How do I get rid of duplicate photos on iPhoto?

well, we try...

Best Regards

Anders, CEO, Brattoo Propaganda Software

Regarding addressing the problem of duplicate photos in iPhoto, this is a respectful request that Old Toad offer his best current opinion of:

1. iPhoto Library Manager

2. Duplicate Annihilator

3. Duplicate Cleaner for iPhoto

4. Alternatives if they are as good or better, in his opinion.

Thank you for your helpful opinions in the past, Old Toad, and in advance for these updated opinions. I've been wrestling with duplicates for years and have tried Gemini, Duplicate Annihilator, and have the demo copy of iPhoto Library Manager which I have not yet tried. I found Gemini easy to use but only partially effective and Duplicate Annihilator apparently fully effective, though I was unable to confirm its effectiveness due to unrelated terminal physical damage to the computer I was using. I've a new computer now and am preparting to make a fresh start. I do not yet need the full suite of capabilities of iPhoto Library Manager; initially I'd use it only to identify duplicates.

IPLM is the best and has many other useful functions

DA is very good too ut does not have the additional functions - and is priced accordingly

ither of these will do a good job of handling duplicates

However I wonder why you have an ongoing issue with duplicates? I have never had an issue - iPhoto is good ablut catching duplicates during import - usually continuing issues with duplicates indicate some issues with a users work flow

LN

Adding to what Larry questioned, as a test launch iPhoto with the Option key held down and create a new, test library. Import a batch of the same photos a couple of times and test to see if iPhoto will catch them. Also import from your iPhone or camera a couple of times. Just don't let iPhoto delete the photos after the import. Report back with the results

.

LarryHN wrote:

IPLM is the best and has many other useful functions

DA is very good too ut does not have the additional functions - and is priced accordingly

It all really depends on what you need and want. iPhoto Library Manager is afansatci piece of Software that I warmly recommend when it comes to handling multiple iPhoto libraries and things like syncing, migratiing, combining etc. But when it comes to handling duplicatesa and especielly those cases when iPhoto Library contents have been reimported directly into a new library such as when a recover agency restore your damaged hard drive then I belive that Duplicate Annihilator will do a better job since it is the only software that will handle imported thumbnails, faces etc.

But don't take my word for it, try it yourself. Since I'm the lead developer of Duplicate Annihilator it is important to stress that it all comes down to the customer needs and not what I say.

Best Regards

Anders, CEO, Brattoo Propaganda Software

Thank you very much for these quick responses, LarryHN, Old Toad, and fltman7. I've exchanged email with Anders at Brattoo and that was helpful; thanks! However, the description above of iPhoto Library Manager as an "... afansatci piece of Software..." was not understandable, even by googling it. Perhaps that's a typo?

Old Toad's suggestion is a good one that I'll try and report back here, but probably not in the next few days. LarryHN's contrasting of IPLM and DA is helpful. I'd buy IPLM immediately if it was available from the App Store - I always seem to have way more credit there, and gift cards for it, than I have need for. It seems that most of the important App's I need are not for sale on the App Store!

Given that I've already bought DA I'm inclined to use it, but it seems that someday I'll probably want IPLM. However, in studying these discussion pages many times over the past few months I've seen considerable opinion that DA is perhaps better than IPLM for helping one eliminate duplicates without risking losing non-duplicates. Does anyone have a strong opinion about that? I'd certainly buy IPLM immediately (App Store or not!) if I thought it would do a better job helping me identify my duplicates! Might IPLM be able to do that better than DA? Does anyone think that? That's the core of my question to all of you. Old Toad used to include DA in his recommendations, but I noticed that about 5 months ago his opinion omitted DA. Was that intentional, or an oversight, Old Toad?

Since LarryHN inquired, my problem with duplicates began with partially corrupted SD card; corrupted perhaps by my Cannon camera or by the card reader I was using (years ago I didn't have sufficient capacity on my SD cards so I used two of them, alternately, and downloaded using the card reader). That corruption problem occurred more than once, intermittently. I obtained some software that would read the uncorrupted portions of the SD cards, but I later saw that those pictures were being duplicated on iPhoto.

My duplicate problem with iPhoto might have (?) arisen from my conversion to iPhoto from Cannon's Image Browser on a Windows machine which I used prior to purchasing my first Mac about 10 years ago. I had to import all those Image Browser photos into iPhoto.

I agree that once one becomes familiar with iPhoto one can avoid having it create duplicates; I've not created new duplicates for a few years now. However, I do not know how my iPhoto Library ever came to have so many thumbnails stored as photos. My most Apple friendly photo-friend (he's been on Apple's for more than 20 years) does not like iPhoto and advised me (nearly 10 years ago) to not use it! (He likes Graphic Converter, which I've found hard to use.) It's really quite surprising to me that Apple has not addressed this problem - many of Apple's tech support people (with whom I've spoken by making sure I always have a valid Apple-care account, which costs money!) seem completely unaware of it. Frankly, if my only experience with Apple was iPhoto I'd return to Windows - but that's not going to happen! I'm generally very happy with my decision to limit my exposure to Microsoft.

Neither DA nor IPLM are going to cause problems - since you have DA I would use it -- if for some reason you are not pleased restore yoru backup and do it again with IPLM - I think you will be happy with either

DA has been to go to application for duplicates for years - recently IPLM has joined and because of its additional capabilities I lean toward it - but I think you will be happy with either and I woudl certainly start with the one you have

LN

I believe it was a type and should have been "a fantastic". The reason I prefer iPLM is its graphical interface. However, DA is the only app that can find and identify the thumbnail files which get imported when importing one library into another.

However, with the introduction of iPhoto 9 (11) iPhoto can't import another library which alleviates a lot of the problem.

Old Toad wrote:

I believe it was a type and should have been "a fantastic".

Correct, for once one would have hoped for autocorrect to fix it but it didn't. :-)

Old Toad wrote:

However, with the introduction of iPhoto 9 (11) iPhoto can't import another library which alleviates a lot of the problem.

Based on feedback from or customers iPhoto seems to do this spontaneously, we have not been able to reproduce it ourselfs but quite a few of our customers have reported how iPhoto suddenly expands from perhaps 10.000 photso to 40.000 including all faces thumbnails and regular thumbnails imported as regular photos. Also, even if iPhoto can't import another library a user can still show the contants of the iPhoto library package and import the folders from there with the same flooded result.

Best Regards

Anders, CEO, Brattoo Propaganda Software

Thank all of you again for your help! best rgds, bob

bob whitsett wrote:

Thank you three again, fltman7, Old Toad, & LarryHN, for offering your wisdom to me; I appreciate it. I want to do what's needed to give you points - would one of you please tell me how to do that? I assume it's easy to just click on something, but I don't think I should click on "Like" as I think that takes me to some social media site and I do not use social media.

I belive that the "like" button in this forum is not a facebook like button so I guess that you can safely press it without any social media interaction.

bob whitsett wrote:

I've written Anders at Brattoo directly seeking his recommendations about preferences but I've not yet heard back from him;

You got mail. :-)

bob whitsett wrote:

I have not rebuilt my iPhoto library as Apple says I do not need to do that if it's working properly. Do you three agree? Some have suggested it's a good idea to do a rebuild prior to running processes such as DA.

We have been developing Duplicate Annihilator for almost ten years and during those years we have encountered a few iPhoto flaws, bugs and odd behaviours. Visible and hidden ones. And during that time Duplicate Annihilator has processed billions and billions of photos in over 170 countries. So based on experience I would say that the Apple personell you have spoken to is right and wrong. If it is working properly you don't need to rebuild/repair. But what if there is ahidden problem that you have not encountered? Or so small that it is hardly noticable? Or not detectable at all since it is flaw "under the hood"? One can only say that it is "Working properly" if you have verified that every function works with every photo in every way visible and invisible. For example, if there is an error in the iPhoto Library database it may very well not be visble or noticable but then if you start to access and write and process every post in that database the error may grow on you and eventually become critical.

So to make it short and simple: a repair/rebuild is a great thing to do now and then.

Best Regards

Anders, CEO, Brattoo Propaganda Software

Friends, I have found it difficult to compare the differences between using Duplicate Annihilator (DA) and iPhoto Library Manager (iPLM) to remove duplicates from my iPhoto Libraries. It is possible that there's no real difference, but when one looks at which photos have been identified as duplicates for removal they are sometimes presented in a different order by each of those two applications, making it more difficult to see if the same photos have been identified. In order to see that better I'm working with smaller and smaller libraries which I'm creating simply for these comparison purposes.

So I am still in the process of attempting to determine which of these app.'s I prefer. Thus far I have not convinced myself that they have both identified all of the same photos as duplicates. There is also the issue of deciding which is the original and which is the duplicate. Insofar as I can determine iPLM does not attempt to distinguish, and perhaps I have not learned enough about how to use DA to have it pick the "real" original and another as the duplicate.

There is one important thing to report now, however, and that is that iPLM completes its scan far, far more quickly than DA. It's so fast one wonders how it could possibly be doing a good job in finding all the duplicates, and finding only true duplicates!

I'll report further when I've learned more, but that might be at least a few days from now, and maybe longer, as there are other matters that will prevent me from working on this issue.

I have one unrelated question - is there a way I can provide my direct email address to any of you correspondents without presenting it here, publicly? Thanks again for all the help and advice! bob

If LarryHN & Old Toad would be willing to provide Anders at Brattoo their email addresses for me I'd appreciate it. best rgds, bob

bob whitsett wrote:

There is one important thing to report now, however, and that is that iPLM completes its scan far, far more quickly than DA. It's so fast one wonders how it could possibly be doing a good job in finding all the duplicates, and finding only true duplicates!

It certainly is quite possible to detect duplicates faster than DUplicate Annihilator does, including such methods as directy accessing the iPhoto Libraray database and only using partial checksums. we hev decided not to do so since we thing that it is better being safe than sorry and since detection duplicates is not done every day we belive in letting it take a whike but get the job done properly.

bob whitsett wrote:

I have one unrelated question - is there a way I can provide my direct email address to any of you correspondents without presenting it here, publicly? Thanks again for all the help and advice! bob

One suggestion: email me, I have a public email address and I'll forward your email addresses to Bob.

Best Regards

Anders, CEO, Brattoo Propaganda Software

This may seem like a stupid statement but, the option of duplicate detection should be integrated into the iPhoto application. It seams strange that you have to out and purchase a solution, in my case iPhoto Manager.

Reminds me of an old Gahad Wilson cartoon, sell lemonaide for 5 cents and then sell the antidote for 1 dollar.