Best Way To Process Large Amounts Of RAW Files?

Hello,

Like any amateur photographer I have tons of CR2 Raw files and most of them are of vacations, family photos etc. What would the best way to process these be? I am not looking at spending years going through them and making minor adjustments to exposure, but I would atleast like to have usable files.

I am currently using Lightroom 6 standalone version and have just put most of my files on a NAS that I just purchased.

Thank you for any help!

Every RAW file contains a copy of the JPEG produced using the camera settings. Instant JPEG from RAW is a free program that will extract the JPEG for you almost instantaneously. You can do hundreds of them in just a few seconds. Since you are not interested in heavily editing the RAWS, why not give IJFR a try? You can always lightly edit the JPEGs if you wish. Be advised though that cameras before about 2011 had only small JPEGs embedded in the RAWs, so if your cameras are very old then you might consider some other solution. All cameras after about 2011 contain the full-sized JPEG, so IJFR is the perfect solution.

I think I would batch convert using DPP and camera settings. That would get you jpegs. Once done, you can go back and just work the ones you deem special or need separate attention.

Why not just use LR6. You already have it and was is built for that. It is great for that with the sync feature. That was the main reason I decided to get it when I was shooting weddings. DPP is good and has recipes for mass edits but it lacks export sharpening IMO. I used to edit in DPP and then send TIFFs to PS for resizing and export sharpening. It was a nightmare. My wife said there was less swearing from the digital darkroom after getting LR.