Software tip for managing out of control photo collections.

This is just a tip for those who are trying to make sense out of a mixed up collection of photos on your PC or Mac.  You know you have lots of photos on your machine but you also know that you have a lot of duplicates.  Web versions, slideshow versions etc. as well as your full sized out of the camera JPG or RAW files.

Here are links to some software that may help tame the mess.

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NUMBER ONE THING,    BACKUP.

Be sure you have a complete backup of your photos before attempting to clean them up.  Hard drives are cheap and  a good backup can prevent a lot of hair pulling and teeth grinding.

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Duplicate finders

Windows  

Best one that I have used is a free one (donations welcome.

Visipics   http://www.fosshub.com/VisiPics.html

Sorts and finds duplicates, easy to use and has Autoselect to choose duplicates with an easy to use slider to determine how exact the match is.  Not fast but very accurate.
I found it so good that I went to the trouble of copying all my images from Mac to a
Windows Fat 32 formatted hard drive so I could run this program. After sorting I will copy them back to the Mac and update Lightroom catalogs.

Mac

Several good ones but all of the Mac versions tend to find duplicates that are not really duplicates, eg: multi frame shots where the image only changes by a fraction etc.  You have to go through and check the found set to ensure there are no errors.  Easy to do as they display images side by side and one click can cancel the marking.

Unik  https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/unik-duplicate-image-finder/id431820180?mt=12
Photo Sweeper   https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/photosweeper/id463362050?mt=12

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Photo sorters, File sorters

Mac

File sorter
Big Mean Folder Machine  http://www.publicspace.net/BigMeanFolderMachine/

Will sort from multiple folders to single folder or from single folder to a folder structure based on size, name, etc.  Can rename or just add a series letter or number when encountering duplicate file names.

Beautiful Backup   http://www.beautifulbackup.com/

Will sort your photos based on the metadata within as well as videos.  It can create any kind of folder structure you wish based on templates.  It can also be set to filter out small images (you decide on size) and place them in a separate folder on your destination.

I use this one to collect images into Year/Year/Month/Day format and then read them directly into Lightroom.

Windows

I know there are some out there.  Send me some links if you have used them and I will add them to the list.

Remember rule number one,   BACKUP