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guido.coza

Active Member
Joined
Feb 24, 2013
Messages
156
Location
Cape Town, South Africa
Lightroom Experience
Beginner
Lightroom Version
6.x
Lightroom Version Number
8.1.4.
Operating System
  1. macOS 10.14 Mojave
I have two external hard drives. they have partially different pictures, but also many common ones. How can I load both hard drives into LR, without having a duplicate picture count. is making to catalogs, one fo each hard drive, and than merging the two an option, or is there a better way?
 
Hello everybody, PLEASE help. The above situation needs to be resolved. Two hard drives, many pictures in common , HOWEVER about 10% different and new.
The hd has 69k images, when I "ADD" those images to catalog, "DO NOT IMPORT SUSPECTED DUPLICATES" IS TICKED. The counter at the bottom left reduces the amount of images to around 55k. BUT only about 5000 images are not in the catalog already!
I need to somehow add the second HD to LR, but I don't want to have 50k picture duplicates and maybe even 50000 "without keyword".
What is the best way to add ONLY the pics not already in the Lightroom catalog?
I am running LR Lightroom classic 8.4.1 on a MBP with Mojave 10.14
PLEASE help or just direct me to a site where I can find a solution
Thanks everybody
 

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A lot depends on what you mean by "duplicates". When you import and the option to "Don't Import Suspected Duplicates" is checked, LrC will check the filename, filesize and capture date of the potential imports and compare them to images already in the catalog. In which case, a "duplicate" has to be an identical copy of a cataloged file, and it it is not an identical copy then LrC will try to import it. So for example, a jpeg might have been created by exporting a raw file, and although the image is the same the file characteristics are not....therefore it's not a duplicate as far as LrC is concerned. There can be many examples of files containing the same visual image which would not be regarded as "duplicates", which may well explain the problem with those 50k images.

You appear to be sure that there are only 5k out of those 69k files which are not duplicates, so the obvious question is how do you know that? Following on from that, are you able to find and isolate those 5k images outside LrC, so that you can specifically target only those 5k files for import?
 
hello Jim. thank you for your reply. No the images are indeed identical. a pic that is in the catalog as a jpeg and is on the second drive as a RAW file would be fine to be imported. To add them manually, I would miss out a great deal and I fear I would sit for weeks trying to, it was the main reason why I hoped LR could do the job. on a "trial" run LR is importing guaranteed duplicates, it even asigns the keyword from the original!?
 
If the "duplicated" images are indeed identical to the originals, that would suggest a significant bug with the "duplicates" detection process, so the correct thing to do would be to report the problem directly to Adobe (using the "Bug Report/Feature Request" link at the top of the page). However, Adobe will want to see the evidence which shows that they are indeed identical, so I would suggest a series of screenshots:

1. The import dialog (the full-size version, not the minimal version in your screenshot) which will need to include the right-hand panel with the "Do Not Import Suspected Duplicates" option checked. Also indicate a couple of images which you believe ARE duplicates, which LrC has selected for import.
2. A screenshot from the Library which shows the originals of the "duplicates" in the catalog, and with the containing folder and hard drive showing.
3. A Finder screenshot which shows the "Get Info" of same the original images in the catalog, then another Finder screenshot which shows the same "Get Info" report of the duplicates on the different drive.

In terms of how to effectively isolate the 5k images that you believe are the only non-duplicates, I'm sorry but I don't have any clever suggestion but hopefully someone else here will have.
 
In terms of how to effectively isolate the 5k images that you believe are the only non-duplicates, I'm sorry but I don't have any clever suggestion but hopefully someone else here will have.

Besides duplicate detection plug-ins, that are probably the easiest option, the other option that comes to mind is using John's Syncomatic plug-in to sync a color label or keyword or something from the raw photos to their JPEG equivalents, and then filtering for that maybe.
 
Hello Victoria, you could also tell me something about a Spanish village, and that in latin or Aramaic, I would understand maybe more there what you said, however thank you the duplicate detection plug-in sounds good to me.
The strangest thing is, it even recognises faces, and has keywords assignments of the original photos ??
@ Jim, thank you so much for all your help. will send the details to adobe
 
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