Deleting Duplicates

Hi. Thanks for the reply. I just did a visual similarity search and hovered
my mouse, but i didn't see any pop-up. (Im on latest windows version. with
a 6-month-old desktop)

And, frankly, that's not all that great, (unless, when hovering, file size
shows up for *all* displayed thumbnails on the screen) .

The key need for me is to be able to select a group of files for deletion
(after the similarity search results are shown). A key need is to see,
displayed, files sizes for all thumbnails (i.e. files). That is needed to
male decisions on the files to be deleted. I'm a bit old and could die
before completing this work.

In the online help:

https://helpx.adobe.com/elements-organizer/using/search-based-visual-uniqueness.html

The feature offered by the organizer is based on 'visual similarity', that is by searching which files 'match' visually. The percentage you see indicates how similar the files are. As suggested by the resulting search list, you have a button to stack or not the suggested . The above help doc is a bit short, but it shows that the process is not what you expect: you can't skip the tasks:

1 - to check the proposal and select the correct 'matches'

2 - to stack your choices, which solves a part of the problem of duplicates: when browsing, you only see one thumbnail

3 - to decide the criteria to find which item to keep or delete. A big issue that even advanced external duplicate finders can't really do for you: based on date, size, visual quality, richness of tags and info in the catalog...

4 - The usual way when you have found the best item in the stack is to 'flatten' the stack, which only keeps the best and deletes the other (from catalog and from disk if you choose so). This is not very realistic for a big library of 100 000 items!

 

One big issue is that duplicates are not found based on file name. With digital cameras, you may have many duplicate names for different pictures.

You might try external duplicate finders (some are free or affordable), but you'll still have the task of deciding the criteria for deletion. If you delete files externally, the catalog will show many 'missing' files and you'll have to select them and remove them from the catalog, which takes time.

 

That does not mean the visual search of PSE is useless. It works very well in certain circumstances. For instance, you import a folder with version sets or stacks created in another catalog. The only way to re-stack them is to search for visual similarity. That works well to stack the original raw file with its edited, cropped version.

 

My other advice for a big library is to consider if it's worth trying to delete duplicates to be proud of a 'clean' look in the Explorer. I have many old scans of family shots taken by many relatives. I am happy to have them stacked and I don't care for the small waste in drive space. 

 

The real reason to start finding duplicates is to find why you have them and to avoid creating new ones.