Optimising a catalog for organisation only

[ronandownes]

I am dealing with 2''.''' files many of them duplicates. I wish to organise so that duplicates are elliminated .

In order to desreae the load on the catalog and the PC I would prefer if metadata and previews were not processed or generated. I have noticed that once requested tasks are comleted LR automatically begin to work on this content.

Back tomy approach to sorting out the files. They are now spread over 3 75' gig harddrives. Only 2 of the drives are added to the catalog. I added the third but the catalog then failed to open and I had to revert to a backup.

Assuming I solve this I can select say 2''5 across all three drives rename to a sequence so all names are unique and than move to folder called 2''5. Then rename YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS and then delete anything with a - in it. That is -2,-3 etc.

Any advice very welcome.

Tried looking into using iview but no solution presented itself.

R

 

[ronandownes]

Accumulating Metadata is one of the tasks I was hoping to cancel.

 

[Sean McCormack]

Possibly a better solution:

Select all, Save metadata and then remove from Library. Then reimport with 'Ignore suspected Duplicates'

You lose collections and Virtual Copies.
Do the reimport in steps, not all at once.

Your renaming strategy would only work if there is absolutely no difference in file order. If you've deleted even one file, the stepping would be out of order.

 

[jimburgess]

I am dealing with 2''.''' files many of them duplicates. I wish to organise so that duplicates are elliminated .

In order to desreae the load on the catalog and the PC I would prefer if metadata and previews were not processed or generated. I have noticed that once requested tasks are comleted LR automatically begin to work on this content.
R

Once the import of images is complete and the preview-generating process has begun, you can cancel the process (hover your mouse over the X at then end of the progress bars at the top of LR's window). Short of cancelling the process, I don't think there is a way to eliminate previews, at least within the Import Photos dialog.

Not sure what you mean by "Accumulating Metadata". In the Import Photos dialog you can set Metadata to None and specify no keywords. You didn't specify your file formats--do XMP files exist?

 

[ronandownes]

Thanks Guys

a few more questions.

IN the case of Jpegs ( captured in 2''4 when I had entered the digital arena is there any way to as lightroom to find what is most likely an original based on size and date and not import the others. I imagine thiws will be thorny and intend to seperate out jpegs from NNG and CAmera Raw files before import.



ALso there are cases where a file exists a DNG and NEF

Is it random what lightroom will bring in or or they not seen as duplicates. If not how would you get around this form of duplication.

As I have a lot of workflow to cary out on the files where I have a choice I would prefer to keep a RAf or NEF.

Another crucial question. I understaND AND am a fan of the Bucket DAM system but now that HD are so cheap are most skipping discs and bucket folders also and if so are you pilling 1''s GB of image data into one folder?

Ronan

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Ignore suspected duplicates looks for files with matching names + EXIF capture dates + lengths (basically file size) - anything else will be imported as normal.

So different file sizes or DNG/NEF duplicates won't be identified as duplicates, those will just be imported.

I'm not entirely sure LR is the best way to be going about this Ronan. I'm not entirely sure what to suggest, but I'd have thought there would be a program out there somewhere which is built specifically to compares thousands of files and flag up duplicates based on specific criteria. Just a thought!

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Hmmm, ok, search google for "windows duplicate search image" and you'll come up with a nice collection of programs which may get you 99% of the way there.