Photos - Best Practice

[Nickster]

I have been using Reunion for many years. I am currently using Reunion 14 on 2 Macs, and iPhone and an iPad (one family file, located on Dropbox).

I have a MacBook Pro M1 running MacOS 14.6.1 and iPhone 15 Pro also the latest software.

There are 1,790 people in my Reunion family file.

I have never really used Photos with Reunion and want to know best practices for doing so.

Here's a few questions....

1. As I am using Dropbox to sync between my devices, I assume I would need to put the photos into the same dropbox folder or subfolder?

2. Do I need to resize photos for Reunion so they will sync better. Most of my scans are several megabytes. I am assuming I would need to reduce the file sizes before linking to Reunion?

3. I assume Reunion links to the photo files rather than importing them into the Reunion family file? Is this correct?

What else do I need to know???? Thanks so much for your help!

[Bob White]

First, there is an entire section in the manual titled "Working with Apple's Photos App (and/or iPhoto)". You should review what that has to say. It answers most of your questions.

Second, please do not connect Photos to Reunion. Every few years, Apple does major revisions in the internal structure of the Photos app AND that does not play nice with Reunion.

Third, when Sequoia on the Mac and iOS 18 release, probably late September or early October, there is a very major revision of the Photos app.

Regarding size and synching, I have never resized photos and never noticed any problems with synch speeds related to that. Having said that, it could be an issue if one has a really slow Internet connection.

[KirkS]

I agree with Bob that it's not a great idea to connect Reunion to the Apple Photos Application. I prefer to save my JPEG photos in a folder just for Reunion media. I also keep my data on Dropbox.

I have a folder structure on Dropbox with these folders
- REUNION (this is the 'top' and contains my FamilyFiles). Inside are also subfolders:
| - Charts
| - Media
| - Reports

Those subfolder correspond to the folders listed in Reunion --> Settings --> Folder

folders.jpg

[Nickster]

Thank you for the replies. I will take a look at the link you have suggested, however at no point was I considering linking my Reunion to my Apple Photo's app. My question was more to do with how Reunion handles photos, synced via Dropbox to the Reunion Touch app on mobile devices. It seems like a file is downloaded onto those devices (likely a 'package') and my question was to do with what happened with large phot files that are trying to sync to these devices. Does Reunion automatically reduce the file sizes etc?

[James Milne]

My understanding is that the original media items (pictures) are only ever accessed from a Mac, and as long as the Mac knows where the files are, there should not be a problem. i.e. you can store your pictures anywhere, hard drive or cloud. Reunion saves a smaller version, user configurable, of the pictures which it uses in charts etc, and they are the ones that appear on your mobile device when using Reunion Touch.

[Nickster]

I thought I would post my conclusions on my Dropbox media files issue here in case anybody else is ever has the same problem.

My wife has a dropbox account that has a family history folder. She has shared this folder to me and so it also shows up in my dropbox account (which is a separate dropbox account).

Everything works wonderfully apart from the fact that the media links are always broken when I open Reunion on my Macs. I have to go to the media settings (in Reunion settings) and hit the "repair media links..." button. These will then automatically relink all the media files on my Macs.

However, when my wife opens Reunion on her Macs the media links are all broken again and she then has to relink all the files again - and so on and so on and so on.

I should mention that we have a Dropbox business account and both our accounts linked to that. So it may be that this is something to do with the problem,

On my Macs the file path to the media files is: ~/FSS Dropbox/Nick Syrett/Family History/
On her Macs the file path to the media files is ~/FSS Dropbox/Maggie Syrett/Family History/

I did notice that our Dropbox business account allows a shared "team" folder which is positioned about the individual level. I gave this a try and it worked great - no more relinking. However, when I opened the mobile app (Reunion Touch) it would not work as Touch would not allow access to the shared "team" folder. So we had to abandon this solution and go back to relinking files each time!

I wanted to document this issue here in case anyone else ever hits the same thing. Would love to know if anyone else found a workaround.

[Bob White]

Aha! I think that the problem is that each of you are changing the path to the individual files each time you "fix" them. e.g. Nickster has file at location 1. Wife come along and "fixes" the problem by putting the file at location 2. Nickster then comes along looking for the files at location 1 BUT they are now at location 2.

Note: It is the first part of the path that you are messing with. Yours being "MacintoshHD/Users/Nick......" Hers being "MacintoshHD/Users/Maggie......" .....before the Dropbox paths you quoted.

I am not sure if this problem can be solved when you have separately licensed copies of Reunion on separate Macs. (I'm guessing that is the situation.) Perhaps Gregg can provide a more definitive answer.