Sync Photos with iTunes and Delete the Same or Similar Ones

Apple has been manufacturing computer systems, laptops and smartphones that are easily the most sought after products, especially among the more well off segments of the society. The popular belief is that it is quite easy to get things done in the Apple ecosystem as their products are designed keeping the high user experience, and simplicity in mind.

Even though the usage of digital cameras and camcorders has greatly gone down since the advent of smartphones, a tiny number of users still continue to use them. A good number of such devices don’t support copying media directly from them to either the iPad, or the iPhone. This leaves users with the more lengthy option of transferring the media first to a MacBook or Windows PC, and from then onwards continuing the process of copying the data to an iPhone. Syncing data to the iPhone is an easy, but a little laborious process. This article sets out to make this job easy for the readers. So let’s get started.

This guide is divided into 2 sections. The first section works only for the Windows platform, whereas the second segment is valid for both Mac and Windows platforms.

Step 1: Clean the Duplicate Photos

Solution 1: Remove Duplicate Photos with PowerShell

Windows PowerShell is an inbuilt tool that has been a constant feature in the Windows OS since Windows XP SP2 got rolled out. It supports manipulating various functionalities of the operating system without requiring any third-party apps or programming languages. 

Note: Please only use PowerShell if you’re well-acquainted with its commands, Otherwise, it is strongly suggested you ignore this solution and move on to the next one.

1. Open the PowerShell application through the start menu.
2. Make sure the photos are backed up before you proceed, just in case any error/ power failure results in unintended circumstances.
3. Type the following command by replacing the text in red with the path where the duplicate photos are located. Leave the %username% portion as it is, this will always work no matter what your Windows username is.
   PS C:\Users\%username%> cd “C:\Users\Duplicate Photos Folder“
4. Type the following command to detect and remove duplicate photos and press Enter to execute it.
   PS C:\Users\%username%\Pictures\Out Dups> ls -include *.jpg,*.jpe,*.jpeg,*.jfif,*.png,*.tif,*.tiff,*.gif,*.dib,*.bmp,*.ico -recurse | get-filehash | group -property hash | where { $_.count -gt 1 } | % { $_.group | select -skip 1 } | del
   
   

Solution 2: Remove Duplicate/Similar Photos with PictureEcho

PictureEcho is a top-notch third-party app that helps detect and identify not just duplicate photos, but also visually similar photos. This application is quite sophisticated in identifying duplicate photos and provides the scan results in a very user-friendly interface, with the user in control of things at all stages. The following steps describe how the whole procedure unfolds.

1. Download PictureEcho from its website and then execute the setup file to install it.
2. Launch the program and click the Add Path button to add a single/multiple locations which will be scanned.
3. Choose between the Exact Match and Similar Match option. The first option uses a simple algorithm to detect identical copies of the same photo, and the former option scans images that bear a close resemblance to each other that can even be detected with the naked eye. If you select the Similar Match feature, you can choose between 4 different scan types from the Similarity Settings link. PictureEcho performs the Exact Match scan by employing what is known as Image Hashing, a process that examines the content of the image, and uniquely identifies it. Similar Match uses a sophisticated algorithm that scans the images and identifies how visually similar they are to each other.
4. Select the Show Preview option so that you can easily view the preview of any photos that are detected during the scan. Simply click an image and you will notice the preview come up in the Preview Area.
5. Hit Start Search to initiate the scan.
6. Once the scan is over, it will list out all the duplicate/similar photos in the user interface of PictureEcho.
7. Now you need to select the images which will be fished out of the folder you just scanned. You can even select them manually, but this option isn’t feasible if the number of files involved is huge. PictureEcho has made this image selection easy via the various options in the Select Duplicates menu. Once you select an option, the files that match that criteria will be highlighted in green.
   

   

8. Finally, click the Select Action button to initiate the final step in the process. You can either permanently delete the images or move them to a folder of your choice, just in case you might need them in the future (in case you’re a professional photographer or a graphics designer).  

Step 2: Sync Photos with iPhone/iPad via iTunes

Once you have removed all the unwanted images, you can easily proceed to sync the photos with either the iPad or iPhone. The steps in this segment work on both Windows PC and Mac. 

1. Download iTunes from the official website. If you’re using Windows 10, you can also download it from the Microsoft Store.
2. Install the latest version on your machine and then launch iTunes.
3. Open iTunes, and now connect the USB cable and the adapter.
   
4. Windows PCs usually don’t contain a lighting port, so an adapter is required to connect it with iPad or iPhone. However, the latest version of iPad contains a USB type C connector, but still an adapter might be required since many desktop motherboards are still equipped with type A ports. Once you’ve figured it out, connect the PC/Mac to your iPhone/iPad with a cable. When iTunes will detect the device, it will show up a small icon resembling the connected device on its toolbar.
5. Go through the new list in the iTunes interface and select Photos from the list.
   

   

6. Now select the checkbox for Sync Photos to initiate the sync process. This should take a while depending on the speed of the USB/lighting port, the number of photos to be synced, the speed of the hard drive of the computer, and the speed of memory chip on iPhone/iPad. An SSD can highly maximize the speed of the synchronization process.
   

   

7. Additionally, instead of the whole Photos folder on your computer, selected folders can be also be synced. You even have the luxury to sync videos as well.