Help, Duplicates in numerous programs, cloud & devices!

[PhotoFlyer]

Hello all, I've gotten myself into a royal muddle. I have tens of thousands of photos stored in various formats and programs. I want to consolidate everything and make back ups onto external hard drives.
I'm overwhelmed and am looking at the best solution. I'm also getting lost and confused in using the Mac and am hoping someone can suggest logical steps to save me from my muddle.
Currently, I have filled the memory on my Macbook Pro. I have photos in Iphoto, Image Capture, Picasa and Dropbox. I want to put all of those photos together in one place (how?) and then run some program which will eliminate duplicates. Then I want to copy all to an external hard drive.
Does any one have some helpful step by step directions and suggestions on how to do this?
Thank you so much!

 

[flynz4]

Hello all, I've gotten myself into a royal muddle. I have tens of thousands of photos stored in various formats and programs. I want to consolidate everything and make back ups onto external hard drives.
I'm overwhelmed and am looking at the best solution. I'm also getting lost and confused in using the Mac and am hoping someone can suggest logical steps to save me from my muddle.
Currently, I have filled the memory on my Macbook Pro. I have photos in Iphoto, Image Capture, Picasa and Dropbox. I want to put all of those photos together in one place (how?) and then run some program which will eliminate duplicates. Then I want to copy all to an external hard drive.
Does any one have some helpful step by step directions and suggestions on how to do this?
Thank you so much!

I think you will be very disappointed in any automated process. Expect it to be slow, and manual.

The key, with that many photos, is to use a DAM... and consider a DAM to be the final home for your photos. Your suggested end state is to have all of these pictures on an external HDD. If they are just there as a bunch of stored photos... you are missing the point.

Pull them all into a DAM... and begin the process of organizing into projects based on whatever organization method you choose. Then, start deleting the dups.

Stop thinking about how to "store the photos"... and start thinking about how you "use the photos". That will drive clarity into your task.

I currently use Aperture because I think it is the absolute best for organization, but Aperture is going away in a couple of years. The obvious next best choice is LR. I am staying with Aperture until I know what follows. I might move to LR, or I might move to Photos (or Photos 2). I don't know yet, but since my library is very well organized into coherent projects, rated, geotagged, and has tags for people, special events, etc, etc... then migration to any new DAM will be trivial (or at least straight forward).

You need to get organized first... then everything else will fall into place.

/Jim

 

[Ray2]

Agree with buchanan897. Copy, not move, them all into one directory and aim a photo duplicates app at them. I use Photo Duplicate Cleaner (App Store) but there are many.

Then decide DAM. Something as simple as a folder hierarchy and Lyn, which can rate and keyword as well, will do the trick just fine. Personally I think data base apps like Aperture or Lightroom are a lot of overhead, a lot of learning and a lot of headaches unless you need advanced image editing tools.