LR Duplicates

[haddadlf]

Hi there,
I am new to the forum, did a search but could not find what I was looking for. So if this has been discussed before I do apologize.
Anyway, I have my pictures on a drobopro, and my catalog on my iMac. When I download pictures, LR no longer recognizes duplicates. I have been using LR since its inception and I have never had this problem. Needlesss to say I am ending up with a lot of duplicates. I have 2 problems:
First is the obvious one, how come LR is re-downloading files already in the catalog
Second: is there an easy way to fish out the dups? I have 1 TB of pictures, the other day alone I downloaded 54 GB just to find out that most of them where duplicates, that's the problem most of them not all of them , so even though I created a collection from the last download, I am having the hardest time fishing out the dups, specially the ones that have not been modified.
Thanks,
Labib

 

[Denis Pagé]

Welcome to Lightroom Forums!

When you import comes a dialog box. In the first section under "Organize" is a checkbox to be enabled that say "Don't re-import suspected duplicates". Check it.

As for those duplicates already in the catalog, the easiest method is probably to remove all of them from the catalog (not deleting from disk) and reimport with the "Don't re-import suspected duplicates" checked.

 

[haddadlf]

Thanks for your reply. I failed to mention in my original post, that I always have the "Don't re-import suspected duplicates", checked. My LR is re-importing images despite the option being checked. I think I know what the problem might be. I use both a laptop and a desktop. I usually download to my laptop and organize on my laptop, after I have enough pictures on the laptop, and running out of HDD space, I export the images from the laptop as a catalog, and reimport them into my master catalog on my desktop. Every now and then, I download images to my desktop using a card that might have pictures that have been through the laptop -> desktop route. These are the files that are re-imported. I do not rename my files, and I do not change the exif, so why would LR re-import, is beyond me.
As far as dupes I did toy with the idea of re-importing all my pics into a new catalog, but I am afraid I will end up losing all my collections..
Regardless, thank you for the input.
Labib

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Hi haddadlf, welcome to the forum!

LR definitely needs a way of flagging up duplicates which are already in the catalog, so I'd suggest putting in a http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform"]Official Feature Request/Bug Report Form[/URL]

It does sound like it should be picking up those duplicates, so it's worth keeping an eye on it. It's looking for matching import filename + exif capture date + file length (similar to file size).

But you mention importing into a new catalog - there is a workaround that could work for you here. For a start, you leave your current catalog exactly where it is. You create a 'temporary' catalog and import everything into it, set to import at the existing location so that it doesn't move anything. It should import everything and then give you a list of pictures that it couldn't import because they're duplicates - and when it does, you can save that list and then delete the temporary catalog. With that list, it's easy to find those duplicates in your main catalog, either manually or possibly using LR/Transporter if there's lots.