Try Now

Culling Photos from a QNAP, TrueNAS, or UGREEN NAS

By Ingo D ·

If you picked a QNAP, TrueNAS, or UGREEN NAS to store your photo library, you made a sensible choice: your originals stay on hardware you own, on a network you control, with no monthly cloud fee eating into your margins. The frustrating part arrives after the shoot.

You have 1,200 frames. You need to get to 60 keepers. And your NAS, for all its excellent storage, has no way to help you do that quickly. The admin interface shows files. It does not show a star-rating workflow, a reject flag, or a full-screen swipe interface. So you copy everything to a laptop, import into Lightroom, cull there, and try to get the metadata back to the NAS later. It works, technically. It takes too long.

This guide covers the faster path: culling directly on the NAS over SMB, with setup steps for QNAP (QTS / QuTS hero), TrueNAS (CORE and SCALE), and UGREEN (UGOS) specifically — because the three are not configured the same way, even though they all speak the same protocol underneath.

Why can’t my QNAP or TrueNAS cull photos on its own?

A NAS is a storage appliance. Its built-in apps — QNAP’s QuMagie, TrueNAS’s file shares, UGREEN’s photo app — are designed to store and display images, not to triage them at speed. None of them offer a true culling loop: a full-screen frame, a one-gesture keep/reject decision, a star rating that auto-advances to the next image, and metadata written in a format your desktop editor reads.

QuMagie, for example, will show you AI-sorted albums and faces, but it has no reject flag and no XMP output. TrueNAS doesn’t ship a photo app at all by default — it’s a pure file server. UGREEN’s photo app is closer to a cloud-photos clone than a pro culling tool. In every case, the rating workflow has to come from a dedicated app that connects to the share.

How does SMB let me reach my NAS library directly?

Every QNAP, TrueNAS, and UGREEN NAS exposes files over SMB (Server Message Block), the standard local-network share protocol that Windows, macOS, and iOS all speak natively. That detail matters because it means any app that speaks SMB can reach your library directly, without proprietary integration or special setup.

CullKit connects over SMB. Open the app, enter your NAS share address, and you are browsing your library on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac in seconds. Nothing is copied to a temporary location. Nothing is uploaded. Your photos stay exactly where they are, on your hardware, on your network.

CullKit is an independent product. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by QNAP Technologies, Inc., TrueNAS / iXsystems, UGREEN Group, or their parent companies. It connects to these devices via the standard SMB protocol, the same way any other SMB client does.

How do I connect CullKit to a QNAP NAS?

QNAP enables SMB (“Microsoft Networking”) by default on most setups, but it’s worth confirming.

  1. In QTS or QuTS hero, open Control Panel → Network & File Services → Win/Mac/NFS/WebDAV and confirm Enable SMB service is on. QNAP supports SMB 2/3; leave the maximum at SMB 3 for performance and encryption.
  2. Note your shared folder name. The default photo share is usually Multimedia (or a custom share you created for RAWs).
  3. Find your NAS IP under Control Panel → System → Network & Virtual Switch — something like 192.168.1.20.
  4. In CullKit, add an SMB connection with the address smb://192.168.1.20/Multimedia and your QNAP username and password.
  5. Browse to your shoot folder and start a culling session.

QNAP path format: \\<NAS-IP>\Multimedia on Windows, smb://<NAS-IP>/Multimedia on Apple platforms.

How do I connect CullKit to a TrueNAS NAS?

TrueNAS does not enable SMB until you create a share, so there’s one extra step.

  1. In TrueNAS SCALE (or CORE), go to Shares → Windows (SMB) Shares → Add.
  2. Pick the dataset that holds your photos as the Path (for example /mnt/tank/photos), give the share a name like photos, and save. Start the SMB service when prompted.
  3. Make sure your user account has permission on that dataset (Credentials → Local Users, and check the dataset ACL).
  4. In CullKit, connect to smb://<TrueNAS-IP>/photos with that user’s credentials.
  5. Open your shoot folder and begin culling.

TrueNAS path format: \\<TrueNAS-IP>\photos (the share name you set in step 2), not the underlying dataset path.

How do I connect CullKit to a UGREEN NAS?

UGREEN’s UGOS exposes SMB much like QNAP.

  1. In UGOS, open the Control Panel → File Services (or SMB) settings and enable SMB.
  2. Confirm the shared folder name for your photos (UGREEN often uses a default share you can rename).
  3. Find the NAS IP in the UGOS network settings.
  4. In CullKit, connect with smb://<NAS-IP>/<share-name> and your UGOS account credentials.
  5. Browse and cull.

The takeaway: the path differs per vendor (Multimedia on QNAP, your chosen share name on TrueNAS, the UGOS share on UGREEN), but once CullKit is connected, the workflow is identical.

What does CullKit actually do?

CullKit is a culling and rating app. You browse, rate, flag, tag, and organise. You do not edit or develop images in CullKit; that job belongs to your editor of choice. Think of it as a dedicated first-pass tool: it sits between your camera card and your editing software, and it does one thing quickly.

The culling interface is full-screen and gesture-driven on iPhone and iPad. Swipe to keep or discard, tap to assign a star rating, use the quick-access bar for colour labels. On Mac the workflow is keyboard-driven: number keys for star ratings, P to pick, X to reject, arrow keys to move through frames. Both feel genuinely fast in a way that no NAS web interface ever does.

A culling session runs in three phases: start (review all frames, unrated only, or a filtered subset), rate (the main swipe or keyboard pass), and batch review (confirm your selects before the ratings are written). This lets you work in passes — a fast first sweep to cut the obvious discards, then a second pass to star-rate the survivors.

How do my ratings get into Lightroom or Capture One?

Every rating you assign in CullKit is written to an XMP sidecar file, stored alongside your RAW files on the NAS. XMP is the open standard that Lightroom, Capture One, and Darktable all read natively. When you open your working folder in Lightroom after a culling session, your selects are already there. No re-import, no manual metadata sync. RAW+JPEG pairs share a single sidecar, following the Lightroom convention, so nothing is duplicated.

This is what closes the loop. You cull at the source, on the device in your hand, and your editor inherits the result automatically. In Lightroom, point the Import dialog (or Library → Synchronize Folder) at the share and the star ratings and reject flags populate immediately. In Capture One, the same sidecars are read when you import the folder into a session or catalogue.

Troubleshooting NAS connections

A few issues come up often enough to list:

  • “Connection refused” or the NAS isn’t found. SMB is probably disabled or the IP changed. Re-check the SMB service is running (steps above) and confirm the IP under your NAS network settings. A DHCP lease change is the most common cause — consider assigning the NAS a static IP.
  • Credentials prompt loops. The username or password is wrong, or the account lacks permission on that specific share/dataset. On TrueNAS especially, verify the dataset ACL grants your user access.
  • You can see folders but not connect to one. The shared folder permissions don’t include your user. Add the user to the share in your NAS control panel.
  • RAW thumbnails are slow to appear. CullKit loads full-resolution previews progressively over the network. Large RAWs from a 45MP+ sensor take a moment on the first pass; a wired NAS connection or 5GHz/wired client speeds this up considerably.
  • Some files won’t open. Confirm the format is supported (most RAW formats, HEIC, JPEG, common video, Live Photos). Proprietary or very new camera RAWs may need a CullKit update.

Why does local-only matter for a NAS workflow?

A cloud photo app would have you upload your entire library each time you want to review it. For a working photographer with a terabyte or more of RAW files, that is not realistic, and it defeats the point of running a NAS in the first place. CullKit processes everything locally. Your photos never leave your network. Credentials are stored in the device Keychain. There is no third-party server in the middle, no additional storage subscription, no privacy trade-off. (More on the privacy model in the FAQ.)

You bought the NAS to own your data. CullKit keeps that promise.

Getting started

CullKit runs on iPhone, iPad, and Mac (Apple platforms only; no Android or Windows). You can also point it at a local folder or external SSD if you want to try it without a NAS. A demo mode lets you explore the full culling workflow on sample data before connecting any real library.

Browse is free. The Pro subscription (seven-day free trial, then monthly or yearly) unlocks culling, star ratings, XMP metadata, move, and delete. Find CullKit on the App Store or learn more at cullkit.com.

← Back to all posts