Clean Up Organizer - how to start

[slophotos]

To any and all Organizer experts -

I've asked a variety of questions regarding Organizer which people have kindly answered. However, I'm hoping if I ask for step-by-step directions on how to solve my problem it might do the trick for me.

I have a mess of pictures with multiple duplicates, etc. I have spent days making tags and organizing and continuously run into problems. I want to safely eliminate the duplicates and get all my photos into one spot for the Organizer. I have photos in my c drive and two EHD's. I discovered that the Organizer relies on getting pics from any one of the 3 hard drives. My goal is to safely remove the duplicates (about a year ago I accidently deleted originals), get the untagged pics tagged and then save it all and then begin doing regular incremental backups.

My plan was to make 2 catalogs: one for my pics and the other for all my scrapbook supplies. I currently have one catalog with everything in it.

I would be delighted to get some advice on how to go about reaching my goal. Although I have been at this for a while I am basically a beginner so explicit instructions work best for me.

Thanks so much -

Stacy

[slophotos]

Is there someone who can help me with this?

Thank you,

Stacy

[dj_paige]

To find duplicates, it helps if they have the same (or similar) file names. Then, in Photoshop Elements, select Find/by File name, type in the file name, and see what the search results are. Then you can eliminate true duplicates.

If the duplicates don't have similar file names, you might be able to find some duplicates by Find/by Details (Metadata), but that is likely to be more difficult.

You say "I want to safely eliminate the duplicates and get all my photos into one spot for the Organizer." There simply is no need for you to get all of your photos into one spot for the Organizer. The Organizer knows where the files are, and it doesn't care if some are on the C-drive, some are on the D-drive and some are on the G-drive. However, if you want to do the extra work to make sure all of the files are in one location, I would use the Organizer's File/Move command. If you move them using Windows tools, and the files are already known to Organizer, you have just confused the Organizer and created more work for yourself. But as I said, I wouldn't worry about putting all of the files in one location. It is not necessary. Even later, when you do incremental backups, it still doesn't matter to Organizer that some files are on the C-drive, some are on the X-drive and some are on the Y-drive. Organizer will create an incremental backup from whereever the files are located.

Finally, you can find untagged photos via Find/Untagged Photos.

[dj_paige]

Another idea to find duplicates is to sort all of the files into date order (which I believe is the default for Organizer). Assuming that when the duplicates were created the EXIF (Metadata) was stored in the duplicates, then duplicate photos will show up in the organizer adjacent to one another when sorted in date order.

(There are ways to make duplicate photos that don't preserve the EXIF information, and if the EXIF is not preserved, then this method won't work. The only way to find out is to try. Also, some scanners don't create EXIF data, so if these are scanned photos from one of those scanners, it won't work either)

[slophotos]

I just happened to check and I had a reply - thank you!

Some of things you have suggested have been suggested to me before and I have tried them. For example, I have searched by file names for duplicates and once I found duplicates, but then somehow I deleted my originals. I went to trash and retrieved them. I seem to have named many of the same photos with a variety of names which has also made it challenging for me to find them. The problem with having photos on all three drives is that if I am trying to find a photo and the particular drive is not on, then the photo is "disconnected".

I have tried many different things and I make a little headway and then I get stuck with something else.

I was hoping if someone could tell me a step-by-step process I could follow it and perhaps succeed so I can start using my time to be creative rather than struggling with photo organization. As a result I am repeatedly saving about 15-17,000 pics when in reality I only have maybe 5-6,000 actual photos. My IHD is running out of space!

I've backed up to a EHD twice and only the pics were saved, not the tags or folders. I was told this is a problem with the Organizer.

I really, really want to get this together so I can move on.

I sure appreciate help!!!

Stacy

[dj_paige]

Stacy, I can't give you a step by step procedure because I am not fully aware of exactly how the files exist on your computer. And even if I was sitting at your computer, I doubt that there is a single method to use ... I think it would be somewhat trial and error. There is no built-in method to eliminate duplicates.

I was not referring to the tags being saved to files, as I understand that the Organizer doesn't save tags in the files. However, if you use Organizer to save a backup of your catalog, the tags are saved ... in the catalog file. (Although, it is a good idea, once your tags are set up the way you want them to be, to select every photo and then select File/Write Tags and Properties Info to File)

I was referring to the camera information that is automatically placed in your .jpg files ... this is the EXIF information. It should be there, even when you make copies. You can see this if you right-click on a photo in the Organizer, select properties and then click on the Metadata icon (that's the icon that is a circle enclosing a lower-case letter i). And so, if you have two different photos that are duplicates, they should have the same EXIF data. Thus in Organizer, you can search for all photos taken on the same date. Go to Find/by Details (Metadata), select Capture Date and enter a date. That should bring up a window containing only those photos taken on the date you specified. From there, you can eliminate duplicates by right-clicking on the duplicate photo only (not the one you consider to be the original), and select "Delete from Catalog".

One question you might answer that would be helpful ... how did you make the duplicates. Please give as many details as possible. How did you delete those files when you were trying to delete them. Please give as many details as possible. How did the same photos wind up with different file names?

Advice: Use Organizer whenever you try to move, copy, delete files, as the Organizer has built in safeguards against actually deleting your originals. Do not use Windows tools.

Advice: Recover your catalog regularly. Go to File/Catalog and click on recover. I do this about once a week, more often if I am doing a lot of edition or deleting of files.

Other than that, I don't have much advice for you right now. Perhaps if you give an example of a duplicate you found via other methods, include the files names, look in the Metadata and provide us with the date the photo was taken and anything else you can tell us that might be similar about the files, we might be able to suggest better ways to find duplicates.

[Karin Sue]

You can find duplicates of a single photo by selecting it and using Find by color similarity.

If you accidentaly reimported a group of photos and for some reason Organizer didn't flag them as duplicates and actually did import them, you can view by import group and delete from catalog. You might want to first use file>move to put tham in a "duplicates" folder and double check before you delete them from the harddrive.

While Organizer doesn't require you to have all your photos in one spot, I think it is beneficial to set up some sort of organization scheme. It doesn't have to make sense to anyone but you. It doesn't have to be complicated or comprehensive because you will have tags and collections and searches within Organizer for all the complicated bits.

First, what is the purpose of the 2 ehds? Are they both plugged in all the time? You might want to designate one for backup files and one for photo files and not keep any photo files on the c drive. That way if one of the drives goes you will have either all your photos or the backupfiles.

If you are using PSE 5 or 6 and do not have your ehd atttached all the time I think you can have Organizer treat it as removable media so if you set the proxy size to the same size as your screen resolution you won't be bothered with disconnected photo messages.

Give a little thought to how you want your photos stored--think of a scheme that is easy to load to. I have mine on an ehd. I have a photos folder, a scanned photos folder, and a photo projects folder.

In the photo projects folder I have all my collages, calendars, cards, artistic attempts, etc.

In the photo folder I have broad category folders such as family photos, work, volunteer group, etc. In each broad category folder I have year and month folders. In month folders are images taken that month or an event folder if there wa a party or trip or something happening then. Event folders may have photographer folders if I copied cards from other people at an event.

I know where each batch of photos goes and the chronological scheme helps if the camera date wasn't set or becomes corrupt. Any further organization is done within organizer. I usually have event and photographer tags that match the folders to use in searches.

I don't usually rename my photos. I usually let the camera name stand with the -edited or copy that Organizer adds. If I start a project from scratch I will give it a meaningful name of course. If I am making copies for someone I will use file>export with renaming and have the base name something intelligible.

You said your backup is not saving tags--you are not doing an official backup. If you use the backup function from within the program you will get folders of files that have names that don't make sense to you. You will need to use the recover command to get those files back and useful and return your catalog to the state it was when the backup was made.

You may have been making copies of your files and then reimporting them. This could explain some of your duplicate problems. If you plan to do your backups this way you need to also copy the catalog .psa file and then restore everything by hand in windows by copying over any duplicates as you use windows to copy everything back into the EXACT same place it was originaly. The path name needs to stay the same. Do not reimport.

My step by step suggestion:
1) Determine where you want your photos to reside and how you want them organized.
2) From within Organizer use file>move to put them where you want them. Chronological is an easy scheme to start with. You can view by date or find by date range and move blocks of images at once.
3) Either while you are moving your photos into your desired photo spot, or after, find and eliminate duplicates.
4)Do a "save as" on your catalog to make a copy of it and call it scrapbook catalog or whatever and them delete(from catalog not harddrive!) all of the photos so only your srapbook elements remain. It is easy to split a catalog.

[slophotos]

Hi Karin Sue -

Wow - thanks for taking the time to write such a response.

I'll have to wait until the weekend to follow your directions. I do have a saving system or scheme that I've been following and tagging photos as such. For example, I have People/Family/and subfolders for each "family" or family member. I have many different folders with subfolders that I follow. I make every effort to make any changes through Organizer and if for some reason I don't, then I immediately go into Organizer and "reconnect" my photos.

Maybe I'm making this more complicated than it needs to be. I just know that I have many of the same photos with various names and I can't figure out which are the original and which have been saved and titled something else for one reason of another. For example, when I retrieved photos from the trash I think they were given a new naming order. At one time I thought it best to rename a batch of pics as .psd's. I'm going to try your idea of finding the duplicates by "import batch" and let you know how it goes.

I have two EHD's because I got one and it wasn't large enough so I purchased a second one. In the course of it all, I have saved photos on both hard drives. Also, my brother and I thought it'd be a good idea for each of us to have an EHD of the other's pictures and we would update them once a month or so. I don't like keeping my EHD's on because I learned it's not good for them and may have contributed to my previous one crashing. The problem is that if I want to get a picture the organizer expects to "retrieve" if from the HD. Make sense?

I like your suggestion to designate one for backup files and one for photo files. My goal is to remove them from my c drive and have them backed up twice.

Again, thanks for your help. I'll let you know how it goes!

Stacy