriptions, tags, and authors.

One neat feature is the ability to setup the Piwigo app so relatives who download the app on their devices, can upload photos from their phone directly to our family web site - allowing everyone to contribute.

Improvements

Despite the wide array of features, I have found a few notable improvements that would solidify Piwigo’s mantle as the must-have photo management tool. These include setting album permissions in the app, uploading videos, and facial recognition with auto-tagging.

Permissions in app

Currently, album and image permissions must be assigned through the desktop experience.  While a user can create albums through the app, any images added to the albums remain public until permissions are manually adjusted on the desktop version. The same is true of images, which could also be assigned permissions and require logging in to the web site version to designate. Integrating this function into the app adds more value to the app experience.

Add videos

Piwigo does not support videos “out of the box” and while they are supported, it requires a lot of backend work to implement.  I would like to see the ability for adding videos integrated as a standard feature of the software. This would truly make Piwigo an all-in-one solution. In addition to still photos, we all have videos of those special moments we captured that are also worth sharing.

Facial recognition

I’ve noticed that the Photos app in iOS and Google Photos (even Picasa) all utilize facial recognition in their software to make it easier to categorize and quickly find photos of people.  Piwigo requires the uploader to tag photos.  It would be great if the software was able to detect people and auto-tag photos. This is the time intensive part of the software.  The app makes it easy to do. You simply select the photos, tap on Details and enter a tag that applies to the selected photos and Save.  Those photos are then searchable based on the tag entered.  It would be great if this feature was automated.

As you can see, Piwigo makes it easy to manage, organize and share photos easily on the web.  Its robust feature set and easy to use app and desktop experience make this a powerful must-have, all-in-one photo management tool.

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References

Piwigo. (2022). Mobile applications. https://piwigo.org/mobile-applications (Links to an external site.)

Piwigo. (2022). https://piwigo.org/