Organising photos and deleting duplicates?

lipsthefish

Hi all

Is there any software that can sort through my photos and delete any with the same name? I have a lot of photos on an external hard drive but I have them in several folders and the same photo might appear in maybe 5 of the folders, I am trying to tidy the drive up a bit and free some space but going through it manually is taking forever!

thanks for any advice

WhiteChristmas

Deleting photos on name alone is a dangerous path to go down; there are numerous ways your camera and computer can decide to name a file with a name that has been used before.

Much safer to use something like Auslogics Duplicate File Finder which compares content as well.

googler

Depending on which version of Windows you're using, the detail of the following process may vary, but the essentials remain the same;

For the drive(s) or folder(s) that contain all your photos -

Right-click on the top-level folder, and select Search from the context menu. Assuming you have all your photos stored as JPGs (most cameras save them in this form), enter "*.jpg" as the search term - this will return all of the JPGs in list form. Sort this list by clicking on the header of the filename column. This will show you all your duplicates, as those with the same filename will be grouped together.

Move the duplicates to a 'scrap' folder with Cut/Paste and delete as appropriate once you've checked that you're deleting the right ones. Don't clear the recycle bin until you're sure.

As a safety measure, back them all up to CD or other external media before you delete them from the hard drive.

marleyboy

As a member who handles thousands of photo's, I tend to use
http://www.ashisoft.com/duplicate-images-finder.htm
for finding duplicate photos on my hard Drive, regardless of the titles.

It will find for example "photo of beach" and "copy of photo of beach" and ask you which you would like to delete, if any. Its a useful piece of software that helps free up your hard drive of duplicated images with different or altered filenames.