Deleting Duplicate .JPG, .JPEG, .PNG and .GIF Images from the Computer

Duplicate files are a reality, and they are here to stay. Almost every single one of us possesses a computer/ laptop that contains anywhere between a modest to a gigantic number of duplicates stashed on the hard disk.

Whether you are a professional photographer, a big-time selfie lover, someone who is too big in computer graphics or even a casual snap lover who captures several dozen images, there is every likelihood that your photos collection comprises of duplicate images. These duplicates occupy valuable storage space on your DSLR’s memory card, the computer’s hard disk and even the cloud storage service you use to back up the images.

You will have to step up and take matters in your hands. There are various ways you can take corrective action to clean up these pesky duplicate images.

 

The Manual Way to Delete Duplicate and Similar Images

This method requires the user to do some manual work, determine the duplicates and kill them off. Firstly, you might want to tinker with the indexing options and then we will switch to the search.

For those of you who don’t know, Indexing forms an index of the overall contents( files as well as folders) located on the hard drive. This procedure is designed to speed up searches, and the results are very positive. Strangely enough, sometimes the computer launches the indexing operation even when the computer is in use, and diverts valuable resources from where the user requires them. This leads to an overall slowdown, and the user suffers. You can either turn off indexing completely if you don’t perform searches that often, or you can even limit the indexing operation to include only those file types(e.g. images) which you frequently search (Windows 7 onwards). This way you will save up all the lag caused by all the indexing performed in locations which you don’t need to search.

If you simply need to disable indexing for a hard drive:

1. Right-click the hard drive in My Computer/ This PC and select Properties.
2. Now simply uncheck the checkbox for Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties.
3. Click OK, and restart your computer to apply the changes.

If you need to disable indexing for a file/ folder:

1. Right-click the file/ folder, and select Advanced under the General tab.
2. Now uncheck the checkbox for Allow this file to have contents indexed in addition to file properties/ Allow files in this folder to have contents indexed in addition to file properties (as applicable).
3. Click OK | OK and restart your computer to apply the changes.

If you limit indexing to select file types, here is what you need to do.

1. Click the Start menu, type in index and select Indexing Options.
2. Click Advanced, then select the File Types tab in the next window.
3. Now you can happily select (and deselect) file types, depending on your requirements. Also, select the radio box for Index Properties and File Contents.
4. Click OK | Close, and restart your computer to apply the changes.

Navigate to a drive which you think contains duplicate images buried somewhere. Now we must first adjust the view as well as the results layout so that we can easily spot duplicates once we launch the search. To do so:

1. Press Ctrl + F1 to bring up the Ribbon interface.
2. Click View (tab) | Preview pane.
3. In the Current view category, click Group by | Name.
4. In the final step, click Details under the Layout category.

Now you will get search results that will be arranged alphabetically, show up attributes such as name, type, size etc. You will also be getting a preview to make matters easier for you.

Simply click the Search Box (just next to the address bar), and type in these keywords (one by one) to bring up relevant results.

• .jpg
  

  

• .jpeg
• .png
• .gif

Now you can easily compare the image previews, spot all duplicates and use the Ctrl +Click combination (to select items in a non-sequential way) or Shit + Click (to select items in a sequence), and press Delete to get rid of them.

 

The Automated Way

The other and more comprehensive way is to use a software program. Clone Files Checker is designed to look out for duplicate images (and all other file types) by carrying out a powerful and speedy scan. It does not rely on the file name at all and minutely examines the file contents. This brings about a high standard of accuracy in the scan results.

Clone Files Checker also supports scanning USB drives, as well as the cloud drives (Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive) for duplicate files. And if you’ve turned on the backup feature, you can back up the entire duplicate image files before you delete them.

1. Download Clone Files Checker, and install it by executing the setup file.
2. Launch the software, and select as many locations as you want to be scanned via the Select drive/folder section.
3. Select Custom | Images to limit the scan to image files only.
4. Click the Start Search button launch the scan.
   
   
5. Once the scan is over, it will bring up a summary of the scan. Click Review & Fix.
6. Now you can review the duplicates detected in a list form. Click the Show Preview button and you will get a preview for each image (similar to the Windows search method).
7. You can opt to manually select the images if they are not that big in numbers. Alternatively, click Select Duplicates and choose an option of your liking to signal which kind of images from each duplicate group you want to retain.
8. Finally, click Select Action and make your choice between permanently deleting the duplicate images or moving the duplicates to a separate folder.

Job done, a significant number of duplicate images have been removed safely and you have freed up some storage space for more productive uses.