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iPhoto diet

Omran Al-Owais | Jul 11, 2009 | Comments View Comments

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My iPhoto mess before cleaning it up

I had about 38000 photos + 5000 more somewhere in my external hard drive. That’s an average of eight photos a day since 1999. iPhoto ‘09 is a fantastic software that has handled all my sharp, colorful pixels. Over the years, I enjoyed many desktops and laptops, PC/MAC, which made it hard to keep all of the photos in one place.

Over the weekend, I managed to back up/clean up 3TB, which took over 20hrs using SuperDuper. Meanwhile, I was checking my iPhoto library, and noticed that I got hundreds if not thousand of duplicates. I wish I could carry all my photos in my MacBook Air. So today, I am starting on my iPhoto Diet.

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Duplicate Annihilator

After a few minutes online I found couple of solution: Duplicate Annihilator. It is a neat application; for only AED35 it will help you to spot all the duplicates by adding a tag on the duplicate. Once you search in iPhoto for the duplicates, select All > Cmd+Del. Done!

Then, to merge all my libraries from my first PowerBook, PowerMac G5, iMac, MacMini, MacBook Pro 17-inch, MacBook Air, and to my last MacBook Pro 15-inch, (taking a breath) I needed a smart software from FatCat called iPhoto Library Manager (AED75). You can use it for free but with limited options. I would recommend you to get the full version if you are over couple of libraries or above 20000 photos. It will help you to preserve albums and special tagging to your photos, faces & places.

How many photos do you have? How do you manage them? Let me know in the comments below ;)

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About the Author:

  • I also suffered similar problems as you with loads of duplicate photographs within iPhoto and eventually my photo library was a real mess. I tried the same programs that you used but not with great success. Being a very keen and dedicated amateur photographer I decided to move up market and purchased Aperture 2. I now keep all my photographs in a separate folder organised in a way that meets my needs. I import these into Aperture 2 as reference files and personally I feel that I am in total control of a photo library. There are a few downsides in using Aperture especially with the slideshow procedures and making calendars etc. I particulary like the Ken Burns effect within iPhoto and hopefully thus will find its way to Aperture in future releases.
    Regards
    Phil Roberts
  • Appleholic
    i Have 59,000 Photos now on my iPhote... ;) its a plain, but i always have a backup of the iPhoto Lybrary on an external HD.. and the Original on another External HD that i cary with me everywhere and never have an iPhoto library on my Laptop of Desktop... cause its just waaay too big of a folder...

    but i baisicly back up once a month, or after major reorganizing... i have been very organized from the start.. so i never had to deal with duplicates.. thank god... cause i remember the first time i moved everythign to my Iphoto.. that when i started searching for duplicates... and it was a pain in my behond...

    then came taging and labeling and now its geotaging... but its fun... cause after u get basicaly all the most frequantly visited places, its very easy to quickly tag the pics...

    but i have tried a software called.. Sponge... its very good for finding duplicates of every thing and it doesnt even have to be labeled the same... for example... if u have a movie or pictures labeled MJ in Las Vegas.. and then another exact duplicate of that fine but labeled "last trip" it will still figure out its a duplicate ;) Magic :P
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