Mac OS Ventura's Photos: Eliminating duplicate pictures

I have many duplicates in Photos, which I have been eliminating with the Duplicates in the program. If there is a slight variation, say 46kb and 48kb, I take the smaller one, thinking there may have been an edit.

On larger ones, say 1.3mb and 500 kb, I was keeping the larger ones and became concerned: maybe they too are edits, and I want the smaller one OR maybe the larger one has essential data if I ever want to work with the picture.

Tell me what to do, and I'll do it!

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.13

Posted on Oct 1, 2023 03:48 PM

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6 replies

Oct 1, 2023 03:53 PM in response to MinnieMe

Follow these instructions:

  1. In the Photos app  on your Mac, click Duplicates in the sidebar.
  2. Note: If you’re using iCloud Shared Photo Library, click the Library pop-up menu in the toolbar, then choose Both Libraries.
  3. Select the duplicates you want to merge.
  4. You can select individual items in a single row and merge them, or select multiple rows of duplicates and merge them all at once.
  5. Click Merge [number] Duplicates.
  6. One original photo or video appears where the selected duplicates were located in your library. Deleted duplicates appear in the Recently Deleted album, where you can recover or permanently delete them.


Hope this helps!

Oct 2, 2023 10:42 AM in response to MinnieMe

Well, first thing is that a 1.3mb and a 485kb version of a photo are not duplicates - they are different versions. Photos and before it, iPhoto (and most other photo apps) frequently have multiple versions of the same image. After all, think about the little thumbnail you see in the Photos window - it would be wasteful (of disk space) to have a full-sized version of the image for that use. So a smaller version is created. When you edit an image a preview is created, used for sharing to other apps and so on. So that's why you get different versions at different sizes. In this case therefore the largest file size is most likely to be the original of the image. I simply would not worry if the images have been edited or not - you can do that again is you need to.

Oct 2, 2023 09:58 AM in response to Yer_Man

Thank you - this was somewhat helpful. I have some, but not enough, understanding of photo size and I do not know what goes into having a duplicate, say, 1.3mb and 485 kb picture. What transpired that I would have such duplicates in Photos - sometimes as much as four of them? I am looking at whether they might have been edited before I continue eliminating duplicates.


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Mac OS Ventura's Photos: Eliminating duplicate pictures

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