Aperture: Remove Duplicate Images
2007-11-11
Ever had this happen?
This project is full of duplicates. There are only 30 images I need to remove in this example, so I can do it by hand, but what if I had a thousand?
There are two ways to remove duplicates: find something that is common to all images in one set and filter on that, or find something that is common to each pair of images and use that to create a thumbnail arrangement that makes for easy selection.
An example of using the first method is to see if the duplicates exist because they were imported a second time. If this is the case then they have a separate import session and I can filter them and remove them. It's easy to check. I click on the filter button top right, select Import Session and see just two. I select one of the two import sessions to filter down to just one set of images:
Then I select all the images will command A and delete them with command delete. When I show all the images in the project, just one set is left.
If the duplicate images were imported together this does not work, so I need a different method of distinguishing them. For example, if one set of duplicates is a different size then I can filter on the EXIF data and use a condition such as Image Height Is Less Than to split them:
To use the second method, that of pairing up the duplicates, the sort order must use an image property that is the same for each duplicate, such as image date, caption, file name, or possibly file size. It depends on where the images came from as to what is available and what will work. The list view can be useful for doing this because it can sort on a much wider variety of image data than the grid view.
Once sorted, and assuming that every image has the same number of duplicates (all have one duplicate in my example), I arrange the display to show the duplicates in rows:
To select the ones that I want to remove, I simply click and drag a selection rectangle from the top to the bottom on the left-hand column:
Once selected, I press command delete to remove them. Just marking them with a keyword or as rejects are other options open to me. It depends how certain I am that I want them removed permanently and right now.
Another way I can get rid of duplicates is to hide them in stacks. This works only if the images have their image dates intact. I select all the images and go to Stack > Autostack. By addjusting the slider on the autostack HUD, the images are paired:
I close all the stacks with option semicolon and the problem has been hidden. If I later want to delete the duplicates, I can open all the stacks and adjust the width of the grid view to show one stack per row. Then I drag a selection rectangle across the right-hand images to select the images and delete them.
Having the duplicates in a stack like this also lets me mark one set. Selecting all the closed stacks and adding a keyword will only apply the keyword to the pick. If I subsequently unstack the images, I can then use that keyword to filter and remove the duplicates.
This project is full of duplicates. There are only 30 images I need to remove in this example, so I can do it by hand, but what if I had a thousand?
There are two ways to remove duplicates: find something that is common to all images in one set and filter on that, or find something that is common to each pair of images and use that to create a thumbnail arrangement that makes for easy selection.
An example of using the first method is to see if the duplicates exist because they were imported a second time. If this is the case then they have a separate import session and I can filter them and remove them. It's easy to check. I click on the filter button top right, select Import Session and see just two. I select one of the two import sessions to filter down to just one set of images:
Then I select all the images will command A and delete them with command delete. When I show all the images in the project, just one set is left.
If the duplicate images were imported together this does not work, so I need a different method of distinguishing them. For example, if one set of duplicates is a different size then I can filter on the EXIF data and use a condition such as Image Height Is Less Than to split them:
To use the second method, that of pairing up the duplicates, the sort order must use an image property that is the same for each duplicate, such as image date, caption, file name, or possibly file size. It depends on where the images came from as to what is available and what will work. The list view can be useful for doing this because it can sort on a much wider variety of image data than the grid view.
Once sorted, and assuming that every image has the same number of duplicates (all have one duplicate in my example), I arrange the display to show the duplicates in rows:
To select the ones that I want to remove, I simply click and drag a selection rectangle from the top to the bottom on the left-hand column:
Once selected, I press command delete to remove them. Just marking them with a keyword or as rejects are other options open to me. It depends how certain I am that I want them removed permanently and right now.
Another way I can get rid of duplicates is to hide them in stacks. This works only if the images have their image dates intact. I select all the images and go to Stack > Autostack. By addjusting the slider on the autostack HUD, the images are paired:
I close all the stacks with option semicolon and the problem has been hidden. If I later want to delete the duplicates, I can open all the stacks and adjust the width of the grid view to show one stack per row. Then I drag a selection rectangle across the right-hand images to select the images and delete them.
Having the duplicates in a stack like this also lets me mark one set. Selecting all the closed stacks and adding a keyword will only apply the keyword to the pick. If I subsequently unstack the images, I can then use that keyword to filter and remove the duplicates.
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