Removing duplicates from Photo Library

With léonie's recommendations in mind read the following:

You want an app that will identify the potential duplicates, put them in an album or mark them with a keyword for easy retrieval and deletion by you. You don't want one that does the deletion itself for obvious reasons. 

I've run tests on the these two apps with the following results and found them to be safe to use:

PowerPhotos - $29.95  

PowerPhotos is the iPhoto Library Manager version for Photos and is very powerful. Although more expensive I would recommend it as it has more capabilities than the others like the capability to merge Photos libraries or copy photos, both original and edited versions, along with their metadata between libraries.

PhotoSweeper - $9.99 - Demo version available.

PhotoSweeper compares bitmaps and/or histograms so it can detect duplicate images even if they have different file sizes, file names, image sizes and capture dates.

When you're dealing with hundreds to thousands of images, you really do want something that will delete duplicates automatically!

Yes you do. Both of those apps will either move the images that are considered dups (only one) into an album or mark them with a keyword. Then the user can evaluate them and delete en mass. PowerPhotos is best for that as it can be set to keep the largest duplicate

and put the others in an album:

That way the user has the last say as to deletion or not.

"Which version of the photos should I save? The .jpeg because it's a smaller file size?"

You should keep the version with the best resolution - the largest width and height. The .jpeg files with the smaller file size are probably just smaller thumbnails or previews with a lesser quality.

How did you transfer the photos to the large library? Do you remember how the duplicates have been imported?

First, I have a warning: I love Gemini 2, but I wouldn't allow it anywhere near my Photos Libraries. I actually just tried giving Gemini 2 a small (referenced) test library that I mess around with and, after being told there were no duplicates, I found the library to be empty! It still had 200 MB of stuff, but Photos thought it was a new empty library. I'm not absolutely sure Gemini was the cause, because this didn't happen a second time, but, wow!

Second: when I tried with my test library that I gave lots of duplicates to, it still said no duplicates. It's not only bad for Photos Libraries, it also does no good.

Third: If you give it specific folders outside of Photos and tell it which folders to protect, Gemini 2 is great at finding duplicates and automatically trashing (in a recoverable way) the duplicates.

Fourth: With pictures that differ in size or resolution, Gemini 2 can quickly eliminate all the lower resolution images. That has been really useful for me.

If you're willing to export pictures from Photos to re-import later, then Gemini 2 can be a great tool. But be careful!

Old Toad wrote:

You don't want one that does the deletion itself for obvious reasons. 

When you're dealing with hundreds to thousands of images, you really do want something that will delete duplicates automatically! That's what computers are for! What you'd like to do is to have exact duplicates removed, and images which are similar presented with information about how they are different so you can make decisions.

I found PowerPhotos to be time consuming and awkward in dealing with large numbers of duplicates and similars. Same for GraphicConverter.

youyou922 wrote:

To clarify, if I have 2 files that appear to be the same, both 4896 x 3672, but the .JPG is 6.6 MB and the .jpeg is 3.8 MB, I should save the .JPG because the file will contain more detail?

It’s possible the larger file has a bit more information in it, but it may not matter. Each is a compression that saves space by carefully throwing away some bits of information that probably make no difference in the way you look at the picture. It will probably only matter if you plan to blow it up into a very large print, and maybe not then. Most people will never be able to tell the difference.

So look at each copy in detail and see if you can tell a difference that’s worth the extra memory. If it’s one of the best pictures you’ve ever taken, keep the big one. Otherwise the smaller one will do. Make a rule you can use without having to look so closely at every photo.