Get to Know Your Photo Collection

You probably have digital photos on your home computers, but do you really keep on top of managing that collection, sorting pictures and keeping track of what you've stored and where? Most users simply download photographs from cameras and disks to the easiest place, using weird, default names such as Photo0123.jpg, and they forget about properly managing the photos afterward. And if you use viewers and editors to manipulate your photos, your system is probably making space-devouring copies of your photos, even if you're just making minor changes such as resizing or rotating.

As a result, even a relatively small collection of photos can steal half of your disk space, and your system might already be choked with copies of photos that are nearly impossible to find and identify. Complex photo-collection managers are one solution, but perhaps you need something that's a little more user-friendly. We don't all need the vast functionality sets that such packages provide: Most casual users only want to trim their collection now and then so that they have a handle on photo management and so that they know their system is using disk space efficiently.

Duplicate Photo Finder offers great simplicity, letting you easily search for duplicate pictures stored in your computer. You can choose between scanning the whole disk and specifying certain folders and the order in which the folders are scanned. To make the search faster, you can set the minimum size of pictures and the required level of similarity. If you need quick skimming of vast numbers of photos, you can use the thumbnail mode, which is less accurate but very fast.

Once you complete a search and found all the duplicates and similar pictures, you'll see a list of them, showing the locations of the files and the level of similarity they have. You can then browse the pictures from this interface to verify matches and decide what to do about them: copy, move to another location, or delete the duplicate. You can also edit the list of results, so, for example, you can clear out the duplicates you need before deleting the whole batch.

Duplicate Photo Finder requires Windows Vista/2003/XP/2000. Download your free trial version and then go back to get the full version for $19.95.