A number of ProSelect users have run into issues when using NAS (Network Attached Storage) such as Synology devices in their studios.

This has been tracked to be because these drives run a case-sensitive file system. This means that the drive will allow you to have two or more files of the same name in the same folder if any of the characters in the name differ in case only. For example, the following different files can exist in the same folder on this device.

Image_1.jpg
image_1.jpg
image_1.JPG

Standard Mac and Windows computers use a case insensitive file system which treats the above files as having exactly the same name and won't allow you to put them together in the folder without first renaming one.

ProSelect assumes that you are running a case insensitive file system when looking for the original files to reload, re-link, open in Photoshop or Lightroom and when running High-Res Production. It doesn't care what the case of the files are. So here is the problem...

You add an image named "IMAGE_1.JPG" to your ProSelect album then later retouch the image and save it as "IMAGE_1.jpg". You then try to do something with the original image such as updating it in ProSelect, if the image is on a Synology drive ProSelect will get all the names of the files from the folder, find that there is one with a matching name (because IMAGE_1.JPG and IMAGE_1.jpg are the same as far as it's concerned) then ask to the operating system to load the file with the original filename which won't be found because the drive treats this as a different file.

We have been advised that it is not possible to set up a Synology drive to be case insensitive so, if you have one of these, you need to be really strict with your file naming conventions. The best option is the make sure that ALL of your filenames are either all lowercase or all uppercase including the file extension. That is, IMAGE_1.JPG or image_1.jpg.

When deciding this remember that some editing software (Photoshop and Lightroom included) defaults to lower case file extensions when you are saving a file as a different type or name so it's safest to choose the "All lowercase" option. However, many cameras save the images using uppercase filenames so you would need to rename these to lower case when copying them from your camera. This KnowledgeBase Article: All about Sorting Images in ProSelect suggests some utility software that you can use to do this renaming.

Mac users can also use the method on this web page.

In summary, using a case sensitive NAS drive can cause a lot of workflow confusion. If you are considering buying one, best to avoid any that are like this.