Unwanted Duplicates in Photos after Importing Pics from iPhone to Mac

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pt1989 Author

Level 1

23 points

Unwanted Duplicates in Photos after Importing Pics from iPhone to Mac

I recently imported all of my photos from my iPhone to the Photos app on my Mac to free up storage space on my iPhone. I imported these pics with a lightning cable to my Mac using Photos, not iTunes. iCloud Photos Library is enabled on all of my devices (Mac, iPhone, iPad) but I just noticed that there are duplicates of almost all of my photos now when I select "Photos" on my Mac's sidebar at the top left. But when I choose the "All Photos" album under "Albums" in my Mac's sidebar, it doesn't display any duplicates. I thought that I had selected "delete duplicates" when importing my iPhone photos to my Mac. What's weird is that some of these duplicate pairs have an HDR stamp on the 1st photo's thumbnail but the 2nd photo of the duplicate pair doesn't have this. On other duplicate pair photos, the 1st photo of the pair will display a video icon stamp on the thumbnail & "0:03" whereas the identical photo will not have either of these stamps on its thumbnail (but the 2nd photo is also a 3 second video).

Also, I don't know if this has anything to do with the duplicates problem, but I changed my Mac's Photos app preferences from "Optimize Mac Storage" to "Download Originals to this Mac". I did this because I have sufficient storage space on my Mac. By my doing this, could Photos have imported duplicates?

Do I need to go into my Mac's Photos app and manually delete all duplicates?

Please help!!!

MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012), OS X El Capitan (10.11.2)

Posted on Jan 18, 2016 10:54 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

1richmont

Level 1

8 points

Nov 3, 2017 8:10 AM in response to pt1989

Hi - Late to the party but thought I would at least partially address this question.

The issue you are seeing is because the "live" photos setting on your phone was likely enabled, thus creating not only the live photo, but subsequently this also creates a 2 to 3 second video. So...you end up with both the "live" photo (which is something like a GIF), and the video used to create the "live" video effect.

It's very annoying and yes, essentially gives you potentially thousands of what could be considered "duplicates" since Photos imports both the static "live" photo and the accompanying 2 to 3 second video used to create the effect.

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Answer 2

LarryHN

Level 10

106,124 points

Jan 18, 2016 11:03 AM in response to pt1989

If you are seeing different results between the All Photos album and Photos (years/collections/moments) you may have database corruption

Backup your Photos library and then launch Photos while holding down the option and command keys - repair your database

What do you see on iCloud.com/Photos? On your IOS devices?

LN

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Answer 3

pt1989 Author

Level 1

23 points

Jan 18, 2016 11:20 AM in response to LarryHN

On both my iPhone & iCloud.com/Photos, I am seeing the same duplicates as on my Mac. Like I said in the previous thread, I am seeing many, many duplicates, but not duplicates for every photo. It appears that most of the duplicates are Live Pictures in which the 1st photo in the pair is listed as a 3 second video and the 2nd photo is listed as a photo (but they are both identical 3 second live photos). I am also seeing many duplicates of videos longer than 3 seconds. But then there are many pics that haven't been duplicated.

What is the best way to backup my Photos library?

What does the "repair database" function do exactly?

Thanks!

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Answer 4

LarryHN

Level 10

106,124 points

Jan 18, 2016 1:46 PM in response to pt1989

Best way to backup is to always be running TimeMachine so you laways have a good, current backup

repairing the database does just that, repairs the database fixing errors in it

However since you have provided additional details and are seeing the same duplicates on multiple devices that database damage is less likely - since the sort of PHotos and All Photos is different you may not be seeing the duplicates in Photos - in All Photos right click on a duplicate that you do not see in PHotos and show in moments - it should show the photo in moments - if it does then you have duplicates and need to address that, if it does not you need to repair your database as the next stap

LN

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Answer 5

pt1989 Author

Level 1

23 points

Jan 18, 2016 3:13 PM in response to LarryHN

LN, I did what you said and it appears that I have duplicates rather than the database being corrupted. I noticed that some photos appear in my Mac's "Photos" in quadruplicate. Any idea how to eliminate all of these copies without having to do it manually? There's an app that I heard of called "Duplicate Annihilator for Photos" but I don't know how well that works.

Also, any idea why many but not all of the Live Photos that I took (3 seconds each) now appear as videos with the video icon at the bottom left of the pics' thumbnails?

Thanks for the help!

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Answer 6

LarryHN

Level 10

106,124 points

Jan 18, 2016 5:11 PM in response to pt1989

Duplicate Annihilator for Photos works well

a couple of other alternatives are PhotoSweeper for Photos and the one I like best PowerPhotosbecause if does so much more than just duplicate identification

LN

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