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Known Participant
December 1, 2022
Open for Voting

P: Duplicate detection for raw/JPEG with same name

  • December 1, 2022
  • 3 replies
  • 247 views

Occasionally I wind up with large numbers of duplicate images due to importing something multiple times over a period of months or years. Literally, importing the exact same images, but for whatever reason, import doesn't notice that they're duplicates. File name changed, date changed, I don't know. When I wind up with "-4" filenames for 5 copies of the same image, I feel like something isn't working right.

 

I really want to be able to find images that are certainly duplicates and that are almost certainly duplicates, and do something with them.

 

Certainly duplicates means the same bits in the image. Lightroom does not work this way however. I'm not sure exactly what way it works.

 

Almost certainly duplicates or just "very similar" means:

  • Very strong likelihood JPEG/raw match (e.g. if same filename and feature-similar image, some metadata matches, etc etc)
  • Same for TIF/PSD/JPEG/raw etc etc
  • Same photo resized, reoriented
  • Same photo cropped a little
  • Same photo with watermark/steganography
  • Same photo with border

 

I could see how "smart collection" could be a good way to integrate this into the application. Make a collection of photos with X attributes and filter out the ones that aren't duplicate or similar.

3 replies

Known Participant
December 1, 2022

To get back to the real point, though, what's needed is a way to find duplicate *images*, not duplicate *files*.

Known Participant
December 1, 2022

That is definitely not how it works, unless it's buggy. Which it could be.

johnrellis
Legend
December 1, 2022

"I'm not sure exactly what way [Lightroom] works."

 

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/photo-video-import-options.html 

"Lightroom Classic determines a photo is a duplicate of another file in the catalog if it has the same, original filename; the same Exif capture date and time; and the same file size."