NAS for Lightroom Workflow – +Moments app

I’m helping my wife get set up with a NAS for her established photography business. I’m a software developer myself, and although data management isn’t my strongest area I feel that I can manage some of the more involved setups, if there’s reason to go with one.

I’m trying to get an idea from her how much storage sure currently has and its growth rate. My best guess at this point would be 10TB exists with another 2TB added per year. The big thing for her is going to be a seamless workflow. She uses an iMac with Adobe Suite, especially Lightroom. I know some NAS come with photo management software. I’m concerned that this software might compete with what Lightroom does in terms of photo library/catalog tasks, and not augment user experience as intended.

That’s the backstory, here come the questions…

 

Is it possible to upload directly from a compact flash (CF) card to a NAS, or to upload directly from the camera via USB?

Yes, you can use SD card USB adapter to upload directly from the flash card. Most cameras will let you offload the footage directly and serve as an SD card adapter. Synology can be even be set up to automatically copy all data from a flash device to a NAS once connected or once quick copy button is pressed.

With a NAS can she do her edits over the LAN, never having the photos physically on the Mac?

As long photos are smaller then 100MB you could use any standard or plus series NAS. Something like DS918+ will do a good job and it also can be expanded up to 9 drives with a potential storage capacity of 80TB. The Quad core processor will also be very beneficial for picture management app – Synology Moments. Dual LAN ports will also turn any switch or router into a load balancing capable device. This improves transfer speed in a multi-user environment or even multi-device setup.

How can she easily maintain both the raw (unedited) copy of a photo and also the edited version?

She can create a separate folder for postproduction. Serious photo editors have a mix of regular hard drives and SSD drives. The editing is done on RAID1 SSD storage and finished projects are then moved to HDD storage for distribution. With a content creator network in place- user accounts can be also created for their footage uploads on HDD media.

Regarding a NAS’s photo built-in management software — would it play nice with Lightroom, or cause more harm than good?

It is recommended to work with raw image files without Moments software. You can use this app for finished projects. You can easily filter down all pictures from a certain year, location or even certain people or objects seen in those pictures. That is very helpful with reusable image libraries.

Is it advisable to do email and website serving for her business on the same NAS, or should that be on a separate piece of hardware?

If you have a time to maintain your website server then you can do that. As long as there are not too many people trying to access it. I think it is better to host your website with professional hosting providers where you can get instant help when something goes wrong.

How often should a NAS itself be replaced?

There are users who come to us and look for a replacement after 10 happy years of using a NAS. But most often people do upgrade every 5 years the plus series and every 2 years the budget series like j and none plus.

Overall, what NAS is right for us?

DS918+ with SSD caching will be a great tool in such setup. The next step up with more storage would be DS1618+ or DS1817+. This when things become more bandwidth demanding. The PCIe slots will let you upgrade those units to a faster 10GbE network.

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