2 Replies Latest reply: Nov 27, 2009 10:35 AM by WilderW RSS

    Find photos with matching capture times?

    WilderW Community Member

      I've been using Lightroom as a way to develop RAW images for sometime but I have only recently started to use it as an organizer in a serious way. I've transferred 25000+ photos from various Photoshop Elements catalogs into one Lightroom (2.6) catalog.

       

      Due to the way I imported from Elements, I have a number a versions of the same photo - for example: DSC4041.JPG and DSC4041_edited.JPG.

       

      I would like to focus my attention on photos that have the same capture time and do some tidying up of the new catalog. While I can sort by capture time which would put these "duplicates" together, 25000 photos is a bit many to glance through.

       

      I cannot discover a way to filter the photos to show just the near duplicates. I can use the Stack by capture time to create stacks of photos with the same capture time but then I cannot discover a way to persuade Lightroom to show me only stacked photos?

       

      Any suggestions?

        • 1. Re: Find photos with matching capture times?
          Gene McCullagh CommunityMVP

          One way to narrow down the pool of images (unless all 25,000 were shot the same day) is to look in the EXIF section of the Metadata panel. Next to the field titled Date Time Original is a small right pointing arrow. (It's after the date and time shown in the field). Clicking this will filter down to only images taken on that date. It's not as granular as capture time but it will at least get you to a single date easily.

          • 2. Re: Find photos with matching capture times?
            WilderW Community Member

            Thanks for this suggestion. My folder heirarchy is already organized by date so I could do what you suggest - but it still basically involves looking at each day and effectively glancing (however briefly) at too many shots.

             

            I've decided instead that I will hunt down duplicates or near duplicates in the file system itself - remove what should go and then ask Lightroom to resync the folder heirarchy which should remove the duplictes. I always write metadata changes directly to the photos and I have backups of the catalogs and the photos should my approach create problems.