Duplicates in albums and Peoples

flutemaker

I need some clarification/understanding. Under people robin I have exact duplicates as well as others and in albums robin I have a number of single photos (similar) and no duplicates as in peoples. Question how do get rid of the exact duplicates in peoples or do I just delete them? The second question is if the remaining singles in albums robin has many singles (similar) photos and I add another file with photos that may have duplicates will that become messy looking through similar and duplicates?

Andrey

flutemaker I am sorry, I am not sure I understand your question. What word “robin” means in this context? Can you please provide screenshots to better exlain the issue?

flutemaker

Information as requested. I am attaching a photo from People/Robin and in that folder are numerous head shots of the same person / files that are exact except for the description. my question is how do I limit these to one photo or should I? If I keep them the the duplicates gets messy . Is not the idea is to find the duplicate, put them in this folder, get rid of them and reduce this folder to zero ideally. What do I do with the photos that are similar, just eliminate them? Another question is when I add another picture file won’t this make the duplicates messy if they are added to the existing file? What I am doing right now it that I have created a new folder called New photo Staging and I have dumped the next new photo file into it and will run remove duplicates on it to see what i get. Let me if you need futher clarification or information.

Andrey

flutemaker No, the idea of personal albums is not to deal with duplicates. This is just that - a personal album of the person. Here you can find all the photos with that person. And what do you do with them - this is up to you.

People have different strategies dealing with duplicates and similar photos, and we as software developers are not in position to tell you which one you should chose. All we can do is to provide you with tools so you can achieve what you want. Tonfotos has tools for dealing with exact duplicates, but as to files that are slightly different, be it difference in metadata or those are just two shots from the one series - this is totally up to user to decide what to do.

But I can share with you my own experience as a user of the applicaiton. I only delete exact duplicates, but I just don’t have enough time or energy to hunt down every similar photo in archive, and there is not so many of them anyway. So I just leave them be. That is my strategy. I think other users use different strategies.

flutemaker

Thanks Andrey for your reply. Okay I get it, thanks again. How do you go about adding a new file of pictures your existing photo files For example if your main photo library is “My photos” would you enter the new file of photos into “My photos” or would you enter them into a “New photo staging area” in which case Tonfotos will check them for duplicates in either case. I assume that you can then move the non duplicate photos over to “My photos” Is there any advantage in doing the new library location first? Second question, How would you go about making a clean file of only pictures you want? I assume it would be to use “Export” Is there anything I should be aware of when using this function? I also assume that the newly created photo file will re-index like any other photo file?
Thanks again for your replies!

Andrey

flutemaker That depends where I get photos from. Usually they are coming from the phone, and in that case those are just new photos, I just import them. If someone sends me their collection, which is quite rare - that would heavily depend on what thier collection is and how likely there are duplicates. If those are photos from the one event or scattered over long period. That all would be taken into account when putting those in my library, since I want not only to keep duplicates away, I also want my structure clear and orginized. But in the end I want this to be part of my main archive.

When using Export funciton keep in mind that files are re-encoded which is probably not what you want. If you need just to take copies, you can just use Conrol+C and then paste them in File Explorer to the destination.

flutemaker

Thanks Audrey for your replies to all my questions. Questions on the ‘clean’ copy. The original photos folder has lots of junk, duplicates, sub folders , ete,etc. in it That is the reason I am looking at this process on how to make a clean reduced file that is still indexed and working with Tonfotos. What is the process for doing that? After the clean up what is next step? You say “When using Export funciton keep in mind that files are re-encoded which is probably not what you want.” can you explain this a little further or is this the result of the ’clean export"? would that mean I would have to basically start over with this new file (export)??

Andrey

flutemaker I am sorry, I am not sure I understand your question. What does “clean reduced file” mean, especially if you are referring to folder with subfolders? What do you mean by “clean export”? Can you please provide more background to your situation and what are you trying to achieve?

flutemaker

Thanks for your reply, appreciate your time questioning and responding to my inquiries.

From what I know now I would have done things differently when I started. My thought on a clean file would be to have a clean file meaning when I run Files/Remove duplicates I would not have all the sub-folders and the 6500 similar/duplicates ( which there are a number). If I am to spend the time manually cleaning this up. I want to consolidate all my pictures into one clean file and if I can make this one file will I have to re-index them like a new file? I know about control C and making exact copies but these are not indexed. There are many similar photos do I just leave them in Albums that would make adding more duplicates difficult to find.

Why not have a"backup file button?"

Some clarification, when you run “Remove duplicate” I assume that is on the contents of “People” and the results are displayed in “Albums”, this would be any duplicates or similar photos. The folder content of both “Albums” and “People” are essentially the same except for “Recents, Favorites and Duplicates”. I would have thought the contents of “Albums” would disappear eventually. and I am struggling with the purpose between “Albums” & “Peoples”. I gather “Peoples” is the true collection.

Okay another question. If I put my additional photos yet to be input and I put them into a new “Library Folder” and run the “remove duplicates” on that file then cleaning out the duplicates would that not be better then dumping them into the mess I have now? If did that would it be better to leave that as a new library location or could I then move the photos over to my main folder and would Tonfotos pick up on the indexing?

flutemaker

Just though of another question, I have a single photo in a an Album folder and also in a Peoples folder of the same names as the Album folder, there is only one photo on file. What do I do with the photo in Albums, f2 and Add to… do nothing. Do I delete or does that delete it all?

Andrey

flutemaker I am very sorry, I don’t think we can have fruitfull conversation like that, I am already confused, and I am sure you will be too if I will try anser as one plan message. I would love to help, but I would prefer to have conversation more structured. Can you please:

1) Post each separate question as separate thread
2) Provide all necessary details supporting question

I am looking forward discuss each one in detial.

Stig

https://www.youtube.com/@tonfotos/videos

I did a lot of try and fail before I run into these videos… they have some good pointers on how to use it.