Leaving

There is little to take with you, because the pictures were never with us. They are in your own bucket, in plain folders, exactly as you uploaded them.

What is where

Inside the bucket

originals/{year}/{month}/{item id}/{file name}   the file exactly as it was uploaded
display/{year}/{month}/{item id}.webp            long edge 1600 px
thumbs/{year}/{month}/{item id}.webp             360 px high
full/{year}/{month}/{item id}.webp               full size, only for HEIC, TIFF and the like

The year and month come from the picture's own date at the moment it was uploaded. Each file sits in a folder of its own, so two files with the same name never collide. The file name is the one it had on your camera or phone.

originals/ is the one that matters. Nothing in it has been resized, renamed or compressed again. The other three folders are copies made from it. You can delete them once you have left.

If you gave your library a folder when you connected the Space, all four sit inside that folder.

Downloading everything

Any tool that speaks S3 can do it. You need the same details you gave your library: the endpoint, the bucket name, and a key. If you no longer have the secret key, make a new one at DigitalOcean. Read-only access is enough.

With rclone

rclone is free and runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. Set up a remote once, then copy:

# once: answer the questions. Storage: s3. Provider: DigitalOcean.
# Endpoint: ams3.digitaloceanspaces.com (your own region)
$ rclone config

# copy every original to a folder on this computer
$ rclone copy spaces:my-bucket/originals ./my-photos --progress

With the AWS command line tool

# once: type the access key and the secret key. Region: us-east-1
$ aws configure

$ aws s3 sync s3://my-bucket/originals ./my-photos --endpoint-url https://ams3.digitaloceanspaces.com

Both can be stopped and started again. They carry on where they left off.

For a few files, DigitalOcean's control panel will do. Open the bucket there and download what you want.

Transfer out of a Space counts against the allowance in your DigitalOcean plan. A very large library may go over it. See their pricing page.

Titles, tags, stories and comments

These are in your library's database, not in the bucket. There is no export button yet.

Until there is one, write to us and ask for a copy of your library's database. The self-hosted app can open it, so you can carry on with the same library on a server of your own. Ask before you delete your account.

Much of what a camera recorded travels with the file itself: the date, the place, the camera and its settings. It was never changed, so any other photo app will read it.

Moving to your own server

ImageStoria can be run by anyone for their own photos. A self-hosted copy can use the very same bucket, so the files do not have to move at all. See Run it yourself.

Closing the account

1. Download what you want to keep, or leave it in the bucket.
2. If you want your titles, tags and stories, ask us for the database first.
3. Delete the account on your account page. This ends the subscription and deletes your library's database.
4. At DigitalOcean, delete the key you made for ImageStoria.

We never delete anything in your bucket, when you leave or at any other time. If you want the files gone, delete the bucket yourself at DigitalOcean. Its bill runs until you do.