Duplicates photos in Catalog

Adobe Elements 4
XP
Dell
How may I quickly find and remove duplicate photos in my catalog?
Somehow I have 100's scattered thru my catalog.

Ray
This question has been posted before and I don't remember anyone coming up with a clean way to find "duplicates".
You could select a photo and try Find Similar (by color) or something like that and hopefully the copies will pop up. The hiccup is you have to have a "starter" image to compare, you can not just say Find All Files That Are Similar.
The Find by Filename might work, but you again need a starter image. Also if one file is titled My Two Nephews and the same photo is labeled Two Boys Fishing, finding by name won't work.
The best bet would be to select one of the duplicates as you notice them and delete from catalog; you can also select delete from hard drive if you are confident you don't need the picture on your hard drive.
Organizer is not supposed to accept duplicates, but I believe it hiccups sometimes.

Similar Messages

Duplicate photos in catalog......

Hi
I've been engaged in a project to clean-up my Photoshop Elements catalog for several months now...   so far, without success.   What spurred me to do this was getting into a situation where I had (literally) thousands of duplicate photos in my catalog -- and I had no idea how they got there....
So, since this problem started, I have
a) moved to a new PC (not b/c of this problem -- but it did give me a clean slate)
b) upgraded from Elements 7 to Elements 9 (I did that b/c I thought if somehow this was a bug maybe it would be fixed in Elements 9)
c) completely deleted Elements and all its catalogs so I was starting from a completely clean slate
d) gone back to loading photos from my camera cards in an attempt to start from scratch
So, I started by loading photos from just one of my camera cards (about 500 photos).   Everything was looking good -- the photos got loaded into Elements; I started to put them into albums; everything was going swimmingly.
Then, I took some new photos and plugged in my camera. I have the option set in "Preferences" to "Copy New Files Only". However, when Elements proceeded to do its stuff.....   instead of saying "I found 15 new photos" it proceeded to reload (as new) everything on the camera card -- i.e. all 500-odd photos.   Now, when I look in the "shot date" directories, I have duplicates of all photos -- such as, DSC_0054 and DSC_0054-1; DCS_0055 and DSC_0055-1 etc etc etc...   so now I have 1000 photos in my catalog....   and lots and lots of duplciates. Which is exactly the problem I started with :-(
I thought this had happened originally because I was doing something wrong...    but I know I did nothing at all wrong here... I've been able to track exactly what I did and I just don't think there is any reason why Elements should have reloaded as new all of the photos it had already loaded and put in the catalog.
I'm curious....   has anyone else seen this kind of behavior? Does anyone know what causes it?    Honestly, I'm just about ready to give up on Elements -- what good is it if it can't even simply detect and identify duplicate photos from the camera that it has already loaded? Isn't that kind of "digital photo 101" stuff???   I described this problem to a professional photographer friend, and she suggested that I not use Elements to offload photos from the camera but only to catalog and edit things once they are on the disk. Frankly, if that's what is needed to make this software work that seems kind of ridiculous....
In case this is of interest, I am running Windows XP and my camera is a Nikon D40.
Any help suggestions much appreciated.

Thanks for your response....   What I would really like is to prevent the problem happening in the first place.   It really seems to me
that Elements is just behaving in a buggy manner... it had already offloaded thoses 500 photos -- why did it do that again?
It's interesting.   I've since (as an experiement) added yet more photos to the camera card in question and offloaded them through Elements and this time it did only detect the new photos.   Why does it sometimes work and sometimes not?
I'd be curious to knwo if others have run into this behavior and if anyone knows of the cause?

How do I remove multiple duplicate photos in a catalog PSE 10

I have multiple duplicate photos in my Photoshop Element 10 catalog - I have run across the compare a photo tutorials but I have possiblely some 200+ photos that are duplicates.
Has anyone come across a simpler way to remove duplicate photos?

edbarry12 wrote:
If I use Dup Scout or another similar utility, and it removes the duplicates from the hard drive, won't I end up with many links to now deleted files
Yes, but then using the "Reconnect All Missing Files" function in PSE will allow you to abort the reconnection and choose to delete all the missing files from the catalog.
As always, first experiment with a very small subset of the images to see if that method will work for you.
Ken

Importing from another catalog hangs up at "Checking for changed duplicate photos" in LR 4.3

Importing from another catalog hangs up at "Checking for changed duplicate photos" in LR 4.3.
I went on a vacation so exported a subset of my main LR catalog on my PC so I could do some work on my laptop. I added some new photos and also editied some olde ones.
Now that I am back home, when I ty to Import from the smaller catalog into my Main Catalog on my PC, the Import from catalog process gets immediately stuck on the step "Checking for changed duplicate photos.'
How can I work around this?
Is this a new bug in 4.3?
Thanks.
John

Yes, the catalogs were optimized, but...the master catalog on my desktop is
HUGE. I mean...really, really, HUGE.
So, that probably explains the very long time it took?
But...I was confused at first, and really did think that LR was 'stuck'
while importing from the smaller catalog and "Checking for changed duplicate
photos".
Next time, I'll just be more patient.
And...in the end, everything went as it should, and I now have all my edits
and new photos incorporated into my HUGE catalog on my desktop.
JJ&J

How do I move all photos and catalog (PE 6) from local computer drive to network server drive?

I'm using PE 6. I have about 40 GB of photos all organized and cataloged on my local PC's hard drive. I have just installed a home server that is networked and want to move/migrate all the photos and catalog information/organization from my local PC drive to the home server's hard drive. Basically, just moving everything to a new drive. I then need to point PE 6 to this new location for the photos and catalog information. All advice on how to do this would be appreciated?

I just got done doing this and I'm not so sure I'd recommend it.
#1 reason: The #$%%#$ Organizer has REAL PROBLEMS figuring out network path names. It has this really nasty habit of thinking, say, \\homeserv\photos, \\Homeserv\Photos, and \\HOMESERV\PHOTOS are DIFFERENT paths. And depending on how you use it to navigate, or drag and drop files onto it, or teach it to watch a folder on a network drive or whatever, it uses variants on these kinds of path names. This leads to problems like duplicate imports that are really the same file.
What a ***.
You MIGHT have better luck if you use a mapped drive letter to make this work. Sad. The rules for writing WinApps to NOT NEED mapped drive letters have been common knowledge to developers for a decade. Just not Adobe developers, apparently. Beyond sad. Pathetic.

Removing duplicate photos in photoshop elements 4

is there a easy way to remove duplicate photos in Photoshop elements 4, i have over 20,000 photos but really only 5000-6000 and 3-4 duplicates of each and i think they have been renamed and haven't found a duplicate photo/file remover that will do it any suggestions

johnrellis wrote:
I don't remember is PSE 4 has the Automatically Suggest Photo Stacks command, but if it does, see this recipe:
http://www.johnrellis.com/psedbtool/photoshop-elements-faq.htm#_Find_and_delete
John,
I have PSE 4 on an old laptop so I took a quick look and my conclusion is no v4 does not have Suggest Photo Stacks.
Find with Visual Similarity is in v4 and I did do a Catalog > Recover with the build Similarity Index choice as preparation for using that Find feature. However using Visual Similarity on any signficant number of photos would seem very tedious. Of course it could be done systematically on a few photos each time over an extended number of days - but still tedious.

PSE10 Crashes when searching for duplicate photos

Hello,
I recently upgraded to PSE10 and imported my catalog from a different machine (which had been running XP). Unfortunately, I ended up with a bunch of duplicate entries in the catalog, one with the path c:\users\... the other with c:\my documents\... These paths both point to the same image on the hard drive.
When I try to Search for Duplicate Photos (from Find>By Visual Searches), PSE invariably crashes. I am running PSE10 under Windows 7 (full system info at the end of this message).
Any idea why this might be happening, and is there a different way I can remove the duplicate entries in the catalog?
Thanks,
Chris
Full system info:
Elements Organizer 10.0.0.0
Core Version: 10.0 (20110914.m.17521)
Language Version: 10.0 (20110914.m.17521)
Current Catalog:
Catalog Name: My Photos
Catalog Location: C:\ProgramData\Adobe\Elements Organizer\Catalogs\My Photos\
Catalog Size: 52.3MB
Catalog Cache Size: 391.7MB
System:
Operating System Name: Windows 7
Operating System Version: 6.1
System Architecture: Intel CPU Family:6 Model:5 Stepping:2 with MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP
Built-in Memory: 3.8GB
Free Memory: 705.3MB
Important Drivers / Plug-ins / Libraries:
Microsoft DirectX Version: 9.0
Apple QuickTime Version: Not installed
Adobe Reader Version: 10.1
Adobe Acrobat Version: Not installed
CD and DVD drives:
F: (hp DVDRAM BUS: 1 ID: 1 Firmware: GT20L)

If I understand well, what you are calling 'duplicates' are duplicate entries in the catalog, the same media being called either by its original path+filename or shortcut path+filename.
The organizer will try open two different files to compare them, but when trying to open the second 'shortcut', the file will be already blocked (in use). That could explain the failure of the comparison for similarity.
Try creating a new catalog with similar images, for instance jpegs and png copies. Does the visual search work ?
About backup and restore : If my supposition is right, that should work if you try to restore to a new custom location with keeping the file structure : the backup should create real file duplicates on different paths. If it works, finding visual duplicate should work, although this process may take a very long time.

Duplicates Photos

A few weeks ago, we were not using Photoshop Album Starter Edition. We were using some other kind of tool which is really a tool to manage files, not photos. It had nice photos features like thumbnails and slide show, etc.. But to manage them, catalog them, classify them... we were creating folders.
A file can only go in one folder at a time. So we were.... copying... the file over to multiple folders. What a waste of disk space. Each file I was copying I hated it.
Now we are in heavens!
When I imported all my 26000 photos into PASE, I noticed that it complained about a lot of photos that it could not import. Are those photos the duplicate photos, the copies? I tried to find duplicate photos in my PASE catalog but could not find any. Maybe I was unlucky, or maybe they are not in the PASE catalog because the import discarded them?
I would like to get ride (permanently delete) all duplicate files from my hard drive to reclaim space. Is there an easy way to do this with PASE? If not, any recommendations to make the job easier would be most welcome. I do not want to go thru 26000 files one by one to search for duplicates.
Thanks.

Kenneth, no I did not. Seems like I'll have to make a small script to handle that (I am a developper).
I found out because after I imported I saw a notice telling me some duplicate files were not imported and I discarded the notice too fast. When I was tagging files I realized some files were in a directory that was not the primary directory where this file should be in and after digging I found out it imported only one of the file and I then remembered about the notice.

Searching for duplicates in PSE catalog?

I am experiencing numerous duplicate photo images in my PSE catalog. I woud like to do a search of the catalog and bulk remove the duplicates. Is there a way to do this?

See that faq by John R Ellis:
http://www.johnrellis.com/psedbtool/photoshop-elements-faq.htm#_Find_and_delete
That works with PSE6.
Once you have selected a number of files, you can either:
- right click, choose stack and automatically suggest photo stacks
- or the find menu, 'by visual similarity'

Duplicate photos from root Picture folder

As a result of upgrading versions of LR from 1.0 to now, and not knowing how to do that properly, I've got nested Lightroom and Pictures sub folders in my root Pictures on my Mac system. Is there a way to illiminate duplicate photos, without breaking the LR catalog? There are no duplicates in my catalog.

I have LR pointing, on my iMac, to the "Pictures" folder. Under that, I have sub folders called "Lightroom->Pictures", etc. I have many more pictures and folders under root->Pictures, than I have in my LR catalog. I think upgrading since 1.0 has duplicated on import and created new folders. I want to clean this up now and delete duplicate raw images on disk. I can't do it manually. Too onerous. Hope that makes this simple situation clearer.
Update: Turns out i only have 2k extra images than what appears in the catalog, so maybe not as bad as I thought. Would still like to reorganize the folders so that they make more sense, like illiminating the lightroom->pictures sub-folders.
Update: Found the easiest way to reorganize is to global highlight photos in a sub folder and drag to the higher level folder. LR does all the work and updates the catalog. Solved.

Duplicate photo's in Revel and Elements after upgrade to Elements 12

I subscribed to Revel in Nov. 2013 and used my Windows Elemennts 11 app to upload all my photos. I recently upgraded to Elements 12 and linked it to my Revel account. This resulted in complete duplication of every image both in Revel and in my Elements 12 catalog. I tried deleting the duplicates in Elements 12, but since there are thousands, it is not feasible.
What are my options? Do I delete the Revel photos after unlinking the Revel account from Elements? Can I rebuild my Elements 12 catalog from the picture files, (I had the metadata written to each file).? Is there any automated way to delete duplicates in my Elements 12 catalog?
I would have thought Adobe would have thought through how this could occur and provided upgrade safeguards against duplication.
Help!

jfairbai,
Kindly try the steps below to recover from this issue.
In Elements, From Edit>Preferences>Adobe Revel, turn OFF “Automatically access all my catalog in Adobe Revel” if checked.
Sign out from Revel inElements through the same Adobe Revel preferences dialog.
Click on Sign in again.
Select Signin as another user. This action deletes the downloaded smaller previews of media in catalog.
Now you have two options:
After step 4, sign in again with same user but choose to upload specific photos only while signin in. In this case all photos and video would not automatically be uploaded to Revel and you would need to mark the media manually for upload which are not there on Revel but are in Elements catalog. You need to be cautious of not choosing “All photos and videos” later as well as whenever you do so, the media would be duplicated again. Also here the media on Revel and Elements are not linked as both of them are different copies. So if you edit one, other is not updated.
After steps 4, delete all media from Revel application and login again from Elements with the same user. This option takes more time as all upload happen again but this will ensure that the media in Elements and Revel are linked. So if any changes happen like editing or adding tags, captions, the changes are refelected in other as well.
Elements also provide a way to remove duplicate photos through Find>by visual searches> Duplicate photos. This option present you with a dialog where you can see the duplicate photos grouped. However this option would take a lot of time as well as for each group, you would manually check the location of media by mouse hovering an ensuring that you are deleting the smaller sized preview and keeping the large sized original locally.

Why doesn't duplicate photo finder work in Prem El 12?

Premier Elements 12, new HP PC, Win 8.1, lots of storage/memory. ~14K pictures and I'd like to start to trim out the duplicates. While in Premier Elements 10 the Organizer's Duplicate photo feature under Find seemed to work pretty well, the one in PremEl 12 does not work; brings up stacks of photos that are not even similar, much less duplicates. What gives?

Dave0518
Photoshop Elements 12 (photo editor) and Premiere Elements 12 (video editor) are standalone program, each with the Elements Organizer 12. When these programs are on the same computer, they share the same Elements Organizer catalog. All that being said, since your issue is with Elements Organizer and it identification "Duplicate Photos" not videos,
I would suggest that you might repost your thread in the Adobe Photoshop Elements Forum for a boarder perspective on your situation.from people such as Barbara Brundage, MichelBParis, et al.
The following is an example of what I mean about the Adobe Photoshop Elements Forum and this type of question.
Elements Organizer 12 duplicates files when Getting Photos and Videos
Please let us know the outcome when you get a chance.
Thank you.
ATR

PSE10 Remove Duplicate Photos

I am running PSE10 on Win 7, and have found myself with a bit of a mess I'd like to clean up. My Catalog has many hundred duplicate photos. These are pairs of items that point to the same physical photo via a different path. All follow the pattern of C:\Documents and Settings\Chris\My Documents\... and C:\Users\Chris\Pictures...
I have tried using the Search for duplicate photos function, which does identify the duplicates, but it also finds tons of false positives, photos that merely look alike but are not actual duplicates. Sorting through these is not feasible.
I could perhaps identify the My Documents versions by deleting the shortcut to My Documents in the OS and seeing which images need to be reconnected. However my tags are all attached to the C:\Documents and Settings versions.
I'm looking for a good way to identify actual duplicate photos in the catalog, rather than merely similar ones.
The workflow I imagine is: identify duplicate photos | transfer tags to C:\Users version | delete C:\My Documents version.
Anyone have any suggestions?
Thanks,
Chris
PS I'll note that I am experienced with databases and sql, on the off chance the catalog is really a simple sqlite database that I can manipulate.

99jon wrote:
I would have thought there may possibly be a database tool which could extract the details into a table.
Unfortunately I don’t know one.
If the table could be sorted it may be possible to delete all the lines with Documents & settings/My Documents and then resave the file. Then replacing the existing db file with the newly saved version.
It’s worth a shot.
That's pretty much the approach I'm leaning toward right now.
The complicating matter is the tags and album data. Chris will have to give us the details, but if the "incorrect" file location data is the only data that has tags and albums, there will be some fancy SQL footwork needed to attach the tags and albums to the "correct" file location data.
In general, the procedure would be to:
Create a temporary table and populate it with the "incorrect" file location data (which contains correct reference keys to tags and albums) from the main media table.
Use that temporary table to attach the tags and album reference keys to the "correct" file location data in the main media table.
Use that temporary table to delete the "incorrect" file location records references from all the other tables.
Use that temporary table to delete the "incorrect" file location records from the main media table.
Delete the temporary table.
That can be done without creating a temporary table, but the subsequent SQL queries would contain somewhat hellish WHERE clauses. All this can be done in a straightforward manner using SQL queries in Database.Net.
Ken

Revel Private Albums create duplicate photos in Elements 12

The problem is: some photos are duplicated in Photoshop Elements 12. The duplicates appear after sharing a 'Private Web Album' to Adobe Revel. The Private Web Album works correctly: In Photoshop Elements, it is listed as a 'Mobile Album.' Online, on Adobe Revel, the album is created and the photos are available.
After a while, the same photos are copied back to the computer's hard drive, and added to the Elements catalog. The original photo remains in the correct location (C:\Users\John\Pictures\...) The new duplicate photo is added to the C:\Adobe Revel\... folder.
Any ideas? Thanks!
PhotoShop Elements 12.1, Windows 8.1

Hi John,
Since you are using the same Adobe ID for both services, duplication is happening. Please try this-
create a mobile album in left pane, add some files that you want to share, click on the Share icon present infront of album name in Mobile Albums panel, and share.
Thanks
Andaleeb

Duplicate photos created by Elements

Hi
I've run into the problem of Elemenst creating duplicate photos -- has anyone else seen this. Here's how it happened: I took some new photos and plugged in my camera. I have the option set in "Preferences" to "Copy New Files Only". However, when Elements proceeded to do its stuff..... instead of saying "I found 15 new photos" it proceeded to reload (as new) everything on the camera card. Now, when I look in the "shot date" directories, I have duplicates of all photos -- such as, DSC_0054 and DSC_0054-1; DCS_0055 and DSC_0055-1 etc etc etc... so now I have 1000 photos in my catalog whereas I only have 500 untique photos on my camera card. This is not the first time I've seen this behavior, but this time I'm positive that the duplicates didn't result from something I did ..... I saw Elements re-load those 500 pictures. Is this a bug? Is there anyway I can prevent it from happening again....

I have the option set in "Preferences" to "Copy New Files Only". However, when Elements proceeded to do its stuff.....
Is your problem resolved?
When you re-imported the pics from the card, was the path selected to copy the files same as when you imported before?
If not, then do not change the path while importing again and re-import the files selecting the "Copy New Files Only" option.

Duplicates photos in Catalog

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