Live data from Hacker News

Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage

markpitblado.me

121–130 of 137 posts

Re: Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage

#121

I use Immich, but saved me money it has not. Unless you actually go through the "Backing up your photos" step, you _will_ lose your photos, it's just a matter of time. And if you're like most people, that is probably not acceptable. And by the time you do the math for the cost of your backups, you'll find Google Photos pricing is actually pretty good. Still worth it, imo.

People setting up homelab often talk about money saved but never account for the time they have to spend as well not just in setting it up and maintainence. If you value your time, the cost of a google pro subscription is not much. I still run a homelab because I like it and yes its good to be able to run several services for "free" but the commitment is never free. This is also true for businesses. I used to think w…

> If you value your time, the cost of a google pro subscription is not much.

And I happily used a Google pro subscription for a while. Even when they doubled the price. Then they started actually limiting it to 5TB and it wasn't worth it.

I guarantee you I am saving boatloads compared to the $100/month tier I'd need for all my data. That pays off my entire hardware budget in under a year and the time I spent is worth a fraction of that.

Re: Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage

#122
post #117

My primary use case for Immich is not as a Google Photos replacement, but as a backup of my photos that are on Google Photos. With all the horror stories in the past of folks getting locked out of their Google accounts (and this all Google services) for misunderstandings without a successful appeal, I don't want to risk losing all of my memories just because Google decided that they needed to lock my account for some…

I don’t get that. Why isn’t google takeout easier, simpler, faster? Am I missing something?

Re: Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage

#123
It’s data privacy. You won’t save any money, google is dirt cheap when it comes to storage, because of their scale. (I’m talking storage you can use for Immich pictures)

In hindsight I am baffled that I accepted for google to have all my pictures, scan all the faces, etc. Insane.

But when everyone is doing it, it turns something off in the brain. I attended a seminar where the explanation was: We don’t have the cognitive resource to do a deep analysis (or any analysis) of every single decision every minute, which is why, evolutionary, we relied on crowd wisdom to move such decisions from CPU to ASIC, the ASIC being “is everyone else doing it?”.

I am still angry at myself that I gave them my pictures for years, the pictures of my relatives’ kids, etc.

@Immich team: pleeeeease add the horizon straightening feature.

Re: Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage

#124

I like this article more than I like Immich. It’s well structured, helpful, and kind (not that Immich isn’t those things). I feel like Futo is going in the wrong direction. In the age of AI, anyone can write a DB query, anyone can design a simple UI, and with docker the structure of hosting is no longer a barrier. I think Futo and Immich should be focusing on data itself. Export, import, store, parse metadata, proces…

Everyone can write it, sure. You can even maintain it. You just can’t do it for every single SaaS service in your life, it’s not sustainable for most.

The sane approach is: Is there something out there with a solid community that fulfils this need? If yes, let’s not vibe code project N.

I think there is this huge wave of projects which will die off when the devs realise the time it takes to maintain it, even with AI.

The amount of code produced will remain significantly higher than before AI, but it will go down a bit, compared to the peak (and I’m not sure we’ve reached peak)

Re: Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage

#126
post #87

I use Immich, but saved me money it has not. Unless you actually go through the "Backing up your photos" step, you _will_ lose your photos, it's just a matter of time. And if you're like most people, that is probably not acceptable. And by the time you do the math for the cost of your backups, you'll find Google Photos pricing is actually pretty good. Still worth it, imo.

“You _will_ lose them”, as in, somehow Immich will do something to lose them (like making a mistake in a dedupe process which deletes the wrong things), or are you just saying you also need to keep backups?

Whatever system it is on will die, etc.

unlike Photos, you don’t have a team of professionals managing it 24/7.

(that said, takeout your Google Photos too, because single point of failure, etc).

Re: Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage

#127

I use Immich, but saved me money it has not. Unless you actually go through the "Backing up your photos" step, you _will_ lose your photos, it's just a matter of time. And if you're like most people, that is probably not acceptable. And by the time you do the math for the cost of your backups, you'll find Google Photos pricing is actually pretty good. Still worth it, imo.

I don't think cost is the main reason you should move. Things like photos, gmail are definitely subsided by google so it's not a fair comparison. It's getting pretty easy to add backup for self hosting so that is becoming the smallest problem. Agree with you, still worth it

Re: Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage

#128

"it’s now easier than ever" Followed by 300 lines of obscure config commands and server configuration. Great... My solution: I connect my iPhone once or twice a year and import my photos to a folder on my hard drive. Then I delete the old photos from the phone. That has worked fine for a couple of decades now. Or you can use iCloud or Google Photos, which is about one dollar per month.

[self promo warning] Setting up self hosting alternatives like immich is still the biggest adoption barrier out there. Most people are not technical. I had the same problem even as a technical personal.

I built malmo to solve that. 1 click install for immich malmo.network/store/immich

Underlying OS fully open source, install it on your own box or use a hosting provider

Re: Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage

#129
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would call it more of a set of tradeoffs This is mostly wording. It is a commitment, it has an opportunity cost, there are tradeoffs. > This is the refreshening opportunity for us non-admins, and a learning opportunity to automate as much of it as possible. So many opportunities but the day is still 24 hours long. You still have to choose your opportunities wisely, and give up something else in the process. And i…

> You still have to choose your opportunities wisely It's odd that you've gone off on this as opposed to people who spend their 'opportunity time' on Netflix, Call of Duty or D&D. Sysadmin is a hobby I enjoy and I don't consider it lost time, or wasted opportunity, when so many of my colleagues go out getting drunk or watch football.

> It's odd that you've gone off on this

"Gone off on this"? Wait till you see me go off on people with a lack of reading comprehension, a pathological persecution complex, and a giant chip on their shoulder.

Anyway, if you ask your parents to explain my comment to you, they'll probably immediately tell you that it's a generic comment on the inability to take up every opportunity all the time. You choose one thing, others choose another, everyone does their own math (you should probably ask someone to do your math for you). I don't care about your hobby which is why I didn't mention "sysadmin", "Netflix", "Call of Duty" or "D&D", nor did I say which one I consider "better" or "worthwhile". Just that you can't do them all.

Re: Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage

#130
post #95
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would call it more of a set of tradeoffs This is mostly wording. It is a commitment, it has an opportunity cost, there are tradeoffs. > This is the refreshening opportunity for us non-admins, and a learning opportunity to automate as much of it as possible. So many opportunities but the day is still 24 hours long. You still have to choose your opportunities wisely, and give up something else in the process. And i…

If you have to jump through this set of hoops to come to the conclusion that you want to outsource the effort of self-admin, just save the trouble and deal with not being the target audience.

Was it a full moon or what's with the dick attitude? It's a few sentences that basically say "you can't have all the hobbies, some people choose something else, everyone pays with whatever they can afford". What's the point of your reply other than the attempted jab at the end?

> jump through this set of hoops

And a weak jab that was for someone who's overwhelmed from trying to parse a couple of sentences. If you thought it's objectively wrong you would have already pointed that out loudly and offensively.

So you just took the opportunity to feel like a big boy and tell me "this admin stuff is not for you". Good for you big boy, glad you got that out of the system.

Of course, you also outsource the effort for almost everything around you (even your reading comprehension), to someone else - an expert, the person you're talking to, or your parents. But you can download a compose file and import it in what's probably a NAS with a nice "import" GUI so welcome to the "target audience". I'm a big boy too, you see, one with actual reading comprehension ;).

Post reply on HN