You probably have tons of duplicates in your digital photo hub as the result of inconsistent downloading, importing of multiple backups and many other reasons. Now is the time to get rid of those extras that are cluttering up your photo library.

Let’s do a quick recap of the process we discussed last time for moving your digital images from all your devices to your digital photo hub.

Your Workflow in Review

1. Move a group of images into your ‘to organize’ folder in your digital photo hub (DPH).
2. Eliminate any photos you don’t intend to keep.
3. Create a folder that represents this group of images, and give your folder a name beginning with a numeric sequence that identifies the date.
4. Create a subset of folders within that folder, to represent events or themes within that folder.
5. Rename your image files with the numeric date followed by where, what, who details.
6. Move your newly organized folder out of ‘to organize’ and into your main folder structure in your hub.
7. Repeat until you’ve transferred all your images into your hub.

Sounds easy, right? Easy yes, time-consuming for sure! This practice will eventually become your ongoing workflow, and will become far less time consuming once you have the bulk of your photos organized.

Duplicates Everywhere

Your newly organized ‘hub’ still has some potential problems. Duplicates! You probably have them. There are two kinds of duplicates; exact duplicates created when you brought the same image in from a few different locations. And then there are ‘near duplicates’ which are images so similar they could be the same, but were taken seconds apart. We can thank ‘burst mode’ for these treasures.

We recommend duplicate finders like Duplicate Cleaner (PC)  ($29.95) or PhotoSweeper (MAC) ($9.99)  These affordable options have settings that allow you to look for exact matches or near matches.

Once you find your duplicates, you can delete them entirely or move them into a folder called ‘to be deleted’ if you’re commitment shy.

Eliminate the duplicate photos in your photo library. They are just clutter! #saveyourphotos Click To Tweet

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We also invite you to visit our sister blog The Photo Organizers for more tips and in-depth knowledge from some of the top photo organizing industry professionals. To find a photo organizer near you, visit the Association of Personal Photo Organizers.