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.

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.

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.

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