wdburt Loc: Tualatin Oregon

Confusion reigns in this retired, chemo addled brain. Hoping some Hedgies can help...

Background: overfed, way over 60, retired.

Mission: Post chemo challenge from my photographer daughter to go through my 3 file cabinets of slides and negatives, and the last 20 years of digital images, and get this all organized and sorted through. I've managed to scan the majority of my slides, and am working on the negatives from the 90's as we speak.

Challenge: Identify/eliminate the duplicate images on my 3 drive RAID array. I want 1 of each image; then I can set up my backups. THEN I can organize it all. Lightroom seems more than willing to sort things, but seems also willing to leave them scattered across all my drives. My linear thinking is that no, I should have everything on ONE drive, then have backups. Seems like I'm just courting failure and disorganization to date. Familiar with failure, but hate the disorganization.

Suggestions? Thoughts? Ideas?

TIA,
Bill

11bravo

Have used this software for removing clones (full dups) of files for a decade:

https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/tpr?p=11375407&t=654553

f8lee Loc: New Mexico

1) A RAID array typically implies a set of "inexpensive disks" that appear to the computer as a single volume - are you saying that you actually have three different drives? If so, then consolidating to a single drive would likely make sense.

2) thanks to @11bravo for his link - it seems there are some good programs out there that can find dupes (and based on the actual image, not just a filename)

3) Lightroom can indeed help, but be aware that you will be the one applying the metadata. However, it's facial recognition capability can be most useful - after having scanned a few thousand old family snapshots, for instance, and running through them 'training" the facial recognition system I was able to pull up all the photos with, say, my grandmother in them and create a photobook to share with family.

Good luck! It'll be a big project - but I bet a lot of fun too.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Right. LR does not care where the image is as long as it is where LR thinks it is. However, like you, I believe it's useful to have them all on one drive. For one thing it makes backups easier. For another thing, when you are no longer around, your family will only have to look at one drive.

I believe it's useful to have a distinct folder structure that can serve as a secondary organizational method. LR is really great at organizing, but in my case, I have nobody in my family who knows how to search for things in LR. So I arrange things by folders with meaningful names to help them out.

My folder structure is basically ../Photos/[year]/[Descriptive text of subject/event/place, whatever]/RAW. I shoot raw only and the raw files go there. The final images are saved as jpg and they go one folder above the ../RAW, i.e. in ../Photos/[year]/[Descriptive text]/. Of course this is my system and you may have other ideas.

On a slightly different subject, you might want to look into the way your family photos are documented. I have a page with some ideas, but it's something you should discuss with your kids. Warning: this is potentially a lot of work, and it all depends on your family whether or not it will be appreciated in the future.

https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/user-page?upnum=2991

wdburt Loc: Tualatin Oregon

Thanks for the quick responses, gang! This is something of a nightmare project. 3 external drives, with lots of duplicates on each drive. Only excuse is chemo-induced brain fog and sloppiness - never thought I'd be around long enough to clean it all up!

Shots vary, but most of the film from the 60-70's were little-known bands (then) i.e., Mr. Daniels, Wilson sisters, Mr. Zappa, and the like, mostly small venue up close, a lot of Tri-X cranked. Most of the 80's were faraway lands and weddings, 90's and 00's were mostly landscapes, cityscapes, and more bands and musicians. The family stuff was fill-in as I was home. Shot some last decade as health allowed. Now that I'm apparently recovered (5 years NED, Stage IV cancer), my daughter's after me to actually catalog everything I've shot. Apparently my index cards and labeled slides just aren't enough (LOL).

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Take a look here.

https://www.ashisoft.com/blog/top-5-best-duplicate-photo-finder-to-delete-duplicate-photos/
https://yourstory.com/mystory/top-5-duplicate-photo-cleaners-for-windows-10
http://9to5mac.com/2015/05/07/how-to-shrink-mac-photo-library-delete-duplicates/
http://www.howtogeek.com/200962/how-to-find-and-remove-duplicate-files-on-windows/
https://home.bt.com/tech-gadgets/computing/how-to-find-and-remove-duplicate-files-and-photos-on-your-pc-11363985986930
https://www.pcworld.com/article/2927913/find-duplicate-photos-two-utilities-that-can-help.html

Schoee Loc: Europe

I am doing a similar project with many digital photos from various cameras plus scans yet to do. I have duplicates and also same file name but different picture from when I got a new camera and numbering restarted. ACDSee Professional is excellent at finding duplicates based on image and/or name. I started organizing the pics by creating folders named as ‘yyyymm short text description’. Then using the libraries rather than folders view in file explorer you can group by month and grab the pics to put in the new folder. If there are duplicate names then rename to anything you like in the source folder because once the process is complete you will then rename within each folder using a sensible name based on the folder name. Use ACDSee to check for duplicates. Once I had most sorted I would run a compare on the destination folder and a source folder that I suspected was full of duplicates. It is easy to get the software to delete the duplicates from the source folder leaving maybe a handful that are not duplicates that you then move to the destination.
I have not finished yet but will eventually run face recognition and add key words to some. Then will embed the metadata so if I ever lose the catalog the info is mainly in the pics and can be seen by any cataloging program. Anyway that might give yeah some ideas. I don’t have time to write more detail. Hope it helps.

tovie

Check out: http://www.bungenstock.de/teekesselchen/download.php, a LR plugin for duplicate finding.

cahale Loc: San Angelo, TX

Pick a disk. Start dragging everything to it. If duplicate (names) come up, the computer will ask if you want to replace or skip. Skip and go to next. Once everything is on one drive, backup or a separate drive and start deleting all the other folders (if photos only), or group and delete all photos if other files in the folder.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

That will only eliminate files with the same name. If there are identical images with different names they will still be there. However, if everything is on one disk you only need to make one pass with the duplicate finding program.

11bravo

I have the paid version of Heatsoft Clone Cleaner on my main desktop; it works on multiple drives.

On my other computers, I have the freeware version which only works on a single drive. I simply create new folders on one drive, say Drive_A, naming the folders appropriately, say Drive_B and Drive_C folders. Then use TeraCopy to move files from the other drives to the appropriate folders. Run Clone Cleaner and with its SmartMark feature, easy to specify Drive_A as the keeper, full clones in other folders as discards.

Schoee Loc: Europe

No don’t do this. I did it ages ago and luckily realised my mistake. I had different photos with the same name due to the naming starting again with new camera so I needed to keep both files, just need to rename one.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

This is one good reason to change the name of your files at download time.
Another good reason is that the names can be descriptive.

wdburt Loc: Tualatin Oregon

Thanks everyone! This gives me a good idea of how to heat, serve, and dine on this particular mammoth! Of course, on the naming protocols, I predate when we had eight.cha naming protocols. Of course, little tiny writing on slide frames are another story entirely...

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

I wish the camera manufacturers would move beyond the 8.3 file names. OTOH, it's not difficult to change the name to something useful at download time and that way you are not depending on some random software engineer to provide names for your files.

Of course even the 8.3 file names are an improvement over some of the really early file names which were 8 characters total.