#DUPLICATE SWEEPER FOR MAC FREE#

That way, youВ have the option of going back and grabbing lost images if needed, but arenвЂ™t cluttering up your main hard drive with an old photo collection thatвЂ™s almost entirely duplicates. My advice: move your old library in its entirety over to a high-quality external hard drive and keep it there until you are absolutely certain that Photos or Lightroom imported everything correctly.

If youвЂ™ve already decided to switch from iPhoto or Aperture to OS X Photos or AdobeвЂ™s Lightroom 6, you could trashВ your old iPhoto/Aperture photo library and use Photos or LightroomвЂ™s new library for everything going forward. The sameВ warningВ appliesВ if youвЂ™re thinking of deleting an entire previous photo library.

The looser your rules are, and the less you manually manageВ the list of duplicates before hitting the вЂњDelete AllвЂќ button, the greater the chance youвЂ™ll accidentally delete something worthwhile.В ItвЂ™s tempting to dump as much as possible when youвЂ™re presented with the opportunity to reclaim gigabytes of lost space by just hitting a button, but be sure youвЂ™ve given everything a look-over, first. Each appВ makes certain assumptions (with your guidance) as to what should be called a вЂњduplicate.вЂќ You can make those assumptions strict, or loosen them to catch images that are extremely similar. ThatвЂ™s why lost photo recovery tools are almost as popular as duplicate removers.Д®xercising caution when using duplicate photo tools can be challenging. Exercise Extreme CautionД«efore going any further in this How-To, read this carefully:Д«e very carefulВ (yes, thatвЂ™s bold, underline, and italics all at the same time) before deleting any of your вЂњduplicateвЂќ photos, particularly in bulk.В One of these libraries may be the only record you have of precious memories, and making the choice to just dump a giant collection of images can be calamitous. The duplicate eliminating tools below turn what could be days of agonizing hunting-and-pecking into a mostly automated hour or two of deleting unneeded images. If your libraries are this big, you have a lot of potential to recover hard driveВ space.Д«ut even if your photo library is smaller, thereвЂ™s a very good chance that there are duplicate images inside, swelling what could be a manageable collection into something needlessly bigger.

#DUPLICATE SWEEPER FOR MAC FREE#

GrandPerspective, the free disk space mapper I recommended last week, quickly shows just how out of control the photo libraries have become: my OS X Photos and Aperture libraries are the two huge blocks on the left, consuming 1/3 of all used space on the drive. I personally like to see diskВ information presented visually rather than mathematically. If you do the math relative to your hard driveвЂ™s size, youвЂ™ll understandВ how much photo libraries areВ weighing down your computer: theyВ were consuming aroundВ 1/4 of my iMacвЂ™s 1TB ofВ drive space. A window will pop up with a number, which in my MacвЂ™s case was over 236GB between a number of different photo libraries -В AppleвЂ™s Photo Booth, Aperture, iPhoto, and Photos, just to name a few. The simplest technique is to open a Finder window and right-click the Pictures folder under Favorites, choosing Get Info. If youвЂ™re not sure just how much space your photo collectionВ is consuming on your Mac, there are two ways to figure it out. IвЂ™ve usedВ both apps, as well as many others, and can help you choose the one thatвЂ™s best for your needsвЂ¦ ThatвЂ™s an incredible amount of wasted space attributable to duplicates, so itвЂ™s no surprise that a $1 utilityВ called Duplicate Photos Fixer ProВ has recently becomeВ the #1 paidВ Mac App Store app, whileВ a superior alternative called PhotoSweeperВ ($10) is in the top 50. After installingВ OS X 10.10.3, the new Photos app converted my 90GB Aperture library into a 126GB Photos library, and left both on my hard drive.

Particularly after installing OS X 10.10.3 with AppleвЂ™s new Photos app, you might be surprised to learn thatВ youвЂ™ve lost a lot of hard drive space, and that there are suddenly tonsВ of duplicate photos on your Mac. TodayвЂ™s How-To is focused on something very specific but with a lot of optimization potential: trimming down your MacвЂ™s photo library. IвЂ™ve focused a lot over the last few months on helping readers to speed up and optimizeВ AppleвЂ™s Macs - everything from adding RAM to recovering hard drive space and upgrading old hard drives to faster SSDs.

Duplicate sweeper for mac