Duplicates Finder

[Oztours]

After years of abuse of any form of true workflow, just being part of this community and reading all the advice from everybody is encouraging me to change my habits. The one area I really need to fix up is duplicates. In my earlier years of PP, I was creating lots of new images every time I made changes and never going back and deleting them. My workflow has improved somewhat (but still open to suggestions), and now I want to clean up. I have been researching Google for the best software to find these duplicates; however, it's a jungle out there with a myriad of suggestions and arguments, sometimes verging on world war 3. Whilst Lightroom can sort of find dupes, I don't find it does a good job and was thinking specialised software is the go.

So far in my search, I have found that 2 programs called 'Duplicate Photos Fixer Pro' and 'ACDSee Ultimate' offer (IMHO) the best solution. If anyone has any experience with either of these or other brands or just suggestions in general, I would love to hear from you. @bwest I noticed in the topic about "DAM", you mention using ACDSee. Have you tried the dupe finder?

 

[soundbyte]

If you make changes to a image file and save a copy that is a problem as in that some duplicate finders usually only search using checksums which will be different for each modified file you save, they will not pick up copies of images as far as I know.
So you may have two images that look identical but have different checksums.
There are duplicate photo finders that search on a pixel level, some are listed from Windows Club, below.

A quick search with DuckDuckgo (doesn't everyone?) using "duplicates finder freeware" will give you LOTS of suggestions.
I use various applications,
Doublekiller http://www.bigbangenterprises.de/downloads/doublekiller.zip
dupeguru https://github.com/arsenetar/dupeguru/releases/download/4.0.4/dupeGuru_win64_4.0.4.exe

If you want to find duplicates and organise images then search using "duplicate photo finder freeware" this will also give you LOTS of suggestions.
Here are some search results

26 Best Free Duplicate File Finder

Here are 26 best free duplicate file finder software. These software let you find duplicate files easily. All these software are completely free.

listoffreeware.com

8 Best Free Duplicate Photo Finder Software

Here are 8 best free duplicate photo finder software. These software let you find duplicate photos easily. All these software are completely free.

listoffreeware.com

Best Free Duplicate Photo cleaner and remover software for Windows 11/10

Here is a list of some of the best free Duplicate IMAGE cleaner, finder and remover software. Use them to remove all the duplicate photos on your Windows 11/10 PC.

www.thewindowsclub.com

Hope that might help, but there are so many, test a few keep using the one/s you like best.

OH and please let us know what you choose.

 

[Oztours]

Thanks @soundbyte. I was aware of the need for different ways of searching but something in the way you worded your reply made me go back and rethink was I looking for the right thing. Thanks.

DuckDuckGo... tried that once before a long time ago and for some reason wasn't impressed. Giving it another go now.

Have downloaded the two I mentioned as well as the two you added and will give each one a trial over the next month or so. There are also a few others I am now looking at and they will probably get a run further down the track. Whilst doing this, I am going to try and map out a workflow that suits my needs. Download pix, rename, backup, cull, edit, final image, backup again.

Now if my old brain can remember to give updates on my trials.

 

[Calson]

Not exact duplicates but images that are similar are quickly sorted through and deleted by using FastStone Image viewer free software. I can display 4 images at once in the viewer and review images taken a sequence of a subject or scene and decide which one is the keeper and delete the rest. If you like FastStone please make a donation to its creator.

 

[Oztours]

@Calson. Thanks for the suggestion. I have been using FSV (a great free program) for years and it is my go to for quick viewing and image comparison; however, with something like 80,000 images to tidy up, spread across umpteen folders and several hard drives, I need a program to tell me where they are. It's all a big mess with originals mixed in with jpeg's, tiff, png, psd and other edits, not to mention several backups of each.

What I have done is downloaded 6 of the most recommended software packages and going to give them all a good workout. I intend to check one hard drive at a time, firstly finding duplicate names, rectify these, then move on to finding actual duplicates.

In this regard, ACDSee has done a fantastic job. On my first drive, it has found over 8,500 dupe names of which, I have discovered, a good many are raw files I hadn't renamed upon retrieval from the camera. In order to solve this problem, using Adobe Bridge's reasonably powerful batch processor, I am going through all the folders and renaming these according to the contents and at the same time adding keywords. This part of the exercise could be done by any other program you have that does batch renaming. FSV as mentioned, Bulk Renaming Utility and even Windows 10 has a simplified version of batch processing. Yes, a long slow process, but so far I have eliminated over 3,000 dupe'd names. Jpegs, etc., I feel will be a different story.

I also ran a check using their "exact duplicates" finder. It did a pretty good at finding these, but I am not a big fan of the way the program displays the images. One very small single image and you have to click on a link to see the other one (in the same window). If there is a way to get a full log report of all the dupes, it would make going thru each folder in FSV or in ACDSee itself, a much easier task.

I also ran a test on "Duplicate Photos Fixer Pro", but that is another story, suffice to say, anyone interested in trying it be warned. Your malware program will find a "pup" program ( potentially unwanted program ) and if you actually want to delete files using the program, you have to buy it. The trial version is restricted to 15 image fixes. Like WOW, that's a huge amount of images for a trial. At this stage, I am being extremely cautious with it.

The best part of this whole exercise - I am feeling really good at what I have achieved and I am finding some really good shots amongst the myriad of bad ones amongst my old photos.