photo duplicates not working

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photo duplicates not working

Hi - my photo library contains about 50,000 images. I recently went though and deleted all the duplicate files showing in the duplicate files folder. There were several thousand that had built up over many years of use and moving libraries around.

i know there are still duplicates in there though. It's missed quite a lot and i ran PowerPhotos and it found thousands of duplicates.

So i Repaired and Restored my photo library yesterday, by starting it up with Command Option. I've left Photos running for over 20 hours but it hasn't found any duplicates...? Do i need to Repair it again, or just wait, or is there something else i can do to prompt Duplicate finder to work?

(btw i have checked and double checked, there are definitely duplicate photos - same size, name, format... identical, but duplicates doesn't spot them. Or hasn't spotted them yet...

???

and No, i don't want to use PowerPhotos. Its good for finding a dozen duplicates, but unless I'm misunderstanding, you have to check them all in one sitting and that is just not possible when there are thousands.

thanks in advance

iMac 21.5″, macOS 13.4

Posted on Jul 3, 2023 1:13 AM

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Answer 1

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léonie

Level 10

200,537 points

Jul 3, 2023 1:47 AM in response to Paul Richards4

For 50000 photos and videos the duplicate detection will take a very long time. Give Photos time to find them. My library has a similar size to yours and it took two weeks for the first duplicates to be shown. Give Photos more time to detect duplicates.

But I would not merge all duplicates without looking at them. At least make a backup copy of your library before merging duplicates, so you can restore missing photos from the copy of the library.

Photos is not only presenting exact duplicates, it is also showing similar photos or different versions of the same photo.

Most of the potential duplicates presented to me by Photos have been just similar photos or different versions of the same photo. For the similar photos I had to decide which version to keep myself, because I preferred the composition of a different version more than the version suggested by Photos. Perhaps your artistic taste is also different from Photos's taste. And most of the different versions of the same photos I had created intentionally for different projects and needed to keep. The version shad been cropped differently, or different color adjustments or Live effects. Occasionally Photos suggested photos as duplicates, just because the filenames were identical, but it have been completely different photos. Check the suggested duplicates before you merge them with Photos. It is safer.

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photo duplicates not working

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