Shin Suzuki Photo Studio

Background

Shin Suzuki is a Japanese photographer. He has been engaged with the photography of iconic marketing promotions, such as Suntory and Japan Railways, for over 20 years. In 2011, he founded Shin Suzuki Photo studio and has been involved in photographing more than 46,000 people. In addition to advertising, he has taken a wide range of photos, from family portraits to business portraits, consistently aiming to provide a fun and unprecedented photographic experience.

Previous challenges

As his business grew, the more he faced problems of data management. Shin Suzuki Photo Studio had several other photographers, each of whom backed up the original image (RAW format files) to an external hard drive after shooting. Due to file sizes and bandwidth requirements, it was not practical to back up image files to the cloud, and dozens of drives made it a headache to manage their data. Photographers not only shoot at their own studio in Tokyo, but also travel throughout Japan. This caused them major issues in organizing their drives.

Some customers would purchase additional image files months later, so it was also a painstaking process to search for the desired files by unplugging and plugging in multiple external drives to the computer.

Solution

Shin had two primary requirements for the new storage system. The first was a system that would provide advanced protection for client's data. The second was to create an environment where photographers could concentrate on shooting, and to remove the hassles associated with data management.

He decided to acquire the QNAP AI NAS TS-AI642 as a solution, a special NAS system that has the performance required for small and medium-sized businesses and uses a system-on-a-chip (SoC) with an 6 TOPS NPU that improves the performance of AI-based tasks such as photo management and file search.

Result

QNAP AI NAS features a wide variety of on-demand apps, especially the AI photo management app QuMagie and the AI search app Qsirch that provide significant benefits to Shin Suzuki Photo Studio.

AI-powered Photo Management & Search

QuMagie is an application that uses AI to identify people and objects in photos and organize them into smart albums. The same person in different photos can be grouped into a single album, making it much easier and faster to find photos of repeat customers who take annual family photos.

QuMagie also smartly identifies and categorizes common things, for example, person in a wedding dress into a "wedding" album, or a dog into a "dog" album, allowing Shin and his team to find the similar previous works and demonstrate to new clients as reference.

To search for photos, they use the Qsirch full-text search application, which searches for the specific file using tags such as things in the photo, color, camera type, and location. This functionality is like using a NAS to do the human-like thinking of "I don't remember the file name, but I remember what was in the picture" and allows you to find the file you are looking for from tons of files that has been stored for several years. All files can be easily shared with a few clicks, with no need to upload them to the cloud.

Access files between Mac® and Windows®

After installing the NAS, access to the data is now via the network, allowing for smoother connection from the desktops, whether Windows® or Mac®.

When working remotely, Shin can use the Qfile Pro mobile app to connect to the NAS. Shin says the most appealing aspect of adding NAS to his studio's workflows is that it is not limited by location or time constraints. While remote access can open up potential risks of unauthorized access, thanks to Qfile Pro's myQNAPcloud connect support, he can safely connect to the NAS without needing advanced IT knowledge.

Various features to protect his valuable data

Because of the need for advanced data protection, Shin set up the AI NAS with a RAID 6 configuration for a high level of redundancy. The previous method of data management using external drives always ran the risk of data loss risk from drive failure, but RAID solved this problem. In addition, to protect the data from accidents and unforeseen events, Hybrid Backup Sync is used to fulfill automatic replication to external storage services.

Originally, Shin’s expectations for NAS features were basic, such as RAID and the ability to simultaneously access from multiple client devices, but after the full-scale introduction of QNAP NAS, he realized the high value of its use. Later, to expand capacity, an 8-bay JBOD enclosure TL-D800S was introduced, leveling up the overall storage capacity to over 100TB. The majority of the photo data has been migrated and well archived.