Two different file sizes of same photo--easy way to delete the smaller file size?

BlinktmbA wrote:

1) The photos appear identical, but one is an HEIC file (taken with Portrait mode) and the other is JPG; so while they appear identical, Duplicates album does not identify them as such; and 2) The photos appear identical, but are 2 JPGs of different file sizes (in one example, one is 5.3 MB, one is 2.8 MB.

That is strange - on my Mac the duplicate album is also showing similar photos, not just exact exact duplicates. Perhaps you just need to wait longer for the similar duplicates to appear.

As to why you are having duplicates of different pixel sizes - this can happen easily if you are mixing two methods of importing images from your mobile devices.

• You can get duplicates at different sizes, if you are using My Photo Stream and also import photos manually from an iPhone or iPad. The reason is, that My Photo Stream is saving the streamed photos at a lesser size on your iPhone, and when you download photos from the iPhone, you will also get the smaller versions downloaded.
• or, when you sync photos to the iPhone with the Finder and edit them on the iPhone. This will save a smaller version on the iPhone, and it will be downloaded a s a new photo, when you download photos from the iPhone. The same goes for photos in Shared albums.
• You should also not mix iCloud Photos with manual downloads from iCloud. If you download photos from the iPhone to the Photos Library on your Mac, they will be duplicates of photos that have already been synced by iCloud. They may have twice the size of the originals, if you download them converted from HEIC to JPEG.

BTW, I have used Photo Sweeper a lot. It is very versatile and does not damage the library, as other duplicate detectors could do. But because the app can be configured freely, the user interface is a bit complicated, when you set up the rules for the duplicate detection. But it is worth it.

There's an almost free app that will search a Photo library comparing the bitmap or histogram of Photos. It can also be set to mark as duplicate the smaller file sized images and the smaller dimension images of the same photo .

Then mark the smaller image, either dimension or file size, in red as the duplicate.

The smaller file size was marked as the duplicate;

This image has the smaller dimensions and, thus, a smaller file size.

The app will move the Photos into a new album titled Trash (Photosweeper) so you can peruse them and verify that those are the ones you want to delete.

When I want to compare the sizes of photos (file size and dimensions in pixel size), I amusing the free trial version of PowerPhotos.

In PowerPhotos we can display our albums in a nice table view, with the meta data arranged in columns.This table view does not require the full, paid version.

We can then sort the photos in the album by clicking the header of the column. Sorting by filename will show photos with the same filename close together and the size column will tell us, which of the two duplicates has the better resolution or the larger file size.

A screenshot from the table view in PowerPhotos 2.0: It is a great companion to Photos, when we want to organize our photos and videos.

léonie wrote: That is strange - on my Mac the duplicate album is also showing similar photos, not just exact exact duplicates. Perhaps you just need to wait longer for the similar duplicates to appear.

I am finding that Photos Duplicates does pretty well with similar files. But when I have straightened a picture, Photos does not see the slightly rotated image as similar to the un-straightened one.

I meant to include a link to the developer's site. Glad you got the name from the screenshots I provided.

It's Photo Sweeper and there is a free trial if you go to the website rather than the App Store.

I haven't used this, yet. OT-- you recommend this?