Synology Photos vs Photo Station: Full Comparison

Synology

Synology has had great media management tools for businesses and creative teams that use centralized storage for a long time. Now that Synology Photos is out, many businesses are wondering how it is different from Photo Station, which has been around for a long time, and which platform works best for them. This comparison shows what both solutions can do and how businesses can use them in secure, scalable environments with help from Epis Technology.

1. An overview of Synology Photos and Photo Station

Synology has two main programs for managing photos:

Photo Station (Old Platform)

Photo Station is a mature solution that has been around for more than ten years. It offers a classic gallery interface that is perfect for professional photographers, marketing teams, and groups that handle large published albums. It has features for permission-based sharing, watermarks, blogging, and working with older workflows.

Synology Photos (New Platform)

Synology Photos, which came out with DSM 7, combines the best parts of Photo Station and Moments. It offers AI-powered organization, timeline views, optional facial recognition, team albums, and management that works on mobile devices. It was made for both personal use and working together in a business.

Businesses that use Synology NAS today often use Synology Photos because it has modern features, can be automated, and has a better security model.

2. Comparison of Key Features ✔️ Organizing Photos

Photo Station: A structured, folder-based way to organize photos that works well for people who sort them by hand and want to show them off to the public.

Synology Photos: Sorts photos into folders and uses AI to do it. Automatically sorts by people, places, and subjects, which makes it easy to find things quickly.

✔️ User experience and interface

Photo Station: A more traditional interface. Good for structured archives and professional portfolios.

Synology Photos: A clean, modern, and mobile-friendly interface with a timeline view, better search, and strong filtering options.

✔️ Features for working together

Photo Station: lets you share albums, protect them with a password, and make galleries that fit your needs.

Synology Photos: lets teams share albums, set up secure links, control who can see what, and work together with more than one person at a time, all in line with DSM 7’s security design.

✔️ Automation and AI

Photo Station: No AI automation. You have to tag and filter things by hand.

Synology Photos: Comes with AI that can do the following:

Recognizing faces
Finding objects
Finding duplicates
Making smart albums
This helps businesses and creative teams save a lot of time when it comes to organizing visual assets.

✔️ Performance and Compatibility

Photo Station: It still works on DSM 7, but it won’t get any more major feature updates.

Synology Photos: Works best with DSM 7 and DSM 7.2+, giving you faster indexing, better responsiveness, and hardware acceleration.

✔️ Access Control and Security

Photo Station: Uses old permissions, which is fine for sharing a simple gallery.

Synology Photos: Works perfectly with DSM 7’s better security framework:

Advanced control over who can access
Inheritance of permissions at the folder level
Compatibility of encrypted shared folders
Very important for privacy and following the rules at work.

3. Which One Should Your Business Pick?

Pick Photo Station if:

You depend on public albums or custom photo galleries
You need legacy features that Synology Photos doesn’t have
Photo Station’s publishing tools are the center of your workflow

Pick Synology Photos if:

You need AI to help you manage thousands of pictures
Your team needs to be able to search quickly, share albums, and access them on mobile devices
You are making a photo archive that is modern, safe, and can grow
You need the best performance and compatibility with DSM 7 and higher

Synology Photos is the best option for most businesses going forward, especially for creative teams, marketing departments, and companies that need to manage a lot of digital assets.

4. How Epis Technology Makes Your Synology Photos Deployment Better

To handle a lot of media, you need more than just an app; you need a strong IT and storage plan. Epis Technology helps businesses set up Synology Photos or Photo Station with:

● Architecture for Enterprise Storage

Setting up scalable NAS systems with the right RAID, caching, and network settings to speed up indexing and browsing.

● Safe Backup and Data Protection

Epis makes sure your photo libraries are safe by:

Integrations for backups with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace
Backup to the cloud off-site
Snapshot protection that can’t be changed
Complete management of PC and NAS backup processes

● Consulting and system optimization for Synology

Synology C2’s Epis Technology helps set up user permissions, shared albums, indexing settings, and hybrid cloud access.

● Networking that works well

Epis makes 10GbE or multi-gig networks that are best for Synology file transfer and multimedia processing for workloads that need a lot of media.

● Ongoing Help and Monitoring

Epis Technology keeps your Synology environment fast, safe, and reliable by keeping an eye on it, making updates, and fixing problems before they happen.

Epis Technology can help you build a high-performing media management system, whether you choose Synology Photos or stick with Photo Station. They have the technical and strategic know-how to do this.

What Epis Technology Is

Epis Technology provides businesses with high-quality IT infrastructure, Synology consulting, cloud backup systems, and safe ways to manage data. Epis helps businesses build Synology environments that are strong, scalable, and high-performance, and that meet their specific needs. They do this by backing up Microsoft 365, protecting Google Workspace, deploying large amounts of storage, and providing fully managed backup services.