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Photo Library management

Due to an incorrectly managed restore after a crash, I have many multiples of photos in my library. A friend ran a program which pulled out originals and put them in a separate folder. If I trash my library and reload from this folder, will other sources such iCloud "restore" all the duplicates?

Posted on Feb 17, 2021 8:52 AM

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Posted on Feb 17, 2021 10:54 PM

Boolean searches not possible as far as I know.


The best way I can think of to do what you want, is to search for "France" Select all the images found, and add the keyword "France" to them (In the keyword manager, or in the info pane (CMD-i).


Then create a smart album with the condition "keyword - is not - France"

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Feb 17, 2021 10:54 PM in response to NaomiLMartin

Boolean searches not possible as far as I know.


The best way I can think of to do what you want, is to search for "France" Select all the images found, and add the keyword "France" to them (In the keyword manager, or in the info pane (CMD-i).


Then create a smart album with the condition "keyword - is not - France"

Feb 17, 2021 10:42 AM in response to NaomiLMartin

If you are using iCloud photos, then yes, all the duplicates are in iCloud - and would be synced back to a new library.


On the other hand if you delete all the photos in your current library by selecting them all (in the all photos view) and then deleting them - they will also be deleted from iCloud.


Then when you re-import the recovered originals they will be re-uploaded to iCloud.


Now I'm going to question what you are doing. How did your freind pull out the originals. If they have been copied from the originals folder inside your library, then I am guessing this will aslo include all the duplicates. Have you checked?


Also you need to be very carful that you do actually have the full size originals, and not (for example) thumbnails or smaller previews.


Before deleteing anything, I'd suggest you make a backup of your library.

Feb 17, 2021 11:56 AM in response to TonyCollinet

Well your questions are exactly my concerns, but I am not technologically savvy enough to know how to respond. What I am trying to do is this: My library is filled with many duplicate photos, the result of trying to restore photos after computer crashes, years ago, pre-iCloud. Most of the duplicates were old photos that were scanned in, not, for instance, from a digital camera. As a result, the date of the image is the date it was scanned, or the date it was restored. In other words, I cannot find duplicates by sorting metadata. I am well aware that some images have a much smaller size (thumbnail?) than others, but I don't see a way to sort by size. I don't want to delete the originals. The library is very large, over 18,000 images, and I am trying to find a way to remove unwanted duplicates without going through each image. I've tried software that purports to do this, but I suspect it looked at metadata, and wasn't much help.

Feb 17, 2021 12:12 PM in response to NaomiLMartin

There are two applications reccomended here for duplicate detection and removal. Power Photos and Photosweeper.


Photosweeper can detect duplicates based on them looking similar. Though you do have to check the results of this. It might be worth checking out before doing anything more drastic. There is a limited free trial available.


https://overmacs.com/

Feb 17, 2021 4:31 PM in response to TonyCollinet

Thank you so much! I've just been running Photo Sweeper, and have eliminated over 7,000 photos. That will be a huge help! I had tried duplicate eliminating software in the past, but the programs I tried really didn't find much. I suspect they relied on metadata.


You've been so helpful, I hate to wear out my welcome, but one other question - is it possible in Apple Photo to run boolean searches? I still have 13,000 photos. If I want to be sure sure that the 500 I took in France are all correctly labeled "France", searching France won't work. I would need to search "All not France" or something along those lines. Then I could more easily see if there were France photos in hiding. I suppose I could put all 13,000 in one folder, and remove all those labeled France. Still, that seems cumbersome.


Thank you!


Naomi

Photo Library management

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