Galaxy Photo Management - Everything that's missing, wrong, or broken

[El3ctric]

Photo and video capture - sorted!

Photo editing - sorted!

Video editing - basic but improving with the release of Studio in OneUI 6.

Photo and video management (organising, sharing, searching, album management, etc) - a complete mess!

In the spirit of well-intended feedback, here is my running list of issues (current as of OneUI 6). I will post updates as new items come to light and, hopefully, some of these get addressed in future releases.

General

• Albums - In Gallery, an 'Album' is actually just a folder. When adding items to an album they have to be either copied or moved. This means that a photo cannot exist in more than one album without it being physically copied. This is quite terrible as it results in unnecessary duplication of items, management overhead, and waste of storage space. This is how albums work in the physical world. With digital photo management, a photo should be able to easily exist  in multiple albums at the same time without its physical location being affected and without the actual file being duplicated. For clarity, Samsung should stop calling folders 'albums'. Files (photos and videos) are stored in folders. Albums are then logical/virtual collections of photos and videos from one or more folders. This approach is pretty universal and consistent across a number of photo management solutions (Google Photos, OneDrive, Apple Photos, etc)

• Cloud Sync - OneDrive sync works as a backup solution but that's it. There's no integration of any sort. Favourites don't sync. Albums don't sync (they can't because OneDrive approaches albums in a different way than Gallery; see above point re albums). Sharing doesn't work across Gallery and OneDrive, stories don't sync, 'On this day' doesn't sync, etc, etc. The lack of any meaningful integration means that photos management across mobile and desktop is completely broken. I think what should happen here is that Samsung should take control of its own ecosystem and enable Gallery to sync with Samsung Cloud which would then allow it to have a consistent photo management framework and enable new, useful features to be added (see next point re shared library). I'd be willing to pay a subscription fee for extra storage required to achieve this. It's either that or sit down with Microsoft and work it out!

• Shared Libraries - There is no shared library concept that allows pre-designated individuals (e.g. family members) to share photos and albums without duplication, with all metadata intact. This is a must have feature, especially for families. Just look at competition and copy (and improve) what's they've done already!

• Location updates - in Gallery, photo or video location cannot be updated to an exact, GPS based location. Basically, Gallery will take the GPS coordinates provided by the user, run them through Google's Geocoding API to obtain a mapped location, then take the GPS coordinates of that location and save it to the file. This often results in significant differences to the intended location, especially for photos taken at locations not near addresses and places as defined by the Geocoding API. To an unsuspecting user this change can easily go unnoticed making this issue particularly bad. I raised the issue with Samsung support however they blamed the accuracy of Geocoding API. The issue here is bad programming, not Geocoding API. GPS coordinates should be validated for format, then saved against the file as provided by the user, and only then the Geocoding API should be used to map to the best fit address to facilitate location based features in Gallery (or any other photo management app for that matter). Currently Gallery is essentially corrupting location data when updated manually.

• Filtering by photos -  In Gallery, it is not possible to filter items to show photos only. Note that it is possible to show videos only by going to Search and selecting Videos under Shot Types or by going to the main menu and selecting 'Videos" (so two ways to do the same thing). Not being able to select photos only is particularly annoying on a day when you've taken many videos but not too many photos and you just want to quickly get to the photos.

[update 21/1/2024] Since the original post I learned that it is possible to type 'Image' into the search box. This will filter the list by images/photos. So while this works it's not obvious that it exists. Definitely could be improved.

• Search by no location - In Gallery, it is possible to search by location however it is not possible to search for photos that do not have location specified. One might want to do this to add locations manually. A good place for this feature would be under Menu/Suggestions/Fix up.

• Search by more than one location - In Gallery, it is not possible to define search criteria for more than one location. For example, search for photos taken in Sydney OR Brisbane that include person A and person B.

• Browse locations via map view - search screen includes a Location section with a map view. The map view unfortunately cannot be expanded and is therefore cumbersome to use when browsing locations. Clicking on Locations presents a full list of locations by location name. This list can be quite long as locations are captured at a granular level. Browsing via map view is critical when one can't remember the exact location where a photo was taken (e.g. Sydney rather than a particular suburb in Sydney. Map view should be expandable to a full screen view to allow for easier browsing.

• Search by tags -  Consider a scenario where you have tagged photos and/or videos taken across multiple locations. Now you would like to search for those photos by tag. In Gallery, go to Search and type or select the desired tag. Gallery displays the results and a list of additional filters to further narrow down the search. Filters include locations but only a few, not the full list of locations that are part of the result set. Manually specifying a specific location as part of the filter is not possible (the search box doesn't allow it). Essentially it is not possible to use tags in combination with location information to arrive at the desired set of photos.

[update 30/12/2024] This has been fixed and it is now possible to search by tag and location (or any other criteria). A location can be selected from suggestions or one can be typed in the search box. Existing limitation that only one location can be included in the search criteria still applies (searches use 'AND' operators by default, therefore only one location is possible).

• Stories notifications - Stories are a prominent feature in Gallery however there are no notification options. There should be an option to enable notifications when stories become available.

[update 6/4/2025] stories notifications are available in One UI 7 and later. 

• "On this Day" - This is a nice to have but it would be good if we had an 'on this day' type of feature (similar to OneDrive) that features historical photos taken on the same day. I find that this is a nice prompt to re-visit old memories. 

Shared Albums

• Missing metadata - When photos and videos are added to a shared album all metadata is stripped. So importing photos from shared albums results in missing location data, for example. Currently there is no option to preserve metadata when adding items to shared albums.

• Storage limitations - Shared albums are limited to 5GB of space. There is no way to increase this, not even by paying for extra storage. 5GB is completely inadequate. 5GB gets filled up very quickly even if you just take a few 4K videos. 

• Importing items from shared albums - There is no ability to import items from shared albums into one's own library. Items can be downloaded from shared albums however they end up in the Downloads folder (with missing metadata, as mentioned previously) and then have to be moved manually into the desired photo folder. What's needed is a one click import so that photos shared by other's can be easily imported to one's library.

• UI - In Gallery,  Albums are accessed by clicking "Albums" at the bottom of the app. The resulting list includes shared albums as well. And yet we have a separate option in the menu for Shared Albums. Seems like duplication and waste of screen real estate.

Auto Updating Albums

• AND/OR select criteria - When and auto updating album is created there is no way to specify whether ALL selected individuals should be in the photo or any of them. Consider a scenario where you are trying to create an album with photos of your family or select few friends. You want to make sure that only those photos that contain ALL chosen individuals are included in the album. It's impossible to do so. Gallery lets you select individuals but then by default includes all photos where ANY of the selected individuals are present. This can result in hundreds of photos included in the album. You can then go to Album setting and change the setting to "All of the selected people" however you get a warning that existing photos already included in the album will remain. What am I supposed to do? Go through manually and clean up hundreds if not thousands of photos??! Completely unusable, half-baked feature!

• Additional selection criteria - Auto updating album feature has a lot of potential but in its current form it's badly compromised. Would be nice to have some additional selection criteria based on dates, places, tags, etc.