Sorting pics by redundant picture number

[rocks911]

I work at a fire department that has a large database of pictures going back several decades. The pics have every name under the sun, the numbers mostly are dictated by the camera but a great number are also given descriptive names such a "Bob at the fire on main street", all of which isnt really a problem.

The problem is that there are copies of the pics, and copies of copies, and copies of copies of copies, and...well you get the point. So a LOT of the pics (maybe even more than the original pics themselves) are redundant and have a parentheses at the end...such as "Bob at the fire on main street (2)", "Bob at the fire on main street (3)" indicating that the pic is redundant.

How do I sort so all of those pics in parentheses are at the beginning/end so I can easily erase all of the redundant garbage?

I've been manually doing it for 3 hours and havent even made a dent.

Help! Please!

 

[ignatzatsonic]

I assume some of the "copies" are not as high quality as the "original"?

Could you use an application that will find all duplicates, regardless of name, and allow you to pick and choose which of those duplicates you want to keep?

There are such things. They can find images which are very very similar to each other, show them to you, and let you choose which to delete, if any.

Normally, you'd keep the larger, better focused picture and delete the inferior ones. Copies are nearly always inferior to an original, but there might be certain cases where a retouched or altered picture is preferable to the original. Every time you resave a jpg, it loses a bit of quality.

Are your pictures jpg format?

 

[rocks911]

I've tried an app that does check for duplicates but it was even slower than doing it by hand.

And no, I dont think for the most part the copies are any different, just an exact duplicate. I think that the office people who use the database from time to time just make a copy as they are afraid to manipulate the original, so we end up with a tremendous number of copies. Some pics have as many as 25 copies. I have no idea why really, but it makes a slideshow pretty much impossible.

If I could sort so that everything with (2), (3), (4) etc. at the end would appear together I could just do this once. As it stands the project is daunting. I'm pretty sure I have more copies than originals, and I have 44,000 total.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Are all of these pictures in a single large folder?

There ought to be a dos command where you could use the "move" command to move any file that contained (2) or (3) to a new folder, where you could then attack them.

Are you on an antique computer? The dupe finder app I have used can analyze tens of thousands of pictures in a few minutes--maybe a half hour. Then it just shows you the pictures that have an apparent duplicate.

Are you willing to categorically delete any file containing (2), for instance? Or will you ultimately have to eyeball each picture before deleting?

 

[rocks911]

All are in a single folder.

My PC is a W7 64 bit beast.

I would be willing to categorically delete anything with a (2), (3), (4)...(25) if you can believe it. I have no idea why so many dupes were made, its just ridiculous.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Are you a DOS-skinner as well as a fireman?

 

[ignatzatsonic]

This command, when entered at command prompt, will delete all files containing (2) from the folder:

del *(2)*.*

You could then alter the command, using a 3, then a 4, then up to 25 or whatever it took.

I'm sure there is a slick way of deleting any file containing numbers 2 through a jillion when within a set of parentheses, but that's beyond my level. If you knew that, you could do it all with one command. Otherwise, you'll have to delete the 2s, then the 3s, etc.

It's irreversible and bye bye forever. Be careful.

 

[rocks911]

I'll have to try when I get home. Thats tomorrow. Thanx for the replies...gotta run.

 

[rocks911]

I just tried performing a search of the folder using the Criteria (2) and I think it'll work for me, 1682 results so far.

 

[whs]

Duplicates you can find with this: http://www.sevenforums.com/software/199974-duplicate-photo-finder.html