Delete Duplicate Photos from Elements Organizer

How I remove duplicate images in Elements Organizer:

_"Find" / "By Visual Searches" menu / choose "Duplicate Photos".

_Photos that are visually similar appear in horizontal rows. Look for duplicates: may show as "xxxx-1".

_Click a photo, then click "Remove from Catalog"; also optional "Remove from Hard Drive" is available from this pop-up window.

I find that it is not true. PS elements DOES generate duplicates, I have had upto 20 identical entries -file name, location size.

The problem I have that I find the duplicates and stack them but cannot get rid of the batches except on a one-by-one basis

Hi georged,

Thanks for posting in Adobe forums.

I understand you are facing issue with duplicate photos in Organizer.

Can we follow the following steps

Click “Find”

Click “By Visual Searches”

Click “Duplicate Photos”

You will get an interface where you see all your duplicate pictures

You get these options that you can use according to your choice “Stack” , “Unstack” or “Remove from Catalog”

Hope this helps

Thanks

Regards

Dhananjay

georged89638796  wrote Is there a way to delete duplicate photos other than marking them one at a time?

You could find a number of posts about getting rid of duplicates in Elements or outside Elements...

Two interesting points in your own question:

I have 8000 photos in my Catalog and several are duplicates!

You seem to be astonished to see duplicates in a catalog...

I'm not quire sure how these duplicates were generated.

and you don't know how those duplicates were generated.

Well the question would be better answered if you had said 'were imported'.

The organizer does not 'generate' anything on its own. Only you can issue orders to 'duplicate' or 'export' files.

Two fundamental distinctions:

1 - The database function in the catalog tries to insure no duplicates can be registered/indexed if you try to 'import' them. That's a basic programming rule for managing databases. So, when you want to 'import' files in the catalog, there is a check for duplicates based on two criteria (among others): file size in kilobytes and date taken of the photo. Such duplicates won't be imported, they are ignored.

2 - Before getting the files in the catalog, the photos must come from your camera, your scans, your web browsing or any other source. That's the main problem for duplicates on your computer. There are many possibilities to get duplicates in that 'downloading' phase. The most current complaint is when you are 'importing' (downloading) files from a camera card. The downloader module has the option to import only new files. The files on the card are compared to the ones in the current catalog for size and date, and only new ones should be imported. It seems the above criteria don't insure 100% safety. It may be because of downloader options like red eye correction changing the size or similar traps. It has not been very clear why there was a number of problems on older Macs...

So, you are talking about duplicates 'in the catalog', not 'in the computer'.

If you consider visually similar files as duplicates, they are not for the database. In that case, there is a way to search for visually similar files in the organizer.

If you find pictures which are duplicates (same size/date) in your catalog (even with different filenames), you'll have to search for differences in the files properties, particularly in which 'import batch' they were imported.

I hope the above will help you so that you can ask for more targeted help.