Upload from Display

Additionally, if you upload from a collection (2) you have the additional option to simultaneously upload to the collection and select displays that you may wish to immediately display the uploaded items:

> Send to Display.  

If you use the display (3), you only send the media item to the display and the library.

If you upload from the Media library (1), you are also able to send the media items to displays or collections (New or existing) or both at the same time. In each case make sure you confirm the name of the collection/display before you “Upload files”.

In all cases the media items will be listed in the main media library under “My Media” and in the collections you have directed the items to appear in.

Deleting your uploaded media from CURA is easy. Go to the Media tab select the items(s) you wish to delete,  Click the “remove media” icon to the top of the page.  Tip: If you want to Delete (vs Remove) all images from a collection, go to the collection, Click on “Select All”, then go to “Media” and click on the Delete/Remove Icon.

ollection Naming

When naming collections use names that are clear and useful that enable you to easily understand the content of the collection. This is not only useful in your media library, but can then be used in voice commands. E.g.  naming a collection clearly as “2024 Beach vacation” can be used in a voice command: “Show me my 2024 Beach vacation collection in the living room” (See how to set voice commands up on you phones here).

Meta data and Media Properties

When you upload media into the Cura system, the upload process reviews and processes as much data that is contained in the meta data of files. In most cases this is just the “date taken”, but elements such as title, subject, taken by, description/comments and captions/labels/tags, will be read in and stored in the Cura data associated with the uploaded media. This data can then be later used to e.g. reverse order a collection by date taken to tell a timeline story or find and create additional sub or superset collections. Some of this information such as date taken, taken by, title and subject can also be used as captions that are displayed on the image when they are being displayed.

Using Set Media Properties

As mentioned above, in most cases raw media on your phone will contain limited meta data, if you use photo management software such as Adobe Light Room or others, the meta data (such as Titles, labels, creator etc.) if saved will carry across into Cura.  The Set Media Properties steps can be performed as part of the upload process or at any time later after upload, it allows to you to set or append certain metadata elements that could be useful later in additional collection creations, filtering etc.

Additionally, Cura has enhanced tagging for both content safety levels and target audiences that can be used later as display filters..

An example:

If you were to upload several of your favorite photos in batches of 200 or so, from your vacations, birthdays or Xmas holidays over the years into collections named say “Beach Vacation 2024”, “Spanish Vacation 2023”, “Xmas 2023”, ”Xmas 2024”, “Margaret’s Birthday 2024 “ etc. In each case is you tagged the images with “Vacation”, “Beach” , “Xmas” and “Margaret” you can use these tags to select and create a superset collection of say “Xmas through the years” that you can play on your displays during the Xmas seasons.

In the example above, there may be a number of images that are age inappropriate, more private or not so interesting to others, that you can set enhanced tagging on safety level and target audience. You have choices of Safe, Moderate (need judgment) , or Adult, for age appropriateness, for audience , you can tag them for General, Friends , Family , Partner or Owner.

When you play back these collections you can select your Room/Display filters to only display your desired subsets depending on who is around.

General Tips and Tricks in creating and safeguarding your photo library.

Above we outlined some best practices on how to manage your images/media to enable you to enjoy them on your TV/displays using Cura. Here are a few more current general tips that you should consider to help you organize and safeguard (backup) your media.

1. Using a family enabled cloud service such as Apple Photos, (with iCloud), Google Photos (with Google One), that will enable you to offload and backup your phone, your partners phone, and your other non-phone media, into shared folders and /or albums, that you can then use to upload into your secure CURA collections. These plans could cost you approximately $20 to $100 annually for 100GB to 2TB annually. Most folk would need about 200GB. In general, you can use their apps on your phone to get achieve most of the organization you may need, but they also have access to your media via PC’s and web browser that may be more suitable for photo organization.
2. In addition to 1. Or as an alternative you store your files on your PC with an backup external USB hard drive (1TB for about $50 including the backup software) you can then organize your media with: (In each case there are mechanisms to import your phone media)
   1. Your normal file manager and file system editor (free)
   2. Adobe Bridge (free)
   3. ACDSee Photo Studio (organizer and Editor) $50 One Time purchase.
   4. Adobe Lightroom, Mobile. Web and PC and includes 1TB of cloud storage for about $150 a year.
   5. Mylio Photo organizer ($120 per year) Add $144 per year for 2TB cloud storage.
   6. Others

AI, facial and location recognition tools that can be found on your phone, Apple Photos, Google Photos  and products such as ACDsee, Adobe Lightroom, Mylio and others that can help you organize and sort through your photo libraries.

Useful features such as auto updating albums on your phone or Apple/Google Photos can be linked to Cura to upload for display items that may be of a particular person or pet so they can be automatically displayed with Cura.