I use iCloud Photos and am on the latest OS on my Mac, iPhone, and iPad.
I’ve finally gathered together a few thousand older photos that have never been added to iCloud Photos and would like to import them using the Photos app on my Mac.
A couple questions:
Will I have any problems if some of the photos I’m importing happen to have the same image file name as photos already in my iCloud Library? Since these photos come from a bunch of previous iPhones, I wouldn’t be surprised is there’s some overlap in the generated file names.
If some of the imported photos somehow happen to be higher-quality duplicates of ones already in the Library, what will happen during the import process? Will Photos reject them as being dupes, or import them normally, or something else? When all is said and done, I’d like to end up with the highest quality versions and no dupes.
I look forward to any thoughts and advice experienced folks have!
Photos will show duplicates as you are importing and allow you to keep them or skip (with a selection box to do the same thing for the remaining imports).
Photos also has a good duplicate finder and (supposedly) will keep the higher quality image and merge anything such and Favorited and other data, but I have never tested this feature on whether they actually keep the best one and where the metadata goes.
It shouldn’t. I don’t know how it actually organizes the images internally, but I believe it assigns them all unique internal ID numbers that are unrelated to the filenames. If the hashing algorithm used for determining what subdirectory holds each file produces a collision (same name in the same directory), I believe it will rename the second one (but will retain the name/title as metadata).
As @raykloss wrote, if it detects them as duplicates, then you’ll be asked whether to import or skip the image. If you import, then you’ll have both and will need to select one or the other for deletion if you don’t want to keep both. I don’t think there’s any mechanism for your import to replace an existing file (e.g. if it’s better quality). You may have to do that on your own using Photos’ detect-duplicate mechanism.
Sounds like a 2-step process should do the trick. First, do the import and allow dupes to be added. Second, use the Duplicates list to “merge” dupes, with the app automatically keeping the best one and the combined metadata.
I gotta say, the support level here on TidBITS is nonpareil! (enjoy the $64 word I tossed in there).
Yes - I think that (Mac) Photos stores the files in folders associated with the date of import or similar (maybe called “roll xx” from the analog film days). I expect iOS uses a similar convention and so duplicate file names shouldn’t matter.
@ddmiller Thanks, yes on a Mac in the sidebar. Must heave been there for years, I never noticed it.
Having said which, this function finds 378 duplicates amongst my 15,000 images.
PowerPhotos from Fatcat software finds 438. The OP could download a free trial of PowerPhotos, you only pay to remove the dupes with this tool, to see them is free.
I believe that duplicates detection was a feature added with iOS 16 and MacOS 13/Ventura. So it was added slightly less than two years ago. (Perhaps it was iOS 15 and Monterey?)
I find that there are some photos it marks as duplicates that are not duplicates, but it does a pretty good job for a feature added to the stock app.
If some of the images lacks proper meta data (in lack of a more accurate word) I would suggest to add that before importing the photos. Batch editing is better and easier in other software than Photos. I think of data such as capture date and GPS information.
Don’t forget that Tidy Up does a terrific job of finding duplicate images, even if they are different filetypes and dimensions. It also performs searches by EXIF.
I just tried using Powerphotos to copy some albums to an external hard drive and it reported both photo libraries were incompatible.
Photos under Sonoma opens them without issues so something seems to have gone wrong with Powerphotos (I checked for updates).
The duplicates finder on the iOS devices only shows up when duplicates are detected, it’s automatic. If there are no duplicates detected it isn’t available.
