Photographers return with hundreds of photographs at the end of a day's shoot. On longer trips, there are thousands of photos to transfer to the computer upon return, which then need to be organized for easy finding, selecting favorites, marking them for editing, backing up, and finally publishing. This whole process is known as the "workflow". Actually, the workflow starts even before taking the photo, beginning with setting the camera settings. This workflow changes over time with evolving technology, software, and cameras. Each photographer has their unique method. In this article, I will try to explain my own workflow process.

Since I started photography as a hobby in 2004, I have taken thousands of photos. As of writing this article, the count has reached 118,664, and I continue to add more each day. I prefer shooting in RAW format for the greater editing flexibility it offers. In this case, a single RAW file taken with my current Canon 5D Mark IV camera is about 40 MB in size. The alternative is shooting in JPEG format, which reduces file size to around 8-10 MB, but significantly limits post-editing capabilities. When shooting in JPEG, the camera processes the photo for you based on the selected settings, converting it from RAW to JPEG, whereas RAW files must be processed with software, not used in their current state. This also impacts the workflow. Thus, the decision to shoot in RAW or JPEG shapes the workflow.

Given this situation, storing photos on a standard desktop or laptop hard drive is insufficient. External hard drives connected via USB do not offer enough online connectivity for my needs. Therefore, I use NAS (Network-Attached Storage) for storage. NAS is essentially a computer without a keyboard, mouse, or monitor, operated only through a network connection, running a special operating system. My chosen NAS model is the Synology DS 718+. It contains two Western Digital hard drives, each 6TB, specially designed for NAS with low energy consumption. I use these drives in RAID 0 mode. This gives me a total disk capacity of 12 TB, equal to the sum of both drives, and operates quite fast as it writes and reads from both drives simultaneously. (There are many different methods like RAID 1, 2, 3, etc. for connecting multiple drives. I prefer 0.)

I connect the NAS device to my home modem via an Ethernet cable, thus avoiding potential delays from Wifi. Once connected to the local network at home, I can access all my files from any of my devices: iPhone, iPad, Android, Macbook, and PC. When you activate the AFP (Apple File Protocol) service on the NAS, you can assign this drive as a separate drive on Mac computers. Similarly, by activating the SMB (Samba) service, you can access your photos from your PC, for example, as a separate drive named P:. This is a great convenience for me. To access from iOS and Android devices, you need to install Synology's Drive app. Another feature provided by NAS is that you can make these services accessible not only on the local network but also via the Internet. This means you can easily access your files from your workplace or anywhere in the world. NAS provides a URL in the format https://%name%.synology.me for accessing your system over the Internet. With Let's Encrypt integration, it creates a certificate for you, making this access more secure via the SSL protocol. If you wish, you can open many services such as Web server, FTP, SFTP, AFP, SMB for Internet access, and NAS does all the port forwarding configurations with your modem on your behalf. Great convenience! On the other hand, I develop the website you are currently visiting from A to Z myself. I can create a development and test environment for my website without needing another PC by using services like MariaDB - MySQL, PHP, Apache Web Server, etc., which come pre-installed on the NAS. When I open this web server to Internet access, I can modify and test the codes of my website from anywhere.

As I mentioned above, I have my photo drive as a separate drive on both my PC and Mac. I use two methods to transfer photos from my camera. If the number of files I'm transferring is very few (max 2-3), I use my camera's Wifi to wirelessly transfer to a folder configured for FTP (File Transfer Protocol) on my NAS drive. For this, your camera needs to support FTP. I don't even need to be at home for this; as I mentioned in the previous paragraph, my FTP server is accessible from the Internet and connecting is quite easy. However, since I shoot the files in RAW format, even transferring a single file can take a long time. Therefore, when I need to transfer more photos, I remove the CF card from the camera and transfer it to the NAS using the CF card reader on my computer, marked as P:. As soon as I transfer the photos, my NAS device starts indexing them. However, since the photos are very large files, the processor of the NAS device starts working very hard, and the transfer speed decreases. Alternatively, you can manually stop the indexing process from the NAS DSM management screen at this moment. Although this indexing process slows down the procedure, it actually does a great job because now I can search my photos through the Synology Moments photo application. For example, if you have friends in the photo, it recognizes who they are by their faces, or you can search by words like mountain, sea, forest. If you took the photo in San Francisco, you can search by location. If you use Google Photos, you'll have a very similar experience, making all your photos searchable. I find the Moments app very successful. The biggest difference from Google Photos is undoubtedly privacy, as your photos are stored on the NAS device in your home, not on Google's servers. You can use the Moments app on iOS and Android devices. The app shows all your photos as a timeline based on years. Your entire archive is accessible from your mobile phone!

With Moments, you can access your archive from all your iOS and Android devices, which is great. But what if you want to examine your photos on a large screen on your computer, categorize the new photos you've taken, select your favorites, and rate them? You want to process them quickly but professionally without transferring them to Photoshop. Which program will you use for this? For many years, I used the Picasa program for this, but unfortunately, Google discontinued Picasa's desktop applications after acquiring it, creating a significant software gap. After a long trial and error process, I found the program I will use: Luminar, developed by a software company named Skylum! It has versions for both Mac and PC, and it meets all my needs in every aspect, I definitely recommend it. Browsing your archive and searching for photos is very similar to the experience in Picasa. Adobe has Lightroom for this purpose, but I could never warm up to Lightroom. Luminar, on the other hand, won me over instantly and has become one of my favorite software. The latest version is currently 4.1.0. For browsing my archive, it can show my photos in the folder structure on the original disk as seen in the screenshot below, or it can automatically create a breakdown by the date they were taken, as seen in the upper right. Similarly, I can filter them based on a scale from 1 to 5, or whether I marked them as a favorite. I can sort the list by file type, name, size, date taken. With these features, I can easily access any file in my photo archive, which reaches hundreds of thousands.

I've been using Photoshop for years to edit photos. However, if you want to edit hundreds of photos in Photoshop, it really takes a long time. Luminar can make significant changes to a photo very quickly. Especially when dealing with many files, this time-saving is substantial. However, its editing capabilities are not as advanced as Adobe Photoshop. We don't expect them to be, considering their price and experience. If the operation I will perform involves more complex steps like many adjustment layers, masks, content-aware fill, I edit the photo with Photoshop. I am a customer of Adobe's Photography Plan. I would say I am an intermediate expert in Photoshop and I define Photoshop as one of the most successful software of all time. But if you want to get a pretty good photo by clicking a few buttons, even if it's not perfect compared to the original, Luminar 4.1 creates wonders. Especially the AI Image Enhancer and Sky Replacement functions deserve all kinds of praise. Image enhancement improves the basic values of the photo like contrast, brightness, structure, color saturation, elevating the photo instantly. Sky replacement, on the other hand, miraculously places any sky from the sky library that comes with the program or that you can expand with additional packages into the photo. It automatically detects the area where it will place the sky, handles all the masking, and adjusts the overall lighting of the photo according to the selected sky. You can also use your own sky images. When you enter advanced settings, as I demonstrate below, it even allows you to adjust the background bokeh if present. Truly a feature worth taking your hat off to, justifying the cost of the program on its own.

The topic I'd like to touch on last is backup. I believe that even if we use NAS drives, we still need to back up our stored files elsewhere, and this is crucial. What if one of the disks you use inside your NAS fails? - which, believe me, is not that difficult. Or if you accidentally delete files. That's when you must have a backup. Otherwise, you might lose all your photos. However, if you have a manual backup process that you can't automate, you're still at risk. When was the last time you backed up? Cloud Computing can be a solution in this regard. But still, you need to find a way to automatically back up your photos. This is where Synology NAS comes into play again. Thanks to the Synology Cloud Sync application, I configured it once, and any changes on my drive are automatically synchronized with the cloud a few seconds later. So, a copy of my NAS drive is synchronized with a cloud server that only I can access. After much research and trial and error, I decided to use BackBlaze Cloud for this. This service works quite fast and is also the cheapest solution compared to others. Approximately 910 GB containing 130,000 photos of mine are backed up on BackBlaze, and I pay a bill ranging from $5 to $6 per month for this size.