Finding duplicate photos: which software?

I just upgraded to an Imac with 2 TB storage, so I'd like to "bring in" all the photos that I now have stored on external harddrives and "clean them up" and get rid of redundant, EXACT, photos that are probably squirreled away on the various drives.

I have Aperture 2 (upgrading to 3 later this week), Iphoto, Photoshop Elements, and Picassa, but none of them do what I want. On my PC I had used ThumbsPlus which was excellent for scanning for exact dupes. I'd like to find something that will do the same so I can pare down my photo collection, then rearchive it in a more organized fashion.

Thanks.

If you start with a blank library in iPhoto you should be able to import all of your photos from your various drives, instructing iPhoto to not import duplicates.

Once you are certain you have them all you can export to another drive as a backup, then (after checking again to make double sure you haven't missed any and that your new library and backup are working, complete and stable) you should be able to delete the scattered archives.

BTW: you can download a beta of ACDSee Pro for Mac and try that as well. I have it (though have only played with it a bit) and chas_m swears by it, so it may also be an option.

Thanks, I'm aware about not importing duplicates, but that won't really tell me what i have "out there" and where they all are among all the hard drives.

janmcn1 said:

Thanks, I'm aware about not importing duplicates, but that won't really tell me what i have "out there" and where they all are among all the hard drives.

Click to expand...

Actually, if you take the drive and drag and drop it on iPhoto it should find and import all of your scattered photos.

Unfortunately, if you do this you get everything, which includes all of the small gifs and images as well.
Again, you could try ACDSee Pro. It is an image viewer and since you used Thumbsplus, it should be familiar to you.

Thanks for the hint....didn't know I could just drop the whole drive onto Iphoto...shall try that! (I'm in heaven with 2 TB of storage in the Imac!)

Also, I used ACDsee in my PC days, so I'll check on them, too...

I think I'm going to import all into Iphoto (per your suggestion) then bring them all into Aperture from it. Aperture won't bring things in as easily as Iphoto. Of course, I guess I can bring them into Iphoto and have Aperture "manage" them from that location...????