P: Search for Duplicate Photos

[olivierlacan]

I can't remember the last time I ever had to worry about duplicates but recently I imported pictures manually from my camera roll and it clearly has imported hundreds of duplicates (with identical filenames mind you). This exclusively happened to HEIC and JPGs from my iPhone's camera roll so it feels like a bug specific to iOS perhaps.

All this brings up the very odd choice of not offering the same deduplicate feature available within the import flow *after* the images are already in the library. In my case, that's hundreds of photos I have to hunt for manually, when the process would be instantaneous if the dupe finder was available outside of the import flow. 

It would also be incredibly useful to be able to group photos from the library that are not *quite* duplicates but very identical (think bursts or multiple edits of the same shot) and allow me to find them, pick the ones I want to keep and either delete or mark the others as rejected. 

I'm not quite sure what version of Lightroom for iOS I was running when the duplicated import issue happened but I'm currently on v7.1.0 if that's any help. 

[Sienna Reid Art]

If you can do it in Photos, than you should be able to do it in Lightroom!

[Raphael34072081ii5s]

incredible how this feature is dearly missed since 2019 and nothing is done to adress this problem. ><
seems like this isn't going to be changed in the next three years since it wasn't in the last 4.....
another reason to crawl back to apple 😞

[arina28630140zmc3]

try duplicate photos fixer pro

[Paul Karns]

Or maybe we shouldn't have to pay for an additional subscription to add to the industry-standard cataloging software...

[arina28630140zmc3]

Try once Remo Duplicate Photos Remover or Duplicate Photos Fixer for iOS

[Kawaer]

   My Lightroom photos (Classic ) suddenly mutiplied and mixed up photo files etc and looks like I will loose most of photos as too many to go through manually. Please develop a system to help in these situations.  

[DSal2020]

A lot of advices and nothing helped.

I ended up using this: Duplicate Image Finder 

I do not know how I have missed it - it can scan not only lightroom catalogs, but also folders and network drives. Performs true image analysis and can find similar photos even if they are stored in different image formats. I do not know how I have missed this tool - it has way more features than anything else I've tried.

[michaelg3698983]

Sad this isn't a thing yet. I've been moving photos from Google to Apple photos (my second copy of everything) and auto import as resulted in 40,000 odd duplicate photos in Lightroom. I certainly won't be paying extra for LR if I go over my 1TB, so might just cancel it and use Apple and Google as my two cloud copies (on top of my local copy and backups)

[Philip22669124pitw]

Sometimes images get imported more than just once. This can have many reasons, e.g. iCloud imports can be done from the iPad and from the iPhone. The result is that all imported images are stores twice in Lightroom. To select and remove these duplicates is a very time consuming process. Adobe Support told me, that there is currently no funktion within Lightroom to find and remove duplicates. This option should be available (similar to Photos from Apple).

[Michael Boreham]

Can I add my support for this feature please.

[enjytme]

upvote this feature request from this guy

[Digiplay]

How is this not a feature even 6 years later - adobe, cmon.. seriously. I'm trying hard to use cc but it's tragic still, even now. No virtual copies, no duplicates - it's just not good enough.

[LjanusH]

The lack of very basic options like this is why I'm trying to get away from Adobe. But it's not easy when I have invested so much into it. It just leaves my annoyed.

[good_Luminary6C19]

Unbelievable that they have not added this feature. Absolute dealbreaker for me.

[youthful_elegance15C2]

As we're all running out of space and other apps provide a duplicate finder feature, i'm hoping Adobe can update with a feature like this soon!

[Adam278347287zzp]

Find duplicates would be extrememly usefull feature. I can't imagine why it is not available yet.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

Greetings all,

This Early Access feature was released two weeks ago on Lightroom Web. 
Log into your Adobe ID at https://lightroom.adobe.com 
Click on the Clean Up icon 
Then select Duplicates

For more information see: https://lightroom.adobe.com/news 

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

Updating status

[SteveB_62]

Hi all, 

I have images in my Lightroom cloud account that were directly imported into Lightroom Mobile from my camera card during an initial cull in the field. All my images are stored on a hard drive after I return home, and these can be viewed through the local tab in Lightroom desktop.

When I want to review all the images after returning home, I can choose the "Add photo" option from the Cloud tab, and lightroom desktop recognises the previously imported images in that file structure and wont let me re-import them. But if I browse these same folders on my hard drive through the Local tab, Lightroom does not recognise the versions previously imported and now in the cloud, meaning I can easily end up with many duplicates in the cloud.

Is there a way to search/identify from the Local tab these previously imported images? The "Copied to cloud" filter only seems to return images copied to the cloud from the Local tab, and won't find the images imported directly from the card in the field (even though the add photos option from the cloud tab will identify them from the same folder structure). This would not be an issue, except that the add photos option from cloud tab does not allow large previews, does not show the file name or pick flags, so I cant easily identify which version of a photo I need to import (I mainly shoot wildlife, so usually have hundreds of similar images to choose the best from).

For ref, I am using Lightroom desktop v. 8.3.1 on a MacBook Pro M3, and Lightroom Mobile on an iPad Air (5th Gen).

Cheers!

[SteveB_62]

Sorry, posted here by mistake...

[SteveB_62]

It seems I didn't post in the wrong place but rather my post was moved here. To clarify, I don't need a solution to find duplicates, but want to know how to identify images from the local tab that were previously imported so that I avoid duplicates (and the extra work it takes to then identify and delete them).

Cheers.

[carls8319116]

Hi there, 

I would like to recommend three features for Lightroom:

1. Find duplicates files in the ecosystem, either by folder or by entire system;

2. Find orphan files that are not allocated to a album or Folder;

3. Select a photo and see which albums or folders it belongs to.

These three features would vastly improve the efficiency of the workflow and save tons of time when organizing our storage environment. 

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

@carls8319116 Assuming you're using the desktop version, 2 out of 3 are already possible. 

2. Find orphan files that are not allocated to an album or Folder;

In the text search field, start typing "not" and in the pop-up below, select the Not in any album search. Or you can create a Smart Album that does the same.

3. Select a photo and see which albums or folders it belongs to.

With a photo selected, look at the bottom of the Info panel.