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I need help with ±50K+ photos.

xJustxMegx

xJustxMegx

macrumors demi-goddess
Original poster
Oct 13, 2024
449
1,018
The Netherlands
Hi there,

I recently deleted my Google account and I made a backup of all my photos. I think it are around 50K photos, also a lot of memes. :p Is there a way to open them all, check if I want to keep it or delete it?

Thanks!
 
xJustxMegx said:
Hi there,

I recently deleted my Google account and I made a backup of all my photos. I think it are around 50K photos, also a lot of memes. :p Is there a way to open them all, check if I want to keep it or delete it?

Thanks!
Click to expand...
You mean manually? Preview would do that fine. If you believe there are lots of duplicates though, there is software that can sort them for you I believe.
 
there are various tools for finding duplicates, etc. - e.g. Geequie (req. brew on macOS), DigiKam, personally I recommend dupeguru which works absolutely great (or findimagedupes in the command line together with Geequie). On the commercial side, e.g. Excire Foto offers that (and more) and has a 14 day trial.
The tricky bit is to find similar resized images as well as RAW support - but there are a bunch of free or commercially available solutions - what OS do you use? What image formats do you want to compare? But in any case, for e.g. JPEG, PNG, Gif, … any tool will probably ease the pain dramatically compared to manually approaching this. 🙃
 
Hi both,

I'm running MacOS 15.3.1. I'm not sure if there are a lot of duplicates, but also pictures I don't want to lose. So what would be the best solution?
 
"I'm not sure if there are a lot of duplicates, but also pictures I don't want to lose. So what would be the best solution?"

Whether it's 500 or 50,000, you're gonna have to check 'em just like Johnny Cash built his Cadillac:
"One pic [piece] at a time" ...
 
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you could try a program like aftershoot, but the problem is that only you know what images would be deemed as keepers. an ai program can cull, but you’re still going to have to go the the rejects to make sure it didn’t make a mistake. it’s too subjective.

aftershoot.com

#1 AI Culling Software for Professional Photographers

Speed up your workflow with Aftershoot AI Culling. Aftershoot Selects reviews your photos in minutes, highlighting the best shots and grouping duplicates.
aftershoot.com aftershoot.com

i’ve never used this program but it is well respected.

personally i would load them into smaller folders and flag them in lightroom classic so i can go the reasonable batches at a time and then delete the unwanted ones at one time.

but if you are really worried about accidentally deleting a “good” photo, you’re going to have to look at every photo individually.
 
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You might want to try PicArrange. It groups images by content which might help determining which photos you want to keep/delete. You can also AI search photo content with words/phrases. So if you searched for "text" it would bring up all your memes that you could then sort through, etc.
 
You might be able to make a coarse cut with a selection by file format, e.g. PNG or GIF -> memes pile, anything else -> photos pile.

You can use Finder Smart Folders (Find followed by storing the Find criteria) to select all the PNGs or GIFs.
 
mtbdudex said:
I made this thread over a year ago.
Good luck, let us know your progress & solution
Testimonial for: Cisdem Duplicate Finder & "Similar" image cleaner
Click to expand...
1739696498230.png
 
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That’s why I made that testimonial post.
I tried other apps, that one by far was best.
Glad it met your needs.

FWIW - my father in his middle 80’s constantly would end up with duplicates/ triples etc on his devices.
As his son and “tech guy” I got stuck cleaning his pictures - and non picture files.
 
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xJustxMegx said:
Hi both,

... but also pictures I don't want to lose. So what would be the best solution?
Click to expand...
You will never find an app that knows which photos you think are important. Only you can do that.

The simplest thing you could do is import them all into the Apple "Photos" app. Then you look at each and give a start rating of 1 to 5 stars.

One tip, WRITE DOWN you rating criteria. I use something like this
zero- I've not yet looked
1 - very poor for technical reasons or just a worthless subject
2 - questionable quality or unimportant subject
3 - photo that might not be perfect but the subject is important to you
4 - a high-quality photo that is important to you
5 - publication quality, something you should be showing off

Then you can make albums that automatically populate themselves with rules like 5-star phots from summer 2011 trip to Spain.

There is not many other options, you are going to have to look at each photo and rate it and maybe add keyword tags.
 
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