¶ PVYphotos | Getting started
At PVY.swiss, we believe each photo and photo collection is deeply personal and emotional. That’s why, with PVYphotos, we ensure real privacy while still supporting features like face-tagging, automatic categorization, and Moments Collections that you’re familiar with.
¶ PVYphoto & PVYfiles
From the moment you shoot a photo or video, the result is no longer stored on your device vendor’s cloud service. Instead, it is stored in PVYfiles and synced to your PVYfiles, whether that’s on a PVY@Home, PVY@Office Appliance, or your own PVY@Cloud running in our data center in Switzerland.
Your personal moments are transported via PVYvpn, encrypted with a symmetric key exchange within a Peer-to-Peer protocol. In short, it is not interceptable.
¶ PVYphoto Web App
PVYphotos is a web app that integrates with PVYfiles and syncs with your private personal library /Photos/CameraRoll. It utilizes AI and machine learning to assist with face tagging and automatically creates Moments for you. However, you can also deactivate these features.
Your PVYphotos on your PVY@Home Appliance are accessible to all users with a PVY-ID. But don’t worry, each PVY-ID user, such as your family members, has a separate, secure environment and only sees their own content unless they share an album with you or others. The same applies to PVY@Office Appliance or PVY@Cloud users: none of your team members can see, search, or index any photo or video you’ve taken, or any other content you upload to PVYphotos. This includes your PVY-ID SysAdmin who also does not have access to any of your content.
¶ PVYphoto & Mylio App for Desktop/Mobile
Before diving into the amazing features, we want to mention our partnership with Mylio Photos. Each PVY.swiss customer receives the stunning Mylio Photo Application for free, available for both desktop and mobile devices.
¶ It was never easier to split Work & Personal
In the age of the smartphone, we are almost constantly connected and tend to take numerous screenshots and photos daily, whether at work or with our loved ones.
With PVYphotos, PVYfiles, and the Mylio App, you can organize your media by creating separate libraries for work and personal matters, displaying only what you want to see at any given moment. You can create multiple libraries, hide or display them as you like, and even create password-protected albums.
These features - automatic sync to secure locations, encrypted transport and device sync, and password-protected libraries and albums - give you the confidence to enjoy your creativity and moments with peace of mind.
¶ PVYphoto Features
¶ Tensor A.I Integration
We use the same AI integration for classifying your photos and pictures as other leading services. However, if you prefer to classify everything manually, you can disable the Tensor AI integration within your account preferences. You can also set the thumbnail quality sent to the AI API for classifying images.
Tensor AI is an external AI service used by Apple and Mylio, among others. In future releases of PVY@Home and PVY@Office appliances, we plan to integrate these features for local computation.
¶ Search
The PVYphoto search comes with some intelligent default settings, which help you to quickly sort and organize your pictures.
- Monochrome
- Panoroma
- Animated
- Stacks
- Scans
- Review
- Archive
¶ Monochrome
Lists all your pictures captured from your camera or added via drag & drop, which are in monochrome.
¶ Panoramoa
If you captured wide angle panorama photos, they are listed here.
¶ Animated
Animated formats such as GIF or WEBP.
¶ Stacks
Photos taken within a short time at same time/place. Also known as serial shots.
¶ Scans
List all your images taken by a Scanner. Can be Dia-Scans, OCR Scans by Flatbed or Document-Scanner, or Smartphone Scanning App.
¶ Review
The application lists pictures for review if, for example, metadata such as Title or Location are incomplete, or if faces are recognized but cannot be assigned automatically.
¶ Archive
These are images or photos you’ve archived but not deleted, making them easy to find quickly.
¶ Albums
Albums have always been an excellent way to organize your photos or images into meaningful, identifiable collections, which can be quickly accessed and played as a slideshow, or shared with friends. When you create a new album on PVYphoto, it’s also created in your private Library/Photos on PVYfiles. This helps you stay organized and allows for easy, fast export of specific albums or creation of backups.
¶ Unsorted
It automatically lists all your captured and imported videos across all your albums and moments.
¶ Videos
It automatically list all your captured and imported Videos over all of your albums and moments.
¶ Favorites
Lists all your Photos and Videos you marked with a heart.
¶ Moments
PVYphoto collects photos and videos that appear to be related to each other based on various algorithms. It then smartly organizes these into collections called ‘Moments.’ For instance, if the day, time, and place of capture are correlated, the system creates a moment. However, it won’t summarize a single photo into a moment.
¶ Calendar
It automatically organizes your photo library into months by year, providing an excellent way to browse through your life.
It’s also searchable by specific dates or relative dates, which can be helpful when you’re looking for a photo you vaguely remember, such as ‘Sometime last September I took a photo of a bridge.’
¶ Places
A global map, powered by the PVY.swiss Private Map Service, allows you to browse through your photos and videos based on the GPS data from your camera.
¶ I am paranoid - I disabled GPS on my Camera
Welcome to the club! Like many others, before using PVYphotos, we also disabled GPS on our camera and managed our photo geo-location manually. PVYphoto lets you select multiple images and batch edit them for various fields, such as location and GEO coordinates. If you prefer to organize by location, descriptions, tags, categories, title, date, and time zones, you can do so manually. Once completed, your photos will be displayed on the world map built-in based on PVYmaps.
¶ PVYmaps
To discover more about our impressive Map Services, hosted on our private infrastructure, keeping your geo-location private and secure, visit PVYmaps.
¶ Labels
Labels are automatically applied by the system using the Tensor A.I Service, but they can also be applied manually to each photo using the Editor or in Batch-Edit mode, or based on an Album. When Tensor A.I is enabled, it helps you quickly find photos with categories that mimic human thinking, such as Mountains, Insects, Dogs, Cats, Shiny Eyes, Kids, Camping, Sea, River, Snow, City, Dining, and more.
¶ Folders
Folders are a valuable addition for managing your Photo Library, allowing you to separate private, hobby, or work-related photos, images, and videos accordingly.
¶ Private
We all have photos we wouldn’t want to accidentally display while browsing or playing a slideshow on our TV screen. That’s why you can mark photos as private, either individually or in a batch-edit process. Once marked as private, these photos are removed from other views and can’t be accidentally displayed. To access photos, videos, or images flagged as private, you need to enter a password, which you can set in your account preferences.
¶ Library
PVYphotos enables you to add multiple libraries, allowing you to organize your work and private photos separately at the top level. For instance, if you use two smartphones — one for work and one for personal use — with the same PVY-ID to access all your digital assets, you can specify different locations for the camera roll on each device. By structuring this setup in PVYfiles and configuring it on the mobile apps, anything you capture on your work device is physically separated from your personal photos right from the start.
¶ RAW & Sidecar Support
PVYphoto isn’t just for businesses or families—it’s also suitable for individuals who take photos professionally. It supports RAW and Sidecar formats, integrates with Darktable, and allows you to offer your artwork for download by sharing.
With RawTherapee, you can convert RAW images and customize your own presets as a photographer, or let the system handle the job. Additionally, you have the option to disable presets altogether and manage both RawTherapee and Darktable settings.
¶ Apple Photos or Adobe Lightroom
If you’re a fan of Apple Photos or Lightroom but prefer to sync your media library across different computers or notebooks using your personal cloud from PVY.swiss, you can easily do so. Simply drag the Apple Photo Library from its current location to a PVYfiles folder within your “My Library” directory. The next time you launch the Apple Photo App, press cmd+alt or a similar combination for Lightroom) to choose where your library resides on each computer or notebook. That’s it! Enjoy private syncing. If your workflow primarily revolves around these apps, you can also utilize the sharing features directly from PVYfiles instead of PVYphotos.
¶ Mounting PVYphotos as WebDav
You can mount your PVYphoto Library as WebDav on all operating systems. This allows you to edit images directly using your favorite photo editor, like Affinity Photo or Pixelmator, or simply browse through them.
Please note, when you delete a Photo over WebDav, it is deleted permanently and not in the trashcan to be restored later. Its gone forever (Help, where is my Backup?).
To obtain the connection details to mount PVYphotos as an additional WebDav Server to your Operating System, go to your Account Settings within the Application Settings on the left Menu Sidebar. On macOS, when you are in the Application Finder, press the cmd+K paste the URL and authenticate with your PVY-ID username and password.
If you like to use that feature often, you can save the password in your keychain. Please note: If you use iCloud Sync for your entire Passwords, because its convenient, we highly recommend that you do not store your PVY-ID there.
¶ Navigate through your PVYphoto Library
¶ Sharing of Photos & Videos
In the main search view of all your photos you don’t have sharing options. Navigate to a Folder, Album or Moment of you choice, where you see the sharing Icon appears both on the Collection Thumbnail, or if you inside an entire list of an collection, you can select one or multiple items, beside of the entire collection.
¶ Sharing Options
You can share a single media of your choice or multi-select a couple items or an entire album, folder or moment by clicking the Share Icon, where you can create one or multiple Sharing Links, with different settings:
- Expires - chose preselected link validity period or create custom value
- Secret - accept random secret or create a custom one
- Webdav Upload - Upload album to any known WebDav Destination by username and password
Please note, since PVYphotos hooks into your PVYfiles personal Library, you can also share a single photo or album within the PVYfiles Mobile or Desktop App. There you have also more options, such share it P2P straight with another PVY-ID User, either read only, write or bilateral sync. A great option for familiy members or different branches in an organisation with own PVY-Appliances.
It is planned, to make the P2P Option also available for the PVYphoto Interface early 2025, so you have all options vice versa. You can define multiple links for each shared album, with different settings, so you have the freedom to differentiate permissions based on your audience.
¶ Settings
Before we delve into each setting parameter, it’s worth noting that PVY.swiss offers more than just PVYphoto. It also includes features for both hobbyist and professional photographers. Some settings may need adjustment from their default values to suit your specific workflows.
For Example: if you use PVYphotos primarily for browsing your photos or sharing them externally with friends or family, but prefer to use Mylio Desktop for tasks like categorizing, organizing, and face tagging, you may want to disable AI integration altogether in the settings. We recommend using either PVYphotos or Mylio Desktop for the main job, but not both simultaneously.
The application settings are divided into different segments, including General, Library, Advanced, Services, and Account.
¶ General
The settings are mostly self-explanatory
¶ Library
¶ Advanced
¶ Watch PVYphoto in action
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¶ Automated Backups
You should handle things that you cherish with care. Therefore, we’ve integrated an automated backup system by default, which also ensures your metadata is preserved. Additionally, if you run PVYphoto on your PVY@Home Appliance, you’ll have PVYbackup included. This allows you to automate backups of your entire appliance to any destination of your choice, all encrypted.
Moreover, since PVYphotos connects to your PVYfiles Library, you also have snapshots and versioning available for all your photos, providing added safety and security.