elements organizer showing multiple instances of photo

Report · Mar 09, 2025

Hello, have been runing PSE for some years, recently moved to a new MacBook Pro (M4 Chip, Sequoia 15.3.1) and purchased PSE 2025 (Ver. 25.1).

All seemed well, but today cleaning up some pix, i notice that in some folders, the organizer shows multiple pictures for one file.

example: in the finder, under the folder i'm currently seeing in the organizer, there is a file "Trish.JPG"

in the organizer, there are two identical images with the following information in the side panel:

1) filename Trish.JPG - has correct tag, person name, location.

2) filename Trish.jpg - has no tag, incorrect person, no location.

they both show identical information under general/meta/history exept for the case of the .jpg extension case.

if i delete the erronious image (or the correct image), the remaining image becomes disonnected.

i'm seeing this in multiple folders, some files are represented 3 times, again with the only difference being the case of the filename or extension.

thanks for any assist.

dan wills

Report · Mar 10, 2025

Wow, I may be having a similar problem. But before I jump to that conclusion, I need a little more information from you.

I assume you transferred your catalog from the old machine to the new one. How did you do that? Backup and Restore using the Organizer's tools, or some other method?

If you restored the catalog using the Organizer, did you use the option to Restore Files to the Original Location or a new one? And did you choose to Restore the Orginal Folder Structure?

Any other details you can provide about your file management and getting the files onto your new computer will be helpful.

My personal situation is a little different. I have been trying to move my catalog onto a new larger hard drive. I managed to Backup the full catalog, but when I restored it, to a new location (the new drive), the catalog still points to the old drive. Now, when I reconnect the files to the new drive, the old entry in the catalog remains, so I have a properly connected thumbnail and also a missing file generic thumbnail. But if I delete the missing file, the correct one remains. I haven't noticed any changes in the extension case.

I know nothing about Macs and you situation may be entirely different from mine, but misery does love company. (I have to reconnect over 250k files!)

Report · Mar 11, 2025

Hi Greg,

i beleive i brought my folders and catalog directory onto the new machine from my backkup, then restored from hard drive. It all went well, exept i made the mistake of changing the top-level directory names. i put them under ~/dan/Pictures-PSE instead of ~/dan/PSE-something-something. (how many times to i have to learn to move ANYTHING using the organizer?). this confused the organizer, so even after the catalog was 'looking' ok, it couldnt find the picture files. I told it to import, and it went and got all the files. everything seemed OK.

Then recently i was mucking out misc old pix, i noticed these 'phantom' pictures. I dont beleive these are related to the restore/import, as one would expect all/most files to be affected - this is a very small percentage. I'm fixing these by deleting the ones that dont match the upper/lower case name of the original file (not deleting original off the hard drive). it's a bit of a pain, but like i said, there arent a lot of them - just have to find them.

i've also noticed that quite a few pictures have multiple location/places on them. I havent dug into this - location/place tags have always been kind of 'iffy' in the organizer, and of limited value.

anyway, as for your situation - as opposed to trying to reconnect that many files, i think i'd start over. Blow everything away, and bring your files/catalog back onto the new drive (being careful to make the pathnames identical to the old).

alternatively, if you have both the new and old drive connected to your machine, can you use the organizer to move your existing catalog to the new drive/location?

dan

Report · Mar 11, 2025

Have you tried a Repair and Optimization of the catalog?

Report · Mar 11, 2025

have done an optimization, no result. "repair" seems to have been removed from the catalog management tool.

i have searched out and deleted (catalog entry only) all of my 'phantom' pix - there were only about 40.

currently investigating how some of the pix suddenly have mulitple place tags. the number here is greater, so i'm fooling with places. might not be worth it - the map locations haven't really been all that usefuel - it's just a neat trick.