Clean Up Photos

When I saw that my library was clogged with duplicates I tried using several applications to clean it up. The most complete application I found was Tidy Up. It provides lots of different types of search options for different tasks, such as cleaning the Photos, Aperture, iTunes and Mail libraries.

So now I will go through a search in Photos and show you a few of the many amazing features that Tidy Up has.

The first thing that I do is select the Photos library as the location in which to scan. As you can see you can select single events or albums to search in.

I use this great feature especially when I get pictures from other people: sometimes they mix up their pictures and when I import them I get copies of the same photos; I just run Tidy Up through the last event and in a few seconds it’s cleaned. You can also select other locations other than the library; you may find this helpful if you want to delete photos in your computer that have already been imported into Photos.

So now I’m ready to select the type of search; usually it’s recommended to use the “Content only” search; Tidy Up will check the content of the pictures and select all the ones that are exactly the same, no matter what their names or other attributes are. The difference between the Duplicate and Similar sections is that in the former Tidy Up will compare the items also by their content. In the Similar section, you may find useful the EXIF tag search especially when you have lots of modified pictures, whose content is different but with the same tags — or the “Date taken” search, which will report all the shots in sequence that were taken in the same second.

You should always check the “Report missing photo” option, which will find all of the images whose original file is missing from the library.

If none of these searches satisfies your needs, you can build your own in the Advanced mode, where you will find lots of other criteria both for pictures and other files.

Once the search is performed, a new window will appear where you’ll be able to manage the duplicate files. Now comes the best part of the application; Tidy Up automatically gathers the duplicates in a smart basket depending upon your needs.

If you don’t care where the photos reside, you can directly trash the contents of the smart basket “All but one item of each duplicate group”. If, on the other hand, you want to use specific filters, you can create your own smart basket from the highlighted button.

For example you can decide to select all the pictures in a specific album or event, or to trash all the newest pictures; just remember to always select an option from the “For Each Duplicate Group” section: this way you’ll be sure that at least one item for each duplicate group will be kept.

If the files that you need to manage are few, you can create a manual basket and drag the items into it.

Now that you have created your basket you have several options to manage the items in it; you can trash the contents of the basket, move or copy the pictures to another folder or hard drive, export the file list or even burn a CD to backup the items and be certain that you don’t lose any important files!

Another useful search is to find all the photos in your computer that have not been imported into the Photos library yet; just select that search from the Miscellaneous collection and in the new window you’ll have all the pictures that are not contained in the Photos library.

Check out Tidy Up

Everybody who owns a Mac, most certainly uses Photos, importing the pictures from their iPhone or digital camera. One of the main factors that can cause Photos to run slowly is the fact that you simply have too many photos. Having a library of 10,000 pictures is not rare for an amateur photographer, and professionals can have more than 100,000. This can become an issue because the more pictures you have, the slower Photos will run. However, there isn't much you can do to solve this problem.

One thing that most people don't know, is that their library is most likely filled with duplicates. When you manage your photos, for example editing, moving them from one event to another, adding a keyword, it's Photos itself that creates duplicates of the modified pictures. Sometimes it happens that one imports pictures from a digital camera and forgets to delete them; the next time the same pictures will be added again, and it's not easy to recognize them, especially when you deal with a great number of photos. For others who frequently update their systems, you are probably restoring backups often, and that's another way to create duplicates.

Photos isn't provided with a duplicate remover system, and, to avoid having to deal with thousands of pictures one by one, I recommend using a software that will do all the work for you. I had been trying some of them, until I found Tidy Up; in a little time I managed to clean my 15-thousand-photo library and I had way more duplicates than I expected! It is really fast because you don't have to go through all the found pictures to decide which ones to keep and which ones to trash; it is provided with a "basket" system, which allows you to quickly individuate the photos to eliminate. Tidy Up is also able to find those photos scattered through your computer, so that you can easily add them to the Photos library, without creating more duplicates. In addition, you can decide to limit your search to a few albums and events or just exclude some of them.

So, if you have problems with Photos running slow or you have a library with thousands of pictures, try the free trial now and see for yourself!

Download Tidy Up now

Since pictures in Photos can be modified once imported, it is really common to have lots of duplicates in the library. Every time a photo is modified, Photos creates a duplicate to keep the original untouched; this way you'll have the original and the modified photo and usually you want to keep just the modified one. It also happens that you import the same pictures multiple times, especially when you are used to import them form different locations every time.

After some time your Photos library gets filled of duplicates, causing it to slow down and wasting space on your hard disk. To solve this problem, due to the fact that Photos isn't provided with a duplicate remover, you need to use a software that helps you find and delete the duplicates. The one I've used for years is Tidy Up. It is now at its third version and in the years it has improved a lot. I've recommended it to some friends of mine who had the same problem; now they're all really satisfied with it and they're also using it to remove duplicate songs in iTunes.

Deleting duplicates with Tidy Up is easy and extremely fast. It is provided with more than 50 types searches, divided in 10 collections. If you like to customize your search, you can switch to the advanced mode and select as many criteria as you want. One thing I love about this software, which the majority of the other duplicate finder software don't have, is that Tidy Up allows you to choose the items to delete, through a helpful automatic system.

Check out Tidy Up for free

Sometimes, navigating through the finder, you find photos that haven't been added to your library. It would be a pain in the neck to have to search for them and check if they're already in the library.

Save yourself time and use Tidy Up. It has a search made on purpose to find photos scattered in your computer that haven't been added to the Photos library yet. With just a few clicks you can move the photos to a new folder and later import them into Photos.

See the tutorial Find out more about Tidy Up!