How to use files from my server in lightroom when i am outside of my local network?

[SunoE]

Hi!

I have my raw photos on a Qnap server located at my home, so can only reach them from my local network. However I can reach my files from outside via FTP but lightroom cannot access the files from an ftp, how to do?? I want to be able to reach my raw files from outside my home.

I can “map” my ftp so I can find it in explorer and treat the file as if they were on my computer, but not directly from lightroom. Now I manually cache them on my local drive and then I can use lightroom, but it’s a bit complicated!

(I am using windows10)

[ManiacJoe]

Lightroom Classic needs the source files to be on a local drive when no network drive is available.

Smart Previews might be an option depending on the type of edits you need to be doing.

I would go with temporarily caching the source files on the hard drive. While maintaining the folder structure, copy the source images to the hard drive, "relocate" the top-most folder to your hard drive from inside of Lightroom. When you no longer need the files outside the house, you can "relocate" the folder back to the network drive and remove the files from the local drive.

Depending on what your work environment looks like when out of the house, external drives connected by USB can work well for this purpose.