I am using 3rd party software to detect duplicates in Apple Photos.
Which program are you using? Some duplicate detectors are showing duplicates that are no duplicates but similar looking photos
- photos you edited or pairs of thumbnails and the original. if you have edited your photos, most of them will show as duplicates. You will want to keep both the original and the edited version
- Or if you took photos in quick succession, you may have many nearly identical photos that are no duplicates. You have to compare them visually to keep theist shot.
- You may have downsized versions of your photos, if you used My Photo stream or Shared albums. Then the full sized original and the shared smaller version may be in your library and you have to compare the pixel sizes to pick the better quality version.
I have thousands of duplicates which is strange.
What kind of duplicates are these? Are you seeing the same photo several times in the Moments - with an identical file size and an identical filename? Only if the photo is more than once in the moments, it is a duplicate. But If the same photo appears in three different albums, it is not a duplicate. You have only used it in more than one album.
Could these have somehow been created when I migrated from iPhoto to Photos?
The Photos Migration does not create duplicates, but it may be showing you the edited version and the original as two photos.
If you see a photo twice in the moments, but only one of the versions is in an album, and you want to keep it in the album, drag both versions from the moments to the album. Then delete the version from the moments, that you do not want to keep, usually the