How to use Synology With Lightroom (full workflow) - Synology for Photographers Part 1

[@LuminousLives]

FINALLY a Lightroom/NAS workflow that's easy to absorb and end to end. Many thanks for making it.

[@EDUcopilot]

Hi Will, love the content. I recommend relocating the files through Lightroom and not through your computer's file manager. Also, keep your catalog local but photos on the NAS and tell the system to Build Smart Previews so you can still edit and see the current state of the images. These previews will stay with the catalog. Thanks for all the great content and for helping me set up my NAS.

[@grantcoop]

could you help explain why I get an error when I try to point my Lightroom at the catalog on the nas? It says it doesn't allow this?

[@nikoonikoo]

How about save the RAW in local folder too. Then use Synology drive back up the local folder into the NAS? I use a 2bay ds220+ and not really sure the write read speed from NAS will be affected if save all RAWs in NAS

[@RolandObermeier]

Does lightroom catalog even work on NAS? Not when I tried the last few years and their response always was strict about it....

[@EDUcopilot]

@@grantcoop Are you putting your catalog and the raw files on the nas? I recommend keeping the catalog on the host machine and the images on the nas. You can then generate smart previews that you can edit. I have found this to work smoothly. Also keep in mind LR needs at least one image in the folder on the nas for it to become aware of the folder.

[@EDUcopilot]

@@nikoonikoo That works, but if you generate smart previews, you should not see a drop in speed when storing the raw files on the NAS. At least, that has been my experience.

[@JackBrassell]

Thanks! I truly appreciated the NAS and LRC setup. Super helpful.

[@SpaceRexWill]

Thanks a ton by the way!

[@douglasgoodman226]

This is exactly what I bought my NAS for. You're the best!

[@kenj447]

Thanks! Your explanation was easy to understand and extremely helpful with my NAS addition. (Synology for Photographers Pt 1).

[@mcbrineellis]

I just wanted to express my sincere appreciation for the concepts shared in this video. I am a perpetually disorganized photographer, but I recently built my own NAS and while I generally understood I could somehow use it with Lightroom, this end-to-end demonstration saved me so much frustration and inevitable procrastination in getting started! Thank you! I'm finally on my way to centrally organized and backed-up photos :)

[@GuillermoTrevino-yb6bh]

Thanks!

[@SpaceRexWill]

Thank you!

[@niltondossantos7338]

This is great. Can I ask if you can make a tutorial on how to find duplicates and delete on the NAS. thank you.

[@SimonGorgesPhotographer]

What works for me perfectly: 1) Save all Raws on NAS, 2) Create LR catalogue on NAS, 3) Import all photos, 4) Create Smart & 1:1 Previews, 5) Copy LR catalogue with previews to desktop or local editing drive, 6) Do all culling, editing, 7) for exports re-link catalogue to NAS - do your exports. 8) final step, just copy the LR catalogue back to the NAS. 9) Finish

[@nguyenthanh-bq5bo]

No2: create Lr catalogue on Nas is possible?

[@karmascotland8]

Hey, @SpaceRex...you have a very 'amenable' presenting style that I appreciate. I find your inputs quite 'calming' and down-to-earth. 😁

[@SpaceRexWill]

Thanks man!

[@boostedmaniac]

This is exactly how I do my workflow now. But one very important thing is backup of your NAS. I have a 4 bay and had one drive fail on me. I popped in a replacement drive and while it was rebuilding, a 2nd drive decided to quit and I was screwed. I had some of the photos backed up on another place, but not all. Frustrated I powered it down, sat on the problem for a while trying to figure out what to do next. A couple weeks later I powered up and the 2nd drive failure sort of disappeared and I quickly copied what I was missing off the NAS before the drive failed again. Lesson learned. Make sure you have that 2nd backup of your NAS.

[@christianbram1959]

Excellent topic. Thanks a lot. I would be interested in your thoughts how to include cell phone photos into your workflow, e.g. behind the scenes stuff

[@me_jt]

This is exactly the videos I needed, as I am like a few others here who has purchased a NAS for this exact purpose. Thanks buddy!

[@unknownKnownunknowns]

This is great, Will.Thank you so very much. How about a way for us to consolidate catalogs from two different Macs (travel Laptop and desktop) And how about a video on consolidating RAW files from multiple Apple Photos/ iPhoto libraries to a single place on the NAS? Please? That would be epic!

[@mdistefano74]

This is something that I struggled with, often i am on the go with my laptop and want to do some editing work on the fly. My Catalog was always stores on my Desktop so I ended up having multiple catalogs. I now have my Catalog on a SSD drive that i can take with me (backing it up regulary to my Desktop) now I have 1 Catalog with all of my archived RAW files stored on my NAS. All of my recent RAW files and Catalog float between my desktop and laptop on an external SSD.

[@daverussell6852]

@@mdistefano74 That sounds like the perfect solution. I was reading further down and saw that one of the other posters came to the same conclusion, and realised that would solve my similar problem. I am often away for several weeks, sometimes doing events where people like to see the images asap. Being able to edit them on a laptop would be very useful. I do have pretty good WiFi at both locations, so in principle could do overnight copies of all the Raw files across to the NAS on main system overnight, to ensure the image files were protected.

[@noelscheuner]

Hey Will! Your workflow seems interesting. But on first sight, it also looks rather inefficient and dangerous in case of backups. May I present you my current workflow? 1) First off, my shared folder for the whole management is "Photos" (will come in handy later). In there, I created two folders; "Editing" and "Photography". 2) Afterwards, I used Synology Drive on my MacBook to connect the folder "Editing" in two way synchronization. After a photoshoot, I'll copy the pictures into "Editing". So the next time I connect to the internet, my files get uploaded to the NAS, while staying available offline on my MacBook. 3) The Lightroom catalog is also placed within the "Editing" folder. That way, I have the ability to edit on my MacBook AND on my windows machine at home, which is setup identically to my MacBook and is hooked up to the same catalog. This allows users, who don't have powerful notebooks, to use both devices on location and at home. 4) Editing happens now either outdoors or at home. And a big bonus is that the files are always on the NAS. So in case of losing my notebook, I don't lose my clients pictures (very important). 5) When the pictures are edited, I export them to the second folder "Photography". There, it's like an archive. This folder is hooked up as "on demand" via Synology Drive. So I don't waste much space, but I gain the ability to access files if I need to. When the project is done, I move the whole project folder into the Photography folder, so I don't waste storage on my notebook. 6) Synology Photos is a great tool to distribute all the pictures to my clients. The main reason I used the shared folder "Photos" in the first place... This workflow offers: -more reliability (always backed up in case of notebook loss etc...) -Same editing speed as yours thanks to two way synced files -The ability to access your projects from multiple devices -Sharing with Synology Photos This may help or inspire some peoples workflow. Btw: without your tutorials, I would not have been able to come up with this workflow! Thank you Will!

[@SpaceRexWill]

So this is a work flow that I do set up for people, but for most people who just need something to work its too complex. You should check out part 2 of the video though! It is very similar and covers the continuous backups!

[@noelscheuner]

@@SpaceRexWill Indeed, I'm excited to watch the other parts! And a Lightroom catalog backup is something I need to consider as well. Another question regarding DNG: are you happy with that file format or have you been experiencing any problems with it?

[@noelscheuner]

@@chengolivier I would look forward into a feature such like this, but haven't found one yet... Hit me up if you did!

[@glenj61]

I add a step when importing to "Make A Second Copy To:" In my case I call it "Card backup" on the NAS. It is therefore snapshotted and can be deleted down the track when I have archived the finished raw files to the NAS. Just another layer of safety.

[@MaikKleinert]

I use DNG since 2014 no problems at all and no more lost edits because of missing .xmp files or what ever :-D I can highly recommend it and you save a lot of storage @@noelscheuner

[@TonySanchez]

Very helpful! When you export, how do you organize these photos in terms of folder hierarchy? Becuase I would assume they are not going to stored in the "raw files" folder

[@ccow11]

This is awesome, I don't even think that I need the local copies since I'm working from a desktop that's wired to the network. Seems like smart previews and regular previews should have you covered!

[@DavidTanJeeBoon]

Will, super thanks for making this as straightforward as possible. I've learnt much considering this is my first NAS. Thanks!

[@sander1068]

Could you do a tutorial on using Lightroom for iPad with the NAS, plus syncing that with a library that’s living on a Mac?

[@dillansgarage]

Have you ever tested making a sparse bundle disk image to hold lightroom catalogue on the NAS? I just made a sparse disk, copied the catalogue to it, and opened in lightroom. Testing now

[@looppp]

So I am doing this a bit differently but the idea is similar When I import photos, it's going in my fast NVME (I'm on PC). I have a Synology Drive Backup set that backups my entire computer to the NAS every few hours, so I know that after each import, it'll be backed up, including my Catalog and my RAWs. Then every so often, when my NVME is running out of storage, I just delete them from my NVME, and I know that my RAWs are all backed up. No need to manually move the date/month/year folders to the NAS manually. I also will be setting up an external HDD to be a backup to my NAS so I have redundancy.

[@GregSpence]

Just found your channel and really enjoy your videos. Thanks for all the work you do!

[@peterdrueckes8688]

Hi Will, thanks for sharing. You mentioned it briefly at the beginning, but can you elute a little bit more why you specifically avoid storing the raw in the "photos" folder? This is why my raw files live. I also saw Noel's comments further down, but would still like to understand the rational of your suggestion. Sorry if I missed anything. Thanks!

[@Garou0410]

The Photos folder on a Synology NAS is continuously indexed and accessed by Synology Photos, which can noticeably slow down your workflow. This happens because the system is constantly generating thumbnails, running facial recognition, and processing metadata in the background. These tasks can consume significant CPU and memory resources, especially when dealing with large photo libraries. I've noticed that this indexing process can affect the overall performance of the NAS, particularly if you're using it for other resource-intensive tasks at the same time.

[@ashenshugar4461]

Hi! How can I use my catalogue files on the Synology nas? Is it possible?

[@ballbreaker333]

Thx for great explanation, this workflow its exactly what I need ;-) What will happen when I need to upgrade to a new Synology NAS ?

[@jat5917]

Suggestions for sharing the Nas between Mac and Windows with the catalogue on an external drive?

[@natalielaspisa4597]

Another super helpful video! Does this same workflow/process work for Lightroom CC? Rather than Lightroom Classic?

[@dmbarash]

Awesome video! I have my LRC on an external drive. Is there a setup to have the entire LRC catalog sync'd to the NAS to automatically update any changes I make to my catalog? Right now, I manually copy the catalog once a week or so using Carbon Copy. Thanks!

[@deepaktalwardt]

Hey Will, how can I edit photos that are on my NAS remotely? That is when the network drive is not mounted? Is there a way to still edit? Thanks!

[@RaulDominguez-v9w]

Great Video, good tips for NAS & LR Integration. I will be saving this and incorporating into my LR workflow.

[@chryslerxc]

You can actually auto-mount the Lightroom folder ("Photography" in your case) after login: System preferences > General > Login Items > + and then select the folder. For older versions of macOS the setting is under "Users & Groups".

[@SpaceRexWill]

Yes good point! You can also drag and drop the share into that box instead of finding it!

[@fo727]

Hey Will, I just set up my 923+ NAS. This is my first NAS experience. I do a lot of video editing. I’ve got an enormous amount of video files on 8TB external HD. What is the best way to transfer these files to the NAS? Can I plug the external 8 TB HD directly into the NAS (USB on the front of the NAS) and then from my MACBOOK see the 8TB drive and then drag the folders over to the NAS to start the file transfer process? Thanks

[@AndrewBartram]

Yes you can 👍🏽

[@felipescherer6678]

I use ACDSee Pro as my DAM - Digital Asset Management. Adobe LR is more streamlined to classify photos but ACDSee has more flexibility to filter and show the images and let you store the catalogs on the NAS

[@20centurymodern]

Excellent timing, been wanting to learn about NAS/Lightroom workflow. I would like to work exclusively off the NAS to edit all RAW photographs. Will this be smooth over a wired 1GBe Ethernet connection with a LR catalog of 200,000+ photos in varying sizes of 10-100MP (10-200mb per file) files? Currently working on a PC with 190mb spinning HDDs. Would there be any performance gains in upgrading to 10GBe for LR workflow?

[@jhmnieuwenhuis]

Excellent subject ! Thanks. Just wonder why you do not move the files from the old to the new location inside Lightroom. It is as fast as copying outside of Lightroom and You do not have to change the folder location in Lightroom. That is done during the move.

[@SpaceRexWill]

For me its control. I know if I copy them outside of Lightroom and something goes wrong I can restart the copy exactly how I expect to. Plus you can backup the catalogue before and not loose anything

[@joshnlevinson]

Thanks for the video Will! When are you planning to release parts 2 and 3?

[@Jalvesphoto]

I only have the option in the first window to create in Volume1: btrfs encrypted. Will that encrypted be a problem later? I am not selecting encrypted later on as you demonstrate in this video.

[@tmichellemoore]

Great video! Can you use the same folder and pictures for Synology Photos and your Lightroom photos? Thus taking advantage of the Mobile features while also using Lightroom Classic to edit?

[@dahlpix]

Great video, gives me better insight for a mobile workflow. If I want to work from both a desktop and laptop how would you suggest I do that since Lightroom only allows the catalog to be on a local drive? Work off a pluggable SSD and move it between devices?

[@MikeKlarich]

Will do you have a video on how to add a 10gb connection to the NAS? I need to add a 10gb PICe card to my Windows desktop. I already have the Synology 10gb card installed on my Synology 1620+. Thanks for your videos!

[@MartinAbrams-h5d]

You are the only person I can see that use the NAS with Lightroom. There are some parts where I can't follow only because I don't have a MAC but Windows. Is it possible for you to do this on Windows? Or can you tell me where I can see another KZbin that I can follow. I do understand that this can be done and you are only person I can see that knows this. Cheers.

[@kirikset]

Does this workflow let you view photos from Synology Photo app?

[@Yurikyurik]

Hello Will, I was starting to learn about NAS and synology so I don't remember in which specific video I heard you saying that lightroom would not work on a NAS, my question is, is this a situation that changed in the last years/months and now you can? or I misunderstood what you said in that video, thanks

[@stefanweibel]

Will, why do you not move the files from local to NAS within Lightroom (drag'n drop)? I am setup Option 2 but I only keep the non-processed RAW files on my local drive. As soon as I have processed them I move them to the NAS. This way I can move files individually after having created the folder on the NAS. Looking forward to Part 2, love your insights, keep going! Cheers from Switzerland.

[@SpaceRexWill]

For me, I prefer to control things completely so I manually move the files and relink! Copying via Lightroom works, but if you are moving multiple TB its not great

[@arnoldleonard886]

@@SpaceRexWill I set up the folder and sub-folder structure for newly downloaded files on my local SSD. After developing the images that I want to develop, I drag the whole file structure to my NAS from within Lightroom. It can take a long time for the folders and files to be moved, but I just switch to other work and let it all happen in the background. The folder structure that I originally established is exactly what I want on the NAS, so I don't have to manually recreate the structure. The Lightroom catalog is automatically updated with the new folder and file locations. It is pretty simple, and since everything is moved to the NAS in the background, I don't care about how long it takes. In fact, manually creating folders and moving files would take me longer to accomplish and require more of my attention.

[@smokie365]

Wondering if you can do a basic video on backing up on truenas scale? I have a smb share, Nextcloud and a few other apps. My apps have there own datasets but I can’t find a good video on one stop backup

[@GunmanBricks]

any way to run catalog from NAS? I get error message when I try to

[@cheekyoscar1353]

I'm just setting up my computer iMac and 3 year old Nas and new Lightroom , is it possible just to set up new category straight onto the Nash Drive or do I have to put it onto a USB drive first and then go through the procedure you have mentioned in the video and recreate the links in order for it to work... thanks

[@ghpetiot]

Hey thanks for all advices and guidelines. I have a massive catalog on a 220j and the system is getting very slow, to the point I can't import my new raw files. Would it help lightroom classic if I indexed the main folder? Are there tricks I can use to avoid lightroom freezing / not responding outside of the configuration you advise for speed in your other video?

[@luisdiegosalas]

This is great, I already was doing something like it. Last week I went a step further and installed Synology Drive Client. And I setup Photography as an on-demand sync folder. So now I import directly to the Synology and when I am ready to edit photos from a particular day I just pin down that day's folder in my mac's Synology Drive, tell Lightroom that's the new location for that folder, edit, export, and when I'm done, I reference back the folder in Synology (in LR) and ask Finder to free space on the local Synology Drive copy. It works like a charm over ethernet, except for a general issue I'm having with Sinology Drive Client on my Mac and it is that it starts eating over my M2 Max resources like crazy (CPU and RAM) It must be a bug. By the way, my catalog and previews are also hosted in a pinned down sync folder.

[@MikeCollins-oe7ze]

Thanks for sharing this ... I really enjoy your videos and the way you put them together. I also enjoy that you are "real" in your presentation. I am revamping my workflow now and making some changes, but one thing I've done that is a modification to your approach I'd like to share. I like to always have more than one copy of my images from day one. I have had a "scratch space" on my local machine. I keep my shoots' RAW files in year and/or sport main folders, but the shoots are all labeled with a Year-Month-Title. When I come home, I initially copy the cards into a new folder with that name and simultaneously put it in the local scratch folder and on the NAS in the appropriate main folder. This is done manually, and from watching your video I'm going to try and see about if LR can do this in one step for me. I've thus far been old school of doing the file copy with folder, and then import. The main point of all this is that the scratch disk is where I do most of my initial work. The NAS is backed up to another NAS and cloud. So my initial step leaves me with 3 copies - Card, Scratch, and NAS main. By the time I need the card and recycle it, there will be a copy on the backup NAS. By the time I need space on Scratch its also now in the cloud too. When I'm done with the need for the scratch folder I can just delete it. When I need to access the files at some point in LR (if ever) it will report that the files are missing. I just need to repoint it to the NAS. So there is never a case I need to come back later and copy something from my local scratch area to the NAS. That space is always considered "scratch". It greatly improves my performance, but I'm never depending on it being there and can delete it at anything after the initial day without concern.

[@jsteinbr]

Will, I am using your process of copying my photos from a Drobo 5N to a Synology DS1522+. I copy a folder from Drobo to Synology - What I am finding is that the folder on the Drobo that I copied to the DS1522 is not the same size (Bytes, File number and Folder number) once the copy is completed and location is update in the Lightroom catalog - should it be? By the way, I am really enjoying all of your content related to Synology NAS technology; Thank you so much!

[@DavidM2002]

My GF runs Lightroom on her older laptop which occasionally bogs down under the load especially when she also has GIMP open. It made me wonder if we should create a VM of her laptop on our DS920+. (We also have a QNAP TVS-h874 which is a powerhouse which would be an even better candidate for a VM but I'll leave that as an aside as it's not Synology.) We could also move the VM as we upgrade the NAS in the future. Are there any merits to this idea ? Backups are not an issue as the 920+ is backed up to 2 other locations plus snapshots ( you taught me well). Or, could you run Lightroom as a Docker app on the 920+ ?

[@pierre1509]

Your videos are always very detailed and provide all the necessary information to réplicate and go beyond chatting. Good work ! About the topic, wouldn't it be more user-mistakes-proof just to use Syno Drive to sync ? So LR files are the local versions and one takes advantage of the On Demand thing to save local space if required, by choosing in the explorer which folders/files are actually synced and not only linked.

[@sam3k]

Was wondering that myself

[@drz400sy9]

Great video. Glad you mentioned the metadata. Many times it seems to get lost or replaced, the EXIF data. My workflow includes ensuring all metadata is there and naming as year/event no/pic no and description with Mac Automator.

[@RomainTaillefer]

Hey Will, Is the part 3 coming anytime please ?

[@ScottMartinez]

Thanks for this. The only thing I have noticed is the SMB share on my M2 Pro is sometimes slow to import new files, or just craps out when I try to transfer images to my Synology from my Mac Mini. I have another PC with that card readers (XQCD and CF Express) to transfer. Then I use the add function in LR, but even then, it'll take up to a minute to even see the Synology's file structure to even add the files to LR. The PC didn't have this problem... Frustrating....

[@versa319]

Will! So in my case I have my catalogs stored on my Synology Drive on my MacBook which syncs to my NAS. And I have all of my RAW files on the NAS. Would you still recommend I keep my workflow this way since this is what you suggested to me several years ago? OR is there a better way of doing things?

[@sfields6903]

What if you have a laptop and a desktop. How do you share the catalog/index on both?

[@julianvrieslander]

I have many years of photos, with different groups currently stored on a JBOD, an iMac, and a Macbook Pro. I plan to obtain a NAS and consolidate all the photos into a folder hierarchy on that device. But I will probably not be using Lightroom. I prefer to use Adobe Bridge, Camera Raw, and Photoshop for my workflow. This avoids the need to keep a (Lightroom) catalog synched to the files. I can import and edit files on any of my computers (or iPhone). Then I transfer them into the final storage location, along with the sidecar (metadata) files. Finder and Bridge provide enough browsing and searching functions for me. Lightroom does not add any advantages, and I don't need to worry about catalog corruption.

[@rastogiatul]

I have learnt a lot from you. Thanks for all the information

[@iam_nick]

Does any know if I want to speed up editing on NAS, what setup can I do? any special settings or using a super fast speed SSD?

[@pietost7862]

How would this work with Lightroom Cloud as this also now offers a local option?

[@sylvainalain6637]

Quick question , on a windows PC , which letter do you start when assigning a drive letter ? I started with Z and I add in reverse. So Z,Y, X etc …

[@SpaceRexWill]

Haha I start with S, its random, but what my old company did

[@kuau714]

If you put the LightRoom Catalog on the NAS, can it be shared between a Mac and a Windows machine?

[@SpaceRexWill]

It cannot

[@rdbimages]

Adobe does not recommend putting your catalog on a network server. Keep your catalog local. It is OK to put your photos on a network server, but be prepared for a slower workflow.

[@avr01]

@@SpaceRexWill I would love additional clarity here if possible. Two questions: (1) Putting a LrC Catalog on the NAS on 10GE enabled network should render a little over 1GBps, which many external SSDs do. Why is this bad? (2) The 2nd part of @kuau714's question alludes to sharing a LrC Catalog with both macOS and Windows. Regardless of where the Catalog is stored, let's say for simplicity it's on the fast external SSD like you recommend, how do you reconcile the differences in how macOS and Windows reference the photo paths (the path is encoded in the LrC Catalog!)? Is this not problematic, or is there a good workaround if it is? Thanks so much for the great content!

[@pax0707]

How bad of an idea would be to put Lightroom photos folder inside of Synology Photos folder? To have people tagging, locations etc accessible from Synology Photos app.

[@jemmanphotography3009]

Hi, Will. I'm just getting started with a NAS unit with Lightroom and am digging into your videos. (Thank-you; I'm finding them helpful and am so glad to have found you.) A question: on import into Lightroom, why wouldn't I make a DUPLICATE COPY to the NAS unit and then UPDATE the location of the files when I'm done with the local raw files? You're copying them in this video and then pointing Lightroom to the new location when you're done with the local files and want to remove them. But could you just copy them to the NAS upon import so that the RAWS are backed up as well - and then update the primary location when done and remove the RAWS from the local spot? Hope I'm making sense. I'm trying to find a workflow that will help keep my laptop "thin" and have a backup / storage on my NAS and be able to use my NAS with Lightroom with files that aren't "current".

[@azwb]

Great Question. One thing to consider is you may trashed some images from your local copy and your nas would have All the images, even deleted ones. (but becuase you have a ton of space on the NAS that may not matter.). I'm thinking about my work flow to 1) Download new images and create catalogs on an external HD (with a backup RAW images on the NAS As you have stated) then Edit on the External, Create Collections, etc. Then have NAS backup external with snapshots as well as having a second copy of RAW images. This having collections on an external and processed on the NAS seems overly complicated. #Solution would be for lightroom to recognize NAS as external drives (Mine has the 10GBe card at 800MB/s). NAS in this case is acting like a backup and not a drive you can work off of.

[@frankline.gonzalez-dwindt2355]

I have been looking for this for a while.....many thanks for bringing it over!!! Is it worth adding SSD cache to the Synology drive for this process?? Would it make any difference? Thank you

[@SpaceRexWill]

It would not make a significant difference in this case

[@mikicho7]

Hello, a question, can I work with a catalog directly from the nas?

[@snyders600]

is it safe enough to store the lightroom library (and raw files) on the local computer an backup it via time machine? i have 1TB on my mac, so plenty of space.

[@manyeye8886]

In my case the loading time of the photos in lightroom or luminar is a huge lot longer if my photos are saved on my NAS. Are there any tips to fasten this up? I can't work like this it's so darn slow... The cataloge is locally saved.

[@martinabrams1]

I was looking at this maybe 6 months ago but my work PC wasn't updated. Today it is ready. I'm using Windows and I can't quite follow step-to-step. I get lost by trying to follow Mac. Is there a possible way for you to show us via Windows?

[@tjmccann2]

Can you talk about using Synology Drive for photos? I would like to keep my RAW files on my computer (or external SSD) and use Drive as a backup and to allow access from my laptop when traveling. Any thoughts?

[@barkingbeanscoffee]

I when I start up my computer and open Lightroom, it does not see my images on the Nas until I go to Finder and click on the Nas. Is there a setting or some thing to have it connect automatically

[@charminbaer2323]

I just built my first home server with an older MBP that was just laying around. I keep my new photos on the local drive on my newer MBP. Older photos are archived on a OWC Thunderbay 4 Mini with 4 x 2.5" SSDs with a total of 8TB in RAID 0. I have a second OWC Thunderbay 4 with 4 x HDDs for a total of 16TB in RAID 0 for a backup of my RAWs in the other RAID. So far I have the backup RAID drive connected directly to my MBP server but now that I know I can have my external drive for my RAWs on a server, I will be moving the Thunderbay Mini and connceting it to my server MBP too. They're connected via Thunderbolt to my server MBP and over Ethernet, so should be plenty fast for my workflow. The HDD DAS is somewhat loud with the fan and mechanical drives spinning, so its gonna be nice to have a much cleaner desktop while also being completely silent and have everything else running in my garage.

[@jennifermedia6288]

I keep my raws in my actual project by year date. For instance Holidays year and then the holiday folder incs LR and VIDEO FCPx files and all the media for that.

[@jonicolton]

hell yeah! looking forward to this for while. thank you! 🤟🏼 -colton

[@shawnphotoart6814]

This video was 8 months ago.. Can you still use a Synology with the new Light Room update, update 13? I will finish watching the videos you made, but I have been running my catalog over my Synology drive for at least 3 years, when I updated light room it cut the connection to my net work drive and the link to all the photos. I am now back on youtube trying to figure out how to fix this. I may need to hire you.

[@maxcarroll5670]

Hey mate, My current set up is a PC and Macbook. Do I share the same catalog for both computers on the NAS drive too and load from there?

[@avr01]

I want to do this too! Is there an answer yet?

[@maxcarroll5670]

@@avr01 I think Lightroom is just shittyer then premier pro for sharing project files across unfortunately.

[@ForbesPhoto]

I'm already synchronizing my photo and video folders from my desktop to my Synology NAS, can I just point Synology photos to these folders that are on the NAS already and have it work with those?

[@20centurymodern]

Whilst you mention not storing all RAW photographs on the NAS to work from, I do and found it to be snappy and totally responsive over a 10GBe connection

[@lukehales4755]

I plan on connecting my computer via ethernet to my router for the faster wired connection. Is there any additional advantage to connecting my computer to the NAS directly via ethernet? I don't have a NAS yet but am a professional photographer and will buy one soon to run a similar setup.

[@SpaceRexWill]

Connecting through the router will give no performance impact! As long as you are wired

[@lukehales4755]

@@SpaceRexWill Thanks for the help!

[@ViianaCodes]

Copying files between places within the NAD is much faster via DSM than over SMB.

[@FDOV917]

Can you edit files that are located on the NAS thru wifi? Many thanks!

[@SpaceRexWill]

Yes! And it’s not too bad of an experience because Lightroom generally uses the on disk previews

[@FDOV917]

@@SpaceRexWill Thank you for your prompt response! Is there any preference on the type of previews to select when importing? Your videos have been incredibly useful. Because of them, I’m one step away from getting a NAS.:)

[@grantcoop]

I think I may have missed a step... I keep getting the message Lightroom will not work on a network nas...... Do I need to keep the Lightroom "catalog" local on my iMac?

[@LA-fh2fs]

I wish I watched this video when I first started photography.

[@cichlisuite2]

I suspect you've probably addressed this in another video but what I would consider super, super important is the backing up of all of those raw files. That should be a key part of the workflow but I know you're well aware of this. Just feel like it should be mentioned in this video?

[@HelberPontes]

I tried using Synology Drive to synchronize the catalogs between my machines; however, it proved to be unstable. The catalogs frequently became corrupted during synchronization between different computers. As a result, I switched back to iCloud, and now everything is working fine again.

[@alexcychung]

Any ideas with Lightroom IPad?

[@camerachris]

I'm unsure about how you're just double clicking on the photography folder and having it mount like a drive, mine doesn't do that and only opens as a network folder.

[@jonedmonds283]

Well done Thank you

[@marcback1]

Hi will, thanks a lor for all the great content you share with us. I'm a pro photographer and have a very different workflow that works for me but that's not the point of my comment. When I'm "done" with a client's projet, I Clean all the files I dont want to keep, then I export my raw files and lightroom edits as a new catalog in a folder on my NAS. Sometime I have to go back to a specific project. The issue is lightroom doesn't let you open a catalog file stored on the network (the *.lrcat). So I have to temporarily copy the catalog file on my local driver to launch it. It is not a big deal but I was wondering if there is a way of "tricking" lightroom to believe you open a local file when you are in fact opening the file on the nas ? thanks a lot

[@ericbarkhurst2951]

Interesting they dont let you access a catalog on the NAS. I do a similar thing and just backup my catalogs since I rarely have to go back and access them.

[@farmersfotos]

Why do you not use the premade photo folder? I’ve been using a synology for a while, and it is dreadfully slow for Lightroom. But I am using that photo folder, is that why?

[@SpaceRexWill]

Because if you use the photo folder, it puts all your RAW files in Synology Photos, which clogs it up for me. I prefer to only put my exports in there

[@farmersfotos]

Thank you :). Yeah I have a Lightroom catalog of 500,000 images and it’s not usable for more than just archived photos. Any image takes minutes to load to edit.

[@farmersfotos]

@@SpaceRexWill my write read speeds on a DS418 via ethernet is 40MB/s which just seems way slow.

[@josecampos2051]

Why is impossible to work on a Lightroom catalog directly from the NAS using the 10Gbs ethernet cable? Having the lightroom file in the same folder where you have the pictures. This is a really huge gap.

[@SpaceRexWill]

So even though a 10 GbE connection has high throughput, it does have much higher latency compared to a local disk. It probably could work, but adobe directly disables it

[@simranbajwa9299]

Needed this video !!!!

[@DennisInVenice]

I don't see how Lightroom knows where the files are when you copy via the computer operating system. What I did was (in Lightroom) add a folder (click the + sign) and choose the NAS drive and shared folder you want. Then just drag and drop the local folders to the NAS. I'm pretty sure that is the Adobe official way to transfer safely.

[@DavidDowns61]

Will, a challenge from early in the video..”organize your files by date’. Direct conflict with Scott Kelby’s recommendation which is far more intuitive.

[@SpaceRexWill]

For me using dates makes managing files much easier, then I use tags for anything else I want to do. At the end of the day its whatever works for you

[@avr01]

What is Kelby's recommendation?

[@DavidDowns61]

​@@avr01 He doesn’t favor the use of dates for organization since our brains don’t remember a particular date. Instead, he recommends organization based on how we remember then. For example, you may not remember exactly which year you visited Vienna for Christmas, but you DO remember you were there. So your filing system should be categorized similarly: Travel->Europe->Vienna. If you visit many areas in Austria, you might have an Austria folder with subfolders for cities. The point is, it’s very easy to find an image years later. Now, you can certainly tag every image, but honestly, I’ve never met anyone who was really religious about that. And tags aren’t visible if you’re just looking through file names. There’s more, google Scott Kelby SLIM and watch his free videos on it.

[@bjamisonf]

I don't understand why you don't save the files directly to your "photo" folder so they can also be accessed by Synology Photos.

[@jaynebrownlee6976]

GET TO THE TOPIC!!!!

[@decon4611]

I like your shirt!

[@idontnodouno]

THANKS