Wow… a wonderful tool, well worth it - great w/i-Photo

This is so far one of the best utilities for photo management with a Mac I’ve come across. I have used the ACDSee duplicate finder as part of its PC program and then Mac, very straightforward on the PC but not so facile working with Mac’s library systems and master, etc. I tried a Mac-specific Dupe finder with simple interface, producing an excel-like list of duplicates to check and delete, but it was limited and not so easy to be sure the right file (original vs. duplicate) was being deleted. Anyway, fast forward to the (d)evolution of iPhotos into Photos, and finding my 1TB Mac drive teetering towards slowing the system down from being so full, Tens of thousands of images, backed from many drives and machines, and I’ve given it another try, after reading reviews of several App Store and other highly-regarded dupe-finders for Mac, and with particular attention to its being used with iPhoto (where my huge collection will continue to live, with star ratings and albums of raw and video files I’ve worked on for years, That’s my context. Something which works with iPhoto library and external drives, and gives me some control. This guy really delivers! Now to my first experience with it:

Installation simple. As are the instructions. (A few important pointers about closing the library first before importing to its list for comparing images and finding dupes.) Dragged and dropped all my albums from Mac’s HD/iPhoto/Library (you can do the same with Photos and Lightroom and a few other apps). It took about 10 minutes (first time loading 200,000 images and some videos) and the display - using a 27” display, it’s beautiful! - immediately grouped a tile display (lie a slide sorter, not tiny threads). Once layed out before me I chose to “compare”, which is really the one-step process, but with a choice as to comparing exact matches versus broader almost-matches, which might include re-sized files (detected by histogram or bitmap, your choice) or different formats.
I went with the basic first, to try it. Having read about 2 minutes of instructions, it was very intuitive. I found the option to arrange by size, for my first attempt to de-gunk years of duplicate file accumulation. I eliminated 8 Gb of duplicate files - mostly .tif, .nef and video files but lots of .jpegs too. Mindful of the usual advice to be careful not to inadvertently delete precious images by accident, it’s nice to know it deletes into the app you use for image viewing (e.g., iPhoto or Photos), into its trash. So I opened up iPhoto after the deletions from Sweeper, and double checked a copy was still where it had been. Indeed. Perfect. Deleted 8 Gb safely, first try.

Beyond dupe finding - the display of found duplicates also shows some errors in files, and you have a choice to auto-trust it to delete the right copy or you can do it manually. I found several videos in iPhoto which were “there” in name, but with corrupt or missing data. So I replaced the bad with a new copy from backup, and found some long-forgotten great images while doing this, and found overlapping dates, all kinds of pure gold organizing and deletion tools. It’s just wonderful, and I’ve not even gotten into looking for duplicate databases or other things, and next up still is external drives, which it does easily.

So, I’m happy I read the reviews and product info (decided on this as opposed to Gemini, which also has fans,at the same price. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a new tool as much as this, for pleasantly organizing and tidying a vast photo library and archives. For less than the price of a movie, I’m a happy camper, giving thanks, on Thanksgiving too. Nice product, worked just amazingly and intuitively, with great results, the best dupe finder I’ve yet come across.

CyberpsychDoc about PhotoSweeper