Gemini2 and deleting photos

That's a problem with Gemini. It's not totally compatible with a Photos library. Uninstall it according to the developer's instructions. If you need to remove duplicates in your library there are only two apps that I've been able to test and will recommend. 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.

Hi

There are no facilities in photos to automate this, so either

• manually,
• or using an app designed to work with the photos library (Ie one that marks the photos or puts them in an album, and lets you review and then delete them, rather than doing the delete itself.

See reply from Old Toad in this thread

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251889636

Could you please clarify? I am not sure why you are mentioning albums.

When you add a photo to an album it is not copied to the album. You can add a photo to as many albums as you want, it will not be a duplicate, because the albums are just holding references to the photos. If you delete the photos outside the albums, they will be removed from all albums as well.

You are only having duplicates in your library, if you are seeing the same photo twice, side-by-side in All Photos.

Are you having genuine duplicates in your library?

Some duplicate detectors can detect, if you imported the same, identical image file twice, based on the file attributes, like filename or creation date or capture date, for example Power Photos. Others can detect similar photos or different versions of the same photo, for example Photo Sweeper, based on histograms and bitmaps. Are the duplicates in your Photos Library exactly identical image files or similar photos?

Assuming for the moment that Gemini 2 has gotten better than it used to be (which. have not checked), I see a couple of possible things that might help you:

When Gemini puts (not moves) photos into an Album, the intent is for you to open the Album, select the photos within it, and delete those photos from the library. Deleting the Album itself without first deleting the photos will do nothing. (Actually, due to a recent bug, it can actually have a negative effect.)

Earlier, you said, "when presented with duplicate photos I was often given the option of one of them being in an album...". It could have been trying to help you preserve the work you did putting photos into albums. Let me explain...

Imagine you went to a party and took a lot of pictures, then you created an Album of favorite photos from that party (which, as you know, does not create duplicates). Later, some of those photos were duplicated (whether due to coding error, malfunction, or operator error).

Now, you run a duplicate detector like Gemini 2. When it finds the duplicated party photos, it then asks whether you want to prefer keeping the version that is flagged to an Album (keeping the album intact) or deleting those and keeping some other version (ruining the Album).

Frankly, I have not tested Gemini 2, as it has been developed by the same manufacturer as Clean My Mac. And when I tested CleanMyMac 2 and 3, both programs damaged the Photos Library. So I am very cautious about cleaning software from the same manufacturer.

But I never let any duplicate Finder delete photos en masse, even duplicate cleaners that have been proven safe to use. I look at each suggested duplicate individually - check, if they are really duplicates, then keep the photo with the best resolution or the photo with the adjustment or metadata applied. My photos in my albums are all tagged with a keyword with the album name, so I can see immediately in the info, if a photo is in an album.

I am not having many duplicates in my libraries, since Photos is checking for duplicates, when we import photos. All duplicates I have in my library, have been created intentionally to have differently adjusted versions of the same photo.

But Gemini 2 does NOT delete duplicates. It moves them into an Album, which you then have to delete separately.

I have accumulated about 20K duplicates. I’m not going to check them one by one. My problem with Gemini is that the photos never really go away, Even after G2 says they are deleted. I’m confused about that. Trying to debug it now.

I have not tested Gemini, as I pointed out earlier.

. I thought that the whole point of the exercise was that the one in the album was not a duplicate, just the reference to the original photo.

That is correct. Photos is not duplicating photos when adding them to an album. You are only having duplicate copies of a photo, if you are seeing two identical instances of the same photo side-by-side in All Photos. But theinformation, that a photo is in an album is helpful, when you want to decide, which version of two identical photos to keep. It might be preferable, to keep the version you have added to an album and discard the duplicate you did not add to an album.

I never delete duplicates sight unseen en masse, that have been found a duplicate cleaner. Photo Sweeper does a very good job, also Power Photos. Both can be configured to select the "keepers" based on rules, like "keep the one with the most metadata" or the largest version. But I always compare the suggested duplicates myself, so I will be sure that I do not accidentally delete the version with the highest resolution or an edited version, that is a duplicate I added intentionally, to have the full sized version and a cropped version for example. We really have to be careful, when deleting duplicates. Occasionally, there will be duplicates, that are scavenged photos found in the library during a library repair. Then we do not want to keep these recovered photos, but the versions we have been working with recently. Use duplicate detectors only to point out potential duplicates, but use your own judgement, which photos you want to keep and which are redundant.

You might be better off getting support directly from Macpaw. This is a group focussed on photos - and I'm guessing most people will not be familiar with Gemini, or how it works.