Move from Immich, PhotoPrism, or Synology Photos to Aubora

1. Find the original files

Take only the originals. These apps also store thumbnails, transcoded videos, and caches, which Aubora would index as extra photos.

Immich

Originals are under the folder set by UPLOAD_LOCATION in your .env file:

• UPLOAD_LOCATION/library/<user> if the storage template is on (Administration → Settings → Storage Template), with the folder structure the template defines;
• UPLOAD_LOCATION/upload/<user> if it's off (the default).

Leave out thumbs, encoded-video, profile, and backups. If you use external libraries, your photos are already in your own folders: use those.

PhotoPrism

Originals are in the originals folder (set by PHOTOPRISM_ORIGINALS_PATH). Leave out the storage folder (cache, sidecar files, database) and empty the import folder first, or take it too if it still holds photos.

Synology Photos

• Personal Space: the Photos folder in your home folder (/homes/<user>/Photos).
• Shared Space: the photo shared folder (/photo).

Synology also puts an @eaDir folder in every photo folder, with its own thumbnails (SYNOPHOTO_THUMB_*.jpg), and keeps deleted files in #recycle. Since version 0.3.1, Aubora skips these on its own, but leaving them out of the copy saves space.

2. Copy the originals to their new home

To kDrive, pCloud, or Dropbox. Copy the folders to your computer, then upload them with the provider's desktop app or website. On a Synology NAS, the Cloud Sync package can upload a folder directly to several cloud services, Dropbox among them; set its filter to leave out @eaDir to save space.

To your computer. Copy the folders to a local disk. These commands copy a folder and leave the system folders behind. On a Mac, in Terminal, with the share mounted:

rsync -av --exclude '@eaDir' --exclude '#recycle' --exclude '._*' "/Volumes/photo/" ~/Photos/

On Windows, in a command prompt (replace NAS with your NAS's name):

robocopy "\\NAS\photo" "%USERPROFILE%\Photos" /E /XD @eaDir #recycle /XF ._*

Pointing Aubora straight at a network share also works while the share is mounted, but a copy is faster to scan and stays available when the NAS is off.

3. Point Aubora at the folder

In Aubora, open the library's Source & connection, connect your storage (or choose Local folder), click Choose folders, pick the folder with Browse…, and click Continue to indexing. The quick start guide covers each provider.

What carries over, and what doesn't

• Kept: each photo's location and date, read from the file itself.
• Not kept: changes stored only in the old app's database or in sidecar files (.xmp in Immich, .yml in PhotoPrism): dates or locations you corrected in the app, descriptions, favorites, albums, and people's names. Aubora groups faces again on your computer, and you name each person once.
• Videos: copied with the photos, but Aubora doesn't index videos yet.

If you corrected many dates or locations in the old app, write them into the files before you leave. Where the app saved them as .xmp files next to the photos, a tool such as ExifTool can copy those values into the photos themselves.

4. Check the result, then retire the server

1. When the first scan is done, compare the number of photos in Aubora with the old app.
2. Open the Map and spot-check a few dates in the Gallery.
3. Keep the server, or at least its originals, until you've checked everything.

Troubleshooting

Still stuck? What to do if you're stuck