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Duplicate photos in Photo Library

Need clarification please. As I understand it, deleting a photo from an album in Photos does NOT delete it from the photo library. But, thinking in the opposite direction: If I see 4 duplicates of a photo in my photo library and delete all but one, is there a chance one of the ones I delete would then ALSO be deleted from an album I'd dragged it to, and the next time I look at that particular album there'll just be a big black box showing where a photo once was (and I may wonder which photo it was!) ?

iMac 27″, macOS 11.7

Posted on Jun 5, 2023 3:32 PM

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Posted on Jun 5, 2023 8:06 PM

Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that if you notice duplicates and delete all but one copy, you have to be careful not to delete a copy that you wanted to have in an album. No, in the sense that deleting such a copy will leave no "big black box" or any other indication that there ever was a copy of that photo in that album.


If you use the duplicate handling that was introduced with Photos 8 in Ventura, it is supposed to handle this issue, making sure that the survivor of a set of duplicates remains in any album that held any member of the set.

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Jun 5, 2023 8:06 PM in response to Gwynedd

Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that if you notice duplicates and delete all but one copy, you have to be careful not to delete a copy that you wanted to have in an album. No, in the sense that deleting such a copy will leave no "big black box" or any other indication that there ever was a copy of that photo in that album.


If you use the duplicate handling that was introduced with Photos 8 in Ventura, it is supposed to handle this issue, making sure that the survivor of a set of duplicates remains in any album that held any member of the set.

Jun 5, 2023 11:50 PM in response to Gwynedd

You will also have to be careful, when you delete photos that have been used in projects like slideshows. Just like albums, the slideshows are just referencing the photos used in the projects, and I am not sure, if even the built-in merging of duplicates will take care of photos in projects. There will not be black boxes in your albums, when you accidentally remove a photo from an album, the album will just have less items and you may not even notice that a photo is missing, but in a book you may be seeing empty place holders, depending on the app you are using to create the project.

As there is no tool in Photos to test, if a photo has been used in a project, I would always create projects in a separate Photos Library with just the photos used for the project, to keep the photos safe.


Duplicate photos in Photo Library

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