Goals
- Store and manage all family members' photos.
- View photos on any device.
- Share photos.
Workflow
My workflow consists of five stages:
- Import
- Processing
- Sorting
- Archiving
- Backup
Import
By this, I mean the process of transferring photos directly to the incoming folder on my PC. The incoming folder is where I put new photos. In my case, it’s a Samsung S25 and a Canon R10.
Canon provides EOS Utility. This application has a great feature that automatically transfers new photos from the camera to the PC. In the preferences you can choose the destination folder and configure a new file-naming pattern. I recommend adding the date and the time of capture as a prefix to the original filename. If you don't do that, you may end up with duplicate filenames.
Unfortunately, Samsung doesn't offer software like EOS Utility to automatically download your photos to your PC. You have to copy them manually.
I use DupeGuru to scan the photos for duplicates because I don’t delete the photos from my smartphone after transferring them to my PC.
Processing
I use digiKam and Lightroom. digiKam is used to add tags and ratings to the photo metadata. Lightroom is used to edit RAW files from my camera.
Sorting
I divide photos into 3 groups: life, work and hobbies. All groups have subcategories. It helps me organize my photo archive. I hope you can see why I recommended changing filenames when you transfer photos from the camera.
Archiving
At this stage I’m only moving photos into folders organized by categories and subcategories.
Backup
When I started looking for information on how I could organize my data, I found a 3-2-1 data backup method.
This method consists of the following principles:
- 3 copies of your data – your original data plus two backups.
- 2 different types of storage media – such as internal hard drives and external SSDs.
- 1 copy stored off-site – ideally air-gapped from the internet and physically separate from on-site backups.
Problems
The first problem arises when you transfer your photos from various devices to your PC. If you don't have an organized workflow for processing and storing your photos, you may end up with duplicates in new folders.
The second problem is manually transferring photos from a smartphone to a PC.
The third problem is the lack of suitable tools for viewing photos. The default Windows Photos app doesn't support metadata-based searching and doesn't let you create smart albums.
The fourth problem is managing photos only from the PC.
The fifth problem is the lack of a way to easily share photos with friends and relatives.
The eighth problem is making the system available to all family members.
The ninth problem is manually backup.
Solution
To solve these problems and achieve my goals, I bought a NAS.
I chose between a QNAP TS-233 and a Synology DS223j. I went with the QNAP TS-233 because its hardware is more powerful, but Synology's interface is more user-friendly. I think both devices perform this task similarly.
All family members have a folder on the NAS. They use it as a network drive for data storage.
Multimedia Console is installed on the NAS. It indexes and creates photo thumbnails. It also recognizes people and things in photos and videos. It also finds similar and duplicate photos. You have to specify the folders on the NAS that contain photos.
There are about 50,000 photos on my NAS. The whole process on the NAS takes about three days.
QuMagie is an app to view, organize and manage your photo library. On a PC, you use it in the browser. On smartphones it's an app. You can create and share albums. You can add ratings, tags and geolocation. One great feature is Smart Albums. It makes it possible to collect photos from different folders into groups based on criteria such as tags, people and places.
To automatically transfer photos and videos from a smartphone, you have to configure the source and destination folders in the app. The destination folder has to be added to the Multimedia Console.
You can also automatically transfer files from your mobile device to your QNAP NAS with Qfile Pro without adding a folder to the Multimedia Console.
For batch-adding ratings and tags to the photo metadata in my archive I use digiKam. I find it more useful than QuMagie.
To back up all my data automatically, I configured HBS 3. It syncs all my data to another device once a month.
Things to Keep in Mind
One drawback is that QuMagie displays only thumbnails in the browser. I found that after creating a low quality. You can’t choose the original size as in the mobile app. It is really illogical that the PC screen is bigger than smartphones.
4K thumbnails take up to 30% of the data size. I don’t use them.
You can create photo thumbnails if you upload them with Qfinder. Unfortunately I discovered this after transferring all my photos using the usual method in Windows.
Conclusion
Any NAS is the perfect solution for storing your data. If you have extra money, I recommend buying a NAS with four HDDs. The NAS software allows you to use it in different ways.
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