Zoner Photo Studio Duplicate Photos

Zoner Photo Studio is an all-in-one photo organizer and photo manipulation tool. It comes with support for an extensive set of file formats, and a pleasant interface for beginners & hobbyist photographers. Using its Explorer-alike folder structure, finding, sorting, organizing, transferring and sharing photos becomes an easy task.

The Problem of Duplicate Photos

There are several reasons why your Zoner Photo Studio has accumulated tons of duplicate photos. Here are some of the common reasons:

• Zoner Photo Studio has an in-house feature to import photos from other sources such as smartphones, digital cameras, USB sticks, etc. If you are regularly importing photos from multiple devices you may end up with a lot of duplicate photos.
• Zoner Photo Studio has a website image-fetching feature. Using this feature, you can fetch images from different websites all at once. Unfortunately, this results in a lot of duplicate photos and eats your computer storage.
• We often back up our photos to multiple locations in the event our original photos are lost. While it’s a good practice to regularly back up photos at different locations, it can also result in unwanted duplication. You might have accumulated multiple copies of the same photo at different backup locations. It’s safe to delete the duplicates if they are older and you don’t need them in the future.
• We often save edited versions of our original photos with different names. While it’s a good practice to prevent the destruction of our original photo, it can also result in unwanted duplication. You might want to get rid of old original versions, and improperly edited versions.
• Do you use multiple photo editing tools such as Zoner Photo Studio, Adobe Photoshop, GIMP, etc? If so, there’s a greater chance of accumulating identical versions.

 

Method 1: Using the Duplicate Finder Feature

Zoner Photo Studio comes with an in-house duplicate photo finder feature. Much like any other standalone duplicate finder, you can specify a directory of your choice to find duplicate photos.

1. Open the Zoner Photo Studio.
2. Click on the Organize menu, and select Find Duplicate Files.
3. In the Search In drop-down box, select the location where you want to search for duplicates. You can select a drive, network path, Photos folder or Downloads folder. It’s up to you.
4. Click on the Search button to start the process.
5. Your duplicate photos will show up in a list. The largest files are shown first, followed by the smaller ones.
6. Zoner Photo Studio offers basic filtering options. For example: To view photos with the exact same name, select the Show only files with matching names option.
7. Use the checkboxes to mark/ unmark files individually. Or use the Mark All Duplicates button to automate it.
8. Once you’ve selected the duplicate photos, choose one of the following options:
   • Move: Choose this option to move all duplicate copies to another folder of your choice.
   • Send to Recycle Bin: Use this option to move all duplicate photos to the Recycle Bin.

 

Benefits:

• No need to download a separate duplicate finder. You get the Duplicate Finder feature as part of your Zoner Photo Studio subscription at no extra cost.

 

Limitations:

• Zoner Photo Finder does not support scan customizability. For example There are no options to set similarity settings. You cannot find photos that are visually similar in nature.
• It lacks many add-on features offered by standalone duplicate photo finders, such as the ability to find and remove duplicate photos from cloud platforms.
• Limited file selection options: You’re restricted to only a handful of file selection options. If you’ve got a long list of duplicate photos, it can make the reviewing a daunting process.

 

Method 2: Using PictureEcho

PictureEcho is a professional duplicate photo finder for Windows. It offers a range of options and the freedom to customize the duplicate scan process.

Using PictureEcho, you can find two types of duplicates- Exact Match and Similar Match. Exact Match are 100% byte-to-byte similar images. In contrast, Similar Matches are visually-similar copies of your images. You may use the similarity level slider to specify the level of similarity to consider.

PictureEcho displays photo thumbnails so that you don’t have to manually open every image. It offers a range of options to automatically mark/ unmark duplicates.

• Select the newest or oldest photos in each duplicate group.
• Select the most modified or least modified photos in each duplicate group.
• Select the high-resolution or low-resolution photos in each duplicate group.
• Select photos by location: Using this option, you may mark/ unmark duplicate files located inside a specific drive or folder of your choice.

Apart from that, it offers many interesting add-on features:

• Cloud Duplicate Finder: With your subscription to PictureEcho, you get free access to Sorcim’s Cloud Duplicate Finder feature. You can scan for duplicate documents, photos, videos, and music from popular cloud platforms including OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, OneDrive, Box Cloud etc.
• Image Organizer: Using this feature, you can re-organize your photos in a handy directory structure. For example: If your photos are scattered across a drive, you may re-organize them by the date taken or modification date.
• Scan by Image: If you ever need to find similar copies of a specific image throughout your PC, use the Scan by Image feature.
• Empty Folder Cleaner: While trying to find an important document, you may come across a lot of empty folders. You can delete such empty folders and make it easier to find and organize your files.
• Lightroom Scan: Adobe Lightroom builds its own catalog which is nothing but a large database that stores the location of your photos along with other information such as photo rating, image editing history, descriptive keywords, etc. Over time, this database grows in size and Lightroom becomes slow & laggy. Thanks to PictureEcho, you can find and remove Lightroom duplicates and optimize the Catalog to a smaller size.

 

Benefits:

• Offers a wide range of file selection options and in-house thumbnail previews.
• Offers many add-on tools from Cloud Duplicate Finder to Image Organizer.

 

Limitations:

• PictureEcho is not free. However, its trial mode allows you to run unlimited scans and delete 10 groups of duplicate photos.