Tin Eye for your hard drive. Sort of...
 

I'm trying out this new duplicate image finder software that appears to work like TinEye-- it looks at the pixels rather than file name or hash. It is scanning my drive now. It's been about an hour and it has scanned 14,000 out of 24,000 images and found 3700 similars. I am guessing it doesn't "see" RAW files, but it does "see" DNG so there's a case for DNG conversion as a matter of course in asset management.

I'll report back when the thing is done and let you know how well it works and how useful it is. Having something like this working with picasa or lightroom would be hella awesome.

awesome duplicate photo finder

OK
notes so far:
Took 1:45 to scan 24,354 jpgs and bmp. didn't scan gif, raw or psd files. It found 5626 duplicates and rated their similarity from 1% to 100% Pretty good, but gave 14% accuracy to the same image where one version was full sized and the other was 750x500. Conversely it gave 100% accuracy to two adjacent frames where the images were clearly different. So it seems to weight size more heavily than image information.

There is a confirm delete button and an acknowledgement of delete button and no provision for multiple selections so numerous deleting is a chore.

It only compares two images at a time, not sure what happens when you have five versions of the same image.
You can't save a search, so the next time I do this I have to allow for nearly two hours to scan my drive.

Sounds a little cumbersome for 24k images, but might be ok for a couple k.

You gonna organize your files better from now on?

I promise I will name all my files and put them in the proper folder.
I promise I will name all my files and put them in the proper folder.
I promise I will name all my files and put them in the proper folder.
I promise I will name all my files and put them in the proper folder.
I promise I will name all my files and put them in the proper folder.
I promise I will name all my files and put them in the proper folder.
I promise I will name all my files and put them in the proper folder.
I promise I will name all my files and put them in the proper folder.

I can tell you from experience that filing only helps. It does not eliminate the problem.

The major issue is the fallacy of categorization. There isn't anything that fits in only one category.

Tin Eye? Tin Eye?

Braceface!

Y'all are weird. I organize by the date the photo was taken, which is part of the filename. Each month gets a folder, and that folder is named by a descriptive list of what's inside, like "01-2011 - Snowballs, Grandma's house, D's Birthday, Birds."

Date is easiest by far. It's how we live our lives. We steadily march through time. Organizing your pictures this way tells a story.

Right. That works. Until you have a photo of a snowball fight at Grandma's House on D's Birthday. And there were birds in the background. Now what?

I realize that this is an uncommon occurrence. But it is well to remember that the uncommon does occur from time to time.

Were the birds falling to the ground, dead?

You're dealing with family snapshots, 3foot is a photographer. He's got all sorts of photos taken by him, and others, for reference, fun, and occasional profit. That's why he's dealing with 24k+.

Nothing changes. It still goes in the January of 2011 folder, and it's extra easy because the name of the folder doesn't even need anything appended to it.

My wife uses Lightroom (I think) to organize her photos. It lets her tag (like a category/folder but many-to-many) and create sets of photos.

She's using it to put together a photo album DVD of our wedding pictures. It looks pretty slick to me.

I see. I read it too quick and thought you had subfolders.

Still falls into the fallacy of categorization, though. That's how I have ours set up as well, 'cause I think that's about the best you can do in practical terms. But when I went to make a slideshow of Zing1 for her graduation, I had to go through all the folders looking for pictures of her.