"suspected duplicates" are ghosts, is my catalog corrupt?

Hi, when importing, some of my photos show as "suspected duplicates" although they definitely are NOT in my catalog. Is my catalog corrupt? Is there a way to correct it? Thank you

Please disregard:
It turns out that if there are multiple copies of the file in the subdirectory of the directory I am importing from that Lightroom marks them as duplicate, and rightly so. They aren't duplicate in my catalog, they are duplicate in the subdirectory when I view from the parent directory. Sorry

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Despite checking the "Do not import suspected duplicates" box, my Lr4 still did re-import hundreds of photos. Anyone know how to avoid that?

Despite checking the "Do not import suspected duplicates"box, Lr4 still did re-import hundreds of photos from the same exact card they were imported from originally. Anyone know what I should do differently next time?

The problem with duplicate detection is that, as far as I can tell, Lightroom is using details it discovers about the file being imported (examining EXIF data and file stats) and what is already in the catalog. Unless it finds an exact match for all parameters, the file is not considered a duplicate. From my own experience, if Lightroom decides a file is a duplicate it is nearly always correct. However, when it misses, it really misses. I have not read anywhere that Lightroom is building and storing a hash count which would make the process more accurate. I also suspect that the search for duplicates is when you are importing a set of photos from one location (a memory card for example) and storing them into the same folder all the time. So, if you take a memory card and import all the photos into Folder_X and then later try and import the same photos into Folder_X again, Lightroom will catch that they are duplicates. But, if you were to import that same group of photos into Folder_Y, Lightroom will not catch it indicating the comparison is not catalog wide. I am not sure how to influence this behavior and it is not anything you did wrong or failed to do. It just is the way it is...

Find suspected duplicates after import

I have approximately 11,000 photos to organize. I created a catalog name and chose to skip suspected duplicates. Approximately 8,000 photos were imported. This is reasonable since I consolidated photos from current drives and backups of two computers.
How do I find the suspected duplicates? I want to review the duplicates and delete all duplicates to free disk space. How do I which photos were not imported?
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Hi Ken!
Lightroom does a fairly decent job finding duplicates during an import but does not make it as easy once the images are in the catalog. Take a look at http://www.lightroom-plugins.com/DupesIndex.php. You can try it for free and see if it will help you out.

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Victoria Bampton wrote:
CuriousBystander wrote:
So what you are saying is this:
if filename equals "existing" AND date/time equals "existing" AND file size equals "existing" THEN its a match.
Yep. And I agree it needs to be better. You might want to add a feature request at the Official Feature Request/Bug Report Forum
At the risk of necroing a thread, I want to disagree that "it needs to be better" if that translates to "ignores files with small differences in the filename but otherwise the same." From the standpoint of file management, we never, ever want software thinking about this too much. I have encountered multiple situations where i was able to recover from a corrupt file precisely because the software was extremely strict on what it considered to be a duplicate. Put differently, it does not hurt us to have two copies of an important photo, while it can be devastating to have no copies—or one corrupted copy—of an important photo. When importing hundreds or thousands of shots, we absolutely want Lightroom insisting that filename, sixe, and capture date/time be identicial to be considered a duplicate. Otherwise, we want these sorts of decisions left to us. After all, there is a reason that file is different, and it could well be that an atuomated process elsewhere failed and two copies of photo allows us to choose what was the correct image to retain.
Again, sorry for the necro, but I felt this needed to be said.

Photos in catalouge and cards, "Suspected Duplicates" - EPIC FAIL

Scenario: I'm out in the field filling memory cards and reviewing them on my secondary PC (laptop), marking & editing various images at night. I do not manage to import all of the photos off of all of my cards (and can't due to disk space requirements). I want to keep the edits and work (and images, due to running out of cards I formated some of them that I _knew_ were in the LR catalouge AND backed up onto other devices).
I get home to my primary PC and export the laptop catalouge and then import it, WIN. I start importing images from cards that ARE NOT IN THE CATALOUGE, also WIN. I put in a card that has AT LEAST _SOME_ (but not necessarily all) images in the exported catalouge. Lightroom FAILS to notice that images that were imported FROM THE SAME CARD into the Laptop & Desktop with THE SAME CATALOUGE are duplicates!
What I want to do is to BE SURE that all of my images are in my primary/desktop catalouge WITHOUT dupes. I want to insert the memory card and have LR import ONLY THE ONES IT DOES NOT ALREADY have. This seems like somehting LR should automagically support, but apparently not. How do I accomplish what I want to do without doing something rediculous like importing everything regardless, then buying a de-duping tool, deleting the duplicate images using file system tools, then removing the not found images manually from LR?
I DID NOT find this fourm thread to be especially helpful for me:
http://forums.adobe.com/message/4843896#4843896
Please help!

Yes, I give custom names on import For example, right now I'm working on importing photos from a card that has early images (i.e. the compact flash file
H:\NIKON D800\DCIM\101ND800\_PL81846.NEF
). I did not alter the memory card in any way (unless importing the images to LR on the laptop somehow altered them).
After importing the exported catalouge, my PC has
D:\Users\liels\My Pictures\Source Pictures\2013\01\06\20130106-Bosque-del-Apache-_PL81846.nef
But
H:\NIKON D800\DCIM\101ND800\_PL81846.NEF
still shows up as non-dupe. This is different than if I import
H:\NIKON D800\DCIM\101ND800\_PL81846.NEF
with the Desktop creating
D:\Users\liels\My Pictures\Source Pictures\2013\01\06\20130106-Bosque-del-Apache-_PL81846.nef
and then insert the memory card. In that case the "suspected duplicates" correctly identifies that
H:\NIKON D800\DCIM\101ND800\_PL81846.NEF
is a duplicate of
D:\Users\liels\My Pictures\Source Pictures\2013\01\06\20130106-Bosque-del-Apache-_PL81846.nef
But that DOES NOT happen when
D:\Users\liels\My Pictures\Source Pictures\2013\01\06\20130106-Bosque-del-Apache-_PL81846.nef
is created as a result of importing an exported catalouge, even though the source for the image is the very same card, e.g.
H:\NIKON D800\DCIM\101ND800\_PL81846.NEF.
I can, in fact import the image with the EXACT SAME renaming scheme & keywords and LR will SILENTLY(!) create
D:\Users\liels\My Pictures\Source Pictures\2013\01\06\20130106-Bosque-del-Apache-_PL81846-2.nef
not bothering to ask me if that is what I want or not (my naming scheme DOES NOT ask for ZZZ-FILENAME-X, but it creates it silently anyway)
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and it has downloaded my photos
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My images are still in the catalog, but the Folder name has disappeared. I need to get the folder back into my structure with the images in place

Help: I have a very well defined folder structure. Folder are located in a Master location and organized by State. Inside of these are my master RAW file folders organized by location. For example: West Virginia > BIRI_RAW_2012, BLFA_RAW_2013, NERI_RAW_2013, etc. After I set up the masterful following a shoot, I go to LR and import the images. At one time I inadvertently imported the NERI_RAW_2013 masterful set as a subset of something else and it was not appearing in my LR Module in the organization I prefer. So I went to my master folders on my drive and moved the NERI file into the West Virginia state folder. When I went back to LR, as expected the NERI folder was grey with a question mark. So I right clicked to find the files and relink, and it did not work. The folder name disappeared. The RAW files are still in the catalog and show up in a missing photos search. I can't reimport because they are already there. I just need to restore my folder structure and get the images back to the right spot.

So I right clicked to find the files and relink, and it did not work. The folder name disappeared.
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How does "Select Ignore Suspected Duplicates" work?

During import, if I select "Ignore Suspected Duplicates" how does LR decide if a given picture is a duplicate? The on-line help doesn' say.

It is looking for actual, same name and file type duplicates. Basicly with this unchecked it will re-impmort images you have already imported so you will have more than one copy and the will be reported under an 'Already in Library listing under 'Previous Import'.
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It seems, in old times we could make path to the original file from the IPhoto browser, couldn't we?
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"suspected duplicates" are ghosts, is my catalog corrupt?

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