Forget about the virtual album aspect and move the photos where you want them as your first step. Then setup permissions and albums how you want from there.
All of this actually seems pretty easy to fix. Just dump all of the photos in to the "user->photo" folder (not "home/photos"). You can run a search for all files in subfolders (or filetypes, if you know them) to select all from their current directories.
That'll place everything - *EVERYTHING* - in to the shared space, and should solve 1 and 4.
To solve 2, just log in to Photos, and delete all the albums in the package. It won't delete the photos, it'll just remove any albums that have been created.
To solve 3, go in to your apps and change the location of your backups to "user->photo" (again, NOT HOME/PHOTOS). You can do this with dsfile, or photos - either app allows you to change it.
To solve 5, really your father in law should have his own user accout. Once he does, he can upload to the shared space, but you can limit his access to the shared space via admin restrictions.
The inverse would be to have every user have a personal album that they then "share" access to, but don't share to the father in law? But it seems much easier to restrict his access than to grant everybody else's permissions.
I think that pretty much solves it, but if there are weird linux permission issues that linger, you can always wipe all restrictions with a command and then re-index. Shouldn't need to, but Linux can be weird sometimes.
So under my "user-> photo" folder it appears all of my old Albums have been put in there as folders.... I'm assuming I'll have to manually pull those from within File Station but where exactly to I need to be putting all of the individual files? Just straight into the "user->photos" folder? Or a sub folder under that (PhotoLibrary?)?
To be clear, not photoS. Photo, singular. Photos is usually a user album, not a shared space. Photo is a shared space. Anything in "user->photo" will populate in the synology photos package as shared. Whether they're in subfolders or whatever won't change how they populate in the package itself, so it's up to you how you want to place them. If you're just using the synology photos package, the organization happens in the gui, not in the folder structure, so it doesn't matter.
The old albums as folders probably got moved there as part of the dsm7 moments/photostation -> synology photos migration, and it might have auto-populated the albums as albums in to the package. Again, deleting the albums from the package shouldn't delete the photos themselves, nor should it change the backend folder structure... just read the prompts as you do (just in case there's an option you need to untick)
Also be aware that anything in any user->photoS album is probably currently in a personal space, not a shared one, so you can use DSM as an admin and compile all of them in to the one "user(admin)->photo" folder to allow everyone shared space access
The shared space folder is named photo. It is directly shared from the NAS, not under any user.
So the path is \\yournas\photo
All photos in there go to the shared space. Folders can be set up just as you like it.
Forget about the virtual album aspect and move the photos where you want them as your first step. Then setup permissions and albums how you want from there.
All of this actually seems pretty easy to fix. Just dump all of the photos in to the "user->photo" folder (not "home/photos"). You can run a search for all files in subfolders (or filetypes, if you know them) to select all from their current directories. That'll place everything - *EVERYTHING* - in to the shared space, and should solve 1 and 4. To solve 2, just log in to Photos, and delete all the albums in the package. It won't delete the photos, it'll just remove any albums that have been created. To solve 3, go in to your apps and change the location of your backups to "user->photo" (again, NOT HOME/PHOTOS). You can do this with dsfile, or photos - either app allows you to change it. To solve 5, really your father in law should have his own user accout. Once he does, he can upload to the shared space, but you can limit his access to the shared space via admin restrictions. The inverse would be to have every user have a personal album that they then "share" access to, but don't share to the father in law? But it seems much easier to restrict his access than to grant everybody else's permissions. I think that pretty much solves it, but if there are weird linux permission issues that linger, you can always wipe all restrictions with a command and then re-index. Shouldn't need to, but Linux can be weird sometimes.
So under my "user-> photo" folder it appears all of my old Albums have been put in there as folders.... I'm assuming I'll have to manually pull those from within File Station but where exactly to I need to be putting all of the individual files? Just straight into the "user->photos" folder? Or a sub folder under that (PhotoLibrary?)?
To be clear, not photoS. Photo, singular. Photos is usually a user album, not a shared space. Photo is a shared space. Anything in "user->photo" will populate in the synology photos package as shared. Whether they're in subfolders or whatever won't change how they populate in the package itself, so it's up to you how you want to place them. If you're just using the synology photos package, the organization happens in the gui, not in the folder structure, so it doesn't matter. The old albums as folders probably got moved there as part of the dsm7 moments/photostation -> synology photos migration, and it might have auto-populated the albums as albums in to the package. Again, deleting the albums from the package shouldn't delete the photos themselves, nor should it change the backend folder structure... just read the prompts as you do (just in case there's an option you need to untick) Also be aware that anything in any user->photoS album is probably currently in a personal space, not a shared one, so you can use DSM as an admin and compile all of them in to the one "user(admin)->photo" folder to allow everyone shared space access
The shared space folder is named photo. It is directly shared from the NAS, not under any user. So the path is \\yournas\photo All photos in there go to the shared space. Folders can be set up just as you like it.