How can I speed up Lightroom when working with files on a NAS?

Question

Are there any settings in Lightroom that help make the experience working with files stored on a NAS (and accessed over WiFi) any better?----------I know that the bottleneck is the speed of WiFi between the laptop and the NAS and that this is not Lightroom's fault. However I've looked at physical solutions and none of them are that great: 1. Use a network cable (which is inconvenient) 2. Use my laptop SSD instead (which is too small) 3. Use an external USB drive (which misses out on the automatic redundancy and offsite backup that my NAS does)Given that I don't want to do any of the above, I wondered if there was anything clever in Lightroom that could minimise the impact of working from a NAS?

Answer 1

Your best option here is to make sure your Lightroom Catalog file is located on your computer's local disk AND that you use "Smart Previews". Smart previews are saved with the catalog file locally so the program will need to make fewer calls to the NAS.

You can create Smart Previews on import or at anytime to images already in your Catalog.

Hope that helps, let me know if you need more details.