Lightroom Classic Duplicate Finder: Remove Duplicates Without Losing Photos
How to Safely Remove Duplicate Photos in Lightroom Classic
Adobe has finally added a Duplicate Finder to Lightroom Classic, and it’s something photographers have wanted for years. It’s a great tool, but before you start deleting thousands of photos, there are a few things you should know. Always back everything up first!
There are two different ways to work with duplicates. You can remove them from your Lightroom catalog, or you can permanently delete the extra files from your hard drive. Both approaches are useful, but one carries a lot more risk.
NOTE: There seems to be a bit of confusion around what a duplicate is. A duplicate is when the same file exists more than once, not a virtual copy, or an identical looking photograph, but the exact same image file more than once. This doesn’t identify similar looking photos and isn’t entered to do that.
Before You Do Anything
Before removing a single duplicate, make sure you have a complete backup of your photos and your Lightroom catalog. If you plan on removing any photos from your computer, first, make a copy of the folders of images, just in case.
Next, create a backup of your Lightroom catalog. If you remove from Lightroom only, you will be able to restore the backup if anything goes wrong.
Go to Catalog Settings > Backups and set Lightroom to back up the catalog the next time it exits. If anything goes wrong, you can simply restore that backup and you’re back where you started. Watch the video at the top for a more detailed explanation on this.
Tip: Remember, the Lightroom Catalog does not include any of your photos, those need to be backed up separately
Finding Your Duplicates
Make sure you are running Lightroom Classic 15.4.1 or later, as this feature wasn’t in Lightroom Classic before this.
Open the Library module.
Select Catalog > All Photographs.
If the toolbar isn’t visible, press T.
Click the new Duplicate Finder button.
Large catalogs may take a while to scan, but Lightroom continues working while the scan runs in the background.
Strategy 1: Remove Duplicates from Lightroom Only
This is the safest option and the option you will use if you don’t want to move or remove any photos from your hard drive. This will just remove the dupes from the Lightroom grid.
Before removing anything, create a collection containing every duplicate.
Select all duplicates.
Choose Photo > Stacking > Expand All Stacks.
If everything isn’t selected correctly, leave Duplicate View and return again.
Create a new collection called Z Duplicates and include all selected photos.
Now you’ll always have an easy way to find the images that originally had duplicates.
 Tip: Naming the collection “Z Duplicates” keeps it out of the way at the bottom of your Collections panel.
When you’re ready, right-click and choose Remove Duplicates.
Select Remove from Lightroom.
Only the duplicate catalog entries are removed. Your original files remain safely on your drive.
Hide Duplicates
These is an option where you can hide certain duplicates from showing in the duplicates view. Usually these would be duplicates that you have verified that you don’t want to remove.
Select the image and choose Hide from Duplicates.
  
Those files disappear while you’re working in Duplicate View but still remain in your catalog.
To show them, click “Show Hidden Duplicates”
You will see a little eyeball icon to indicate that they are hidden images.
This is useful when batch-removing duplicates while excluding a few you want to keep.
Strategy 2: Delete Duplicate Files from Disk
This option permanently deletes duplicate files from your hard drive.
Before doing this, make sure you know exactly which copy you want to keep.
To check the location of the image on your drive: Expand a duplicate stack.
Right-click each version and choose Show in Finder (or Explorer on Windows).
Compare the folders.
Quite often you’ll find one copy is properly organized while another is sitting in an old backup or temporary folder.
Delete the unwanted version, not simply whichever Lightroom labels as the duplicate.
Tip: Lightroom’s “duplicate” isn’t always the copy you want to remove. Always check the folder location first.
Display Folder Names While Sorting
Rather than having to right-click each time to see the parent folder, we can set up and overlay to show this information.
Knowing where each file lives makes duplicate management much safer.
Choose View > View Options.
You will see you can have compact or expanded cells. Switch to Expanded Cells.
Under the extras, you can choose what’s displayed in the grid.
Display the Folder information in one of the overlay positions.
Now you can instantly see which folder every image belongs to without opening Finder each time.
If you prefer Compact View, you can also display the folder name there.
Change this to Folder.
   Â
Which Strategy Should You Use?
Use Remove from Lightroom if:
- You simply want a cleaner catalog.
- You aren’t worried about duplicate files on your drives.
- You want the safest option.
Use Delete from Disk if:
- You’re cleaning up years of duplicate folders.
- You’re trying to recover storage space.
- You’ve verified which copy is the master version.
Final Thoughts
The new Duplicate Finder is one of the most useful additions to Lightroom Classic in years, but it’s also a feature that deserves a little caution. A few minutes spent creating backups and verifying folder locations can save you from accidentally deleting photos you’ll never get back.
Have you started using Lightroom’s Duplicate Finder yet? Which strategy do you prefer—removing duplicates from the catalog, or cleaning them off your hard drive completely? Let me know in the comments.
It’s great to see you here at the CAFE
Colin
If you want to see all the other new features added to this version of Lightroom Classic, check out this tutorial.
Recommended for this tutorial
Learn Masks in Lightroom and Camera RAW
Make precise local adjustments in Lightroom and Camera Raw with every type of mask.
$59.99 · one-time purchase · instant download
Free for you
The Photoshop Vault
Get my free Layer Blending Modes ebook along with dozens of exclusive Photoshop goodies: actions, brushes, presets and cheat sheets.
You're on the list, so your free goodies are waiting for you in the Vault.
Get Free Photoshop Goodies Open the Vault
Powerful Landscape Masks, make easy, precise photo editing in Lightroom and ACR in Photoshop
Powerful Landscape Masks, make easy, precise photo editing in Lightroom and ACR in Photoshop Read tutorial
New Features Lightroom Classic 2025. LRC 14
New Features in Lightroom Classic 2025 aka Lightroom Classic 14 Read tutorial
Adaptive Profiles in Adobe Camera RAW – perfect starting place for photos
New Adaptive Profiles in ACR Adobe Camera Raw make photos better Read tutorial
New Features in Lightroom, Lightroom Classic and ACR Feb 2025 update
New Features in Lightroom, Lightroom Classic and Adobe Camera RAW Feb 2025 update. Read tutorial
New Auto Landscape Masks in Lightroom and ACR a Game changer
Ai Auto Masks for Landscapes are here in Lightroom and ACR Read tutorial
Thanks Colin, quite helpful. Some time ago I switched from LRc to LR. I was fed up with the catalogue issues. The ability to manage files locally as well as in the cloud made the switch a no-brainer. It seems that many folks still use LRc but I really wish Adobe would put the same effort in adding these new features into the LR “desktop/mobile” program.
Great comment. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and your experience on LR.
Would you please explain a little more what Adobe considers a duplicate (the exact criteria if you know)? If I add both jpeg and raw images shot at the same time, is this a duplicate. Same if I’m doing burst photographs at a sporting or car racing event. Does it just use name or does it use date (MM/DD/YYYY HR:MIN:SEC) as part of the criteria and file size? Any help and explanation would be most helpful. Thanks.
It looks for a duplicate file, (not a duplicate moment) it uses the file name as well as analyzing the images appearance.
Great tutorial! Thank you. I’m still uncertain and somewhat afraid of the feature; are virtual copies duplicates in Lightroom (not hard drive, of course)? More generally, are two pics duplicates, if the original is common, but they have been subjected to different edits? Does duplicate detection take into account any edits that may be different, thus rendering the the photographs essentially two different products?
It doesn’t affect virtual copies. If you have duplicate edits you are either using a virtual copy, or a different file name if edited in Photoshop. These aren’t affected. I recommend checking each one manually before removing from disk, don’t just trust it to get it right automatically.
I’m struggling a bit with this. I want to keep the edited version and remove the one downloaded from camera.
Your tutorials are always so clear and helpful. Thank you for including written directions as an option.
If you just have a variation, that isn’t a duplicate and should stay on your computer.
A duplicate is when we have 2 or more physical instances of exactly the same image file.
A great tutorial that I will need to review several times to get the full understanding. Rather than keeping my photos on the computers hard drive I decided to transfer and store the images separately onto a 2 TB external SSD drive. I then back this up onto another identical SSD with the catalogue backed up onto yet another external drive.
But I would assume that with everything done this way, the duplicate system must operate exactly as you describe as in effect nothing has fundamentally changed. You would work it exactly as you describe here in your tutorial.
Make sure you plug that drive in for a few minutes each year as a SSD can leak if its not powered up occasionally 🙂
I have watched many videos and tutorials in the last 13 years. This is the first explanation ever of compact and expanded cells. Love how customizable both are.
Thanks for the nice comment. Its something I have included in my LR course for years, but glad you found it useful here!