Let others create their own albums from my photos

Edit Subject

It's actually possible to add other users' photos in your own album from a technical standpoint, but we decided to prevent it until we have figured out a way on how to present this to the viewer and some other UI issues.

Album owner and photo owner can be different. How should this be presenter to the viewer. How does privacy work?

A adds B's photo to his album and share it to C. C can't see the photos because B only allow A to see it.

We have several options on the table:

1) Adding other people photos (by reference, not copy) to your album (if allowed by owner). This option can come with a lot of weird side effects. Privacy changes, photos disappear, who is the owner?

2) Have the ability to copy another user's photo to your account (if allowed by owner). This would solve privacy issues and having two users actions affect each other photos. Drawback? duplicate photos, two owners of the same photo and excess storage use.

3) Create a new type of album called "Group Albums". Each group album have an owner, which can assign one or several moderators/editors to help him tags and organize the photos. This group album, can have its own set of rules. Example: Require a certain resolution, force photos to have a CC license, tag requirements. It's a collaboration album.

Group Albums can they be used by people in several different ways. Some examples:

- As a simple Family Album where are all family members have rights to organize photos (tagging, title, description)

- Vacation Album. You went to a vacation with 5 of your best friends. Everyone can upload and contribute to this album.

- Photo Contest. You create your own group with rules (maybe even a special agreement). You moderate it. You can limit the group to a fixed amount of entries. You can limit it by date etc. Other users can vote/rate.

There are some issues here we haven't solved on paper yet. Where are we going to store these photos? When you add a photo a group album. Do you make a copy of it or is it just added as a reference? Ownership? Pros on cons?

We have been talking about group albums for quite some time, it's on our list, but it won't be part of the next update.

What's your thoughts?

It's nice to hear you have already been thinking of this. I'm not surprised :o)

I'd like to set a general option that states that other users may include my photos in their albums. It would probably make some people happy to be able to override this per album.

Only if they actually want to edit my photo (in their album) would a new copy need to be made, and I can only guess that the total extra storage needed would be negligible.

I might have shared my photo only with A, but now A can share it with the world. I should be aware of that before sharing, so on introduction of this feature, ALLOW_COPY should be false on every album and photo.

Let me know (by filter?) which photos are used by others, where and if they are edited. Let me add one "originators comment" to their display of my photo, a comment they can only get rid of by "deleting" my photo again.

This would far exceed the powers I currently have over my published material, anywhere. And I'm more visible too, if anyone likes my photos enough to display them.

People that don't respect my rights don't hesitate to copy and post anyway, but I'd like to focus on making approved use simple.

Group photos should be stored on each participants account, and a refrence to the apropriate resolution image only included in the group. Allow album creator / moderator to decide resolution (min/max) for inclusion / display.

I belive these will be killer features for Expono. Bump it up!