I know this has past, but just got round to using it after installing on the giveawayday. It works great, really easy to use and a keeper, although I'd hope not to let my photos get in such a state again. Over 2gig of hard drive space recovered, also meaning 2gig not needed to be backed up. If it comes round again, i'd go for it if you missed it. Thanks GaoD

Thanks Karl!(was not allowed to 'Yes' your comment useful. Time expired?)

#58 Mark S.

This is a good and correct warning!But don't be afraid.

You should never scan for duplicates the Windows System folder. There are duplicate system files for backup or other different tasks of your operating system.

Scanning is of course allowed for all USER folders. This means: never C:\windows\... but all C:user\, D:, E:, F:, G: ...

Installed and ran well (Win 7 1600x2 4 GB)

Found many jpgs and bmps, helping me find duplicate copies of entire CDs that were accidentally copied into different directories, I will manually remove the entire duplicate directory (that includes non-image files, too).

I leave it to the software maker and others here to report on complex comparisons -- what if I've tweaked a copy of an image file for printing, will it collect all versions of the otherwise same-sourced image?

If I crop an image, will it show me both copies -- master and crop copy -- because it figured out the contents of one came as a sub-set from the other?

@ric, EXIF is a terrific start for comparison (if the EXIF exists in both copies) NOT because EXIF describes the image subject content, but because EXIF identifies a the file itself that might have been copied into multiple directories.

If the EXIF is different, no need to compare further, move on.

If the EXIF IS SAME (or missing from one photo file), then compare to the next levels (... because one copy might have been cropped, EXIF-cloned to an another image, rotated, and so on).

EXIF is useful, but not determinant.

I wonder what other comparative criteria the software uses.

For instance, if I have a large and small resolution copy with the same EXIF (technically a no-no), will this software recognize that one file is a sub-set of the other?

This software has no master purpose beyond what each of us needs.

Some of us need [ EXACT copy finding ].

Some of us might like [ "derivative works" finding ] so we can collects all edits of an image file into one location -- we don't necessarily want to delete "duplicated" but edited copies.

#7 Karl.... Installed CloneSpy but it comes with a warning that if you are not careful you can 'kill' your system ... 'Do not run on Windows files/folders'. Is this the case with all these anti-duplicate remover programs listed here including today's GAOTD? I'm almost afraid to even use this in case I make a mistake, and kill my pc. #7 Karl, what do you have to say about this? Anyone else?

#9 Keith

I would have thought the only true way to check for identical pictures was analysing the EXIF information of each image. This must be possible with software, and in my view the only safe way of finding duplicates.

Consider this situation, you took a photograph of a car on the road side with your camera. 1 second later you turned sideways and took a photograph of a far away mountain with the same camera. So if you use EXIF to check for duplicates, these two photos are definitely not duplicates.
EXIF is not a suitable indicator of the pictorial content inside photographs.

@Fubar... I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why you would call everyone here [GAOTD] " (...) So Stupid..." Really? The only thing I find 'stupid' is your comment, sir: "You don’t know anything about Windows, you don’t realize that the votes are completely fake..." 1. Who exactly knows nothing about windows and what makes you an expert? Please show us your credentials. 2. Concerning the 'Fake' votes that you conjured up in your hallucinogenic mind, how are they fake? Do you know realize that the GAOTD staff has to properly comb thru the comments BEFORE posting them? This means that by the time the comments are seen by the public, that the same 'Likes' and 'Thumbs Up's' have already been calculated AUTOMATICALLY before the comments are shown; thus showing you that you are not an expert when it comes to website moderation. Please think before you insult an entire community. Welcome Back ;)

#33

That is because you used cnet, they are are known spyware/malware distributor.

Download it from the actual source next time http://www.duplicate-finder.com/photo.html

My concern with any such program is - will it detect a "duplicate" which is actually just the Windows library listing of the file?

Can a windows library index for a photo file be picked up by such a program, i.e. is it a logical file that can be false-positively identified as a duplicate?

The danger would be that you may delete a source file thinking a duplicate exists which is just the library index, so your photo would be gone-ski.
(i.e. delete it from the source, it gets deleted in the library. Delete it in the library it stays in the source.)

or is this not possible?

Sorry, I forgot, the pics are http://up.picr.de/17426483fc.jpg and http://up.picr.de/17426482pt.jpg

I tested this pgm against Dup_Same_Files_Searcher_(2_2_3) and against similarity and it's by far better then these.

Even pics like
were recognized as duplicates.
Great soft!

It worked for hours and did not find one single file - though there are foldes with exact copies!!!
Just deleted the program.

What the? So many downvotes? Okay usually I agree with the votes but for once..no. That vote tally is false..this program is good.

I tried this app in the past, and was disappointed. This time around, I'm loving it. They made it a lot easier to highly duped images by graying around the selections. So if have 3 dupes and select one, the other 2 are highlighted in gray as a group. VERY USEFUL!

I scanned over 45,000 images on my HDD and it only took about 2 minutes! The side by side makes it very easy to check the images. It also auto-refreshes the search after you delete dupes and lets you save searches so you can continue going through them later.

I'm very happy with this Giveaway, and highly recommend it to all image hoarders out. ;)

As a free alternative, I recommend Antidupl.net .... it saves data on your images already scanned so that your next scan does an incremental scan only saving much time.

http://antidupl.sourceforge.net/english/index.html

Re. #33, and the comments about Conduit, KEYBAR, MALWARE and search hijacking.
Cnet adds the malware to its 'Downloader' for many of the programs it offers.
Instead, avoit Cnet and download from the Software's own site where possible.

eg. -

Get Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder from http://www.duplicate-finder.com/photo.html
It states that -
Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder is a completely FREE Software. It contains absolutely NO ADWARE, NO SPYWARE, NO REGISTRATION, NO POPUPS, NO MALWARE or other unwanted software.
DavidBee

Installed and registered on Windows 7 with no problems.
Sadly, the dire warnings about losing everything with one click made me very cautious about using it. Auto-deleting anything on my PC is a no-go at any time.
After reading the reviews here I decided to give Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder a try and to be truthful I found it easy on the eye, easy to use and easy to control. It's pretty quick too, so that's what I'm sticking with.
Thanks to TriSun Software Inc. for their kind offer and to GAOTD too.
DavidBee

I use the program here finds similar or the same. Guide here as well
http://ilikefree.co/programs_index.htm
Duplicate Image Finder

# 1 and # 7: Corno, you are a star! Thanks a lot for solving the translation problem in yesterday's GAOTD!

Valuable hard disk space ? LOL Couple Terabytes can be had for under $100. 4 Terabytes $139(just saw an ad). I've got duplicates, triplicates and more of my pics. Anything worth saving is worth having backups of. 4 Terabytes BTW would hold over 650,000 pictures at around 6 Megabytes each. A 6 Megabyte picture is about 64" by 48" and is very high resolution. How many pics you gonna' shoot? ;)

#30 David Roper I'm not mad at you. Maybe you should try and find out how to contact the programme author before going off on one. The only way seems to be to Like him on Facebook. But when you do nothing happens. Then, when you search for him on Facebook he doesn't appear to exist. And when did I say anything about erasing it?

1. @Fubar: Welcome back Fubar! Hope all is well with you & your family.

2. CNET isn't what it used to be. CNET free programs sometimes come with crapware that cannot be rejected.

Checked my link in # 7 for viruses in the portable version, locally my antivirus found no problems.
So I checked it online at the following link:- https://www.virustotal.com/uk/
It checked the file with 49 virus scanners 48 said it was clear of viruses, one (Bkav) said there was a virus.

@ Fubar, post # 5: Give it a rest, will you please? Your longtime contributions have always been valued here so knocking those who read 'em seems a bit silly.

As for GAOTD's feedback facility, well, er, yes. It certainly has its weaknesses but that doesn't alter the fact that GAOTD is a valuable resource that facilitates many a good software opportunity -- and also happens to be pretty darn good when it comes to the exercise of free speech, too. (Try saying what you said here on a certain other discount / giveaway website and you'd soon see there's a difference of far more than a few bits each day between the freedom enshrined here at GAOTD and the hypocritical censorship of any unfavourable comment by the operators of that other place.)

As to today's giveaway: I'm well aware that web censorship is, sadly, a feature of Chinese life, for which reason I'm wondering if Chinese developers actually get the same chance we do here in the West of seeing just what software is out there, free and paid-for? Surely, if today's developer had had sufficient opportunity to do some research into existing, and long-established, freeware and donationware, it would've become blindingly obvious that a $20 drive-only (not folder-level) non-RAW image comparator app such as today's has no commercial future at all. Thanks GAOTD, and thanks, too, to TriSun Software, but no thanks.

As so many free-alternatives have been mentioned here, let me add one more: "anti-twin" http://www.anti-twin.com/
The programme has a lot of options (and in my opinion more options than other software offers), related to how files are compared and how duplicates or similar images are selected and processed (for instance, by age, by their respective folders, position on directory tree etc.) The latter feature seems unique and really helpful when, for instance, you have a sorted collection in one folder and a lot of similar, forgotten etc. files somewhere else in your machine.

My headache with other software occurs when the software shows many, many duplicates and similar files and – in most cases – you have to go through each file individually or the number of options in the automatic selection system is really limited, in most cases to the file age.

The programme is, of course, slower than other software clever enough to be imprecise or unreliable. For me, who has large collections, it is the ultimate soft to reliably manage my images.

#32 Mario "some comments here I gave a no answer to it and it gave it a plus 1 rate"

I have to defend GAOTD here, because you have got it a trifle wrong. The reason you don't see what you expect to see when you click "yes" or "no" is simply a matter of refreshing.

By the time you scroll through all the comments and click your choice, several other people have also done the same. What you then see next is the sum of the total "yes" and "no" votes, which takes yours into account also.

So if you voted "no", but in the meantime 2 other people voted "yes", the sum would be +1.

And I don't even work for GAOTD. Just figured it out that's all.

#1 Corno: Thanks a lot for your bright idea of by-passing the fault of Hornil’s GAOTD of yesterday!!!
Cheers - Marek

Installed on Windows 7 pro 64 bit. Installation was easy, but program freezes and I get the (Not Responding) message every time I try to run it. I have shut it down and restarted it, I uninstalled and reinstalled it, and still the same. I have reduced the search parameters as far as they will go, and still freezes. NOT PLEASED, or impressed, or happy. If this is common, I am voting it DOWN. If not, screw it anyway, if I cannot use it, then I cannot recommend it.

#13 BHT

Awesome Video does not include Open Candy!

I just now installed it based on the positive comments and was offered Real Player, which I declined. It then proceeded with installation.

It's currently examining one folder of 3800 images.

Get you facts right before misleading folk, which apparently includes #14.

From some of the comments it would appear there is some confusion between a duplicate file finder and a duplicate image finder.
In the former you check for file size and, content at a byte level, in the latter you look for visual similarities of shape.
This means they can have different file and dimensional sizes and even different levels of brightness and contrast and hue.
Hope this clears up any confusion :-)

Be extremely careful Folks, and make sure you read the comments quoted below, before you download and install Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder:


"January 19, 2014 | By jkmacr
Version: Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder 1.1
Pros
App itself seems to work well
Cons
As noted by others and shame on me for missing the comments, the app installs the Search Conduit search redirection malware, taking over whatever browser you are using.
Not the worst of malware, but a PITA to get rid of it. I used Malwarebytes and it did the job quickly.

Shame on CNET for offering this software on their site!
http://download.cnet.com/Awesome-Duplicate-Photo-Finder/3000-2193_4-75206819.html#ixzz2tsQsIUk3

Cons
Installed Conduit, KEYBAR, MALWARE and search hijacking. This is inexcusable. Corrupted my IE, FIREFOX, and CHROME setups.
**Worst of all is that it was moderately difficult to remove.
Summary
DO NOT DOWNLOAD. I SPENT HOURS REMOVING SPYWARE AND MALWARE FROM MY PC AFTER INSTALLING.

http://download.cnet.com/Awesome-Duplicate-Photo-Finder/3000-2193_4-75206819.html#ixzz2tsQsIUk3"

Have a great day everyone.

some comments here I gave a no answer to it and it gave it a plus 1 rate. this is all setup to make this software look good. I personally think that comment #4 and the link from comment #7 is better. I tried it and it worked good and fast. I work with photos a lot so I have many duplicates. this program tries to find the entire photos leaving it to take a long time to find and not to mention Ii don't give many choices. Thumbs down for me. I am uninstalling this program.

@9 Giovanni

http://malich.ru/duplicate_searcher.aspx can't find similar files.

If necessary I'm using good old DupDetector 3

#15 Brian Astbury - Are you kidding? Ask Giovanni? Email the author of the program. Ask him.

Gio just gave you a suggestion to try. Looks like you didn't find it to your liking, so just erase it. You paid Zip, Nada, Nunca, Nuttin'
and right now, you are mad at me, not Giovanni. That's okay. I'm protecting my Goombah.

Pass - I downloaded and used their program for a short while, and after determining that it only finds EXACT duplicates I deleted it. (Use "Everything" and sort by name to get a faster list of duplicates of all file types.)

Worse, I am bombarded with email advertising to "upgrade" to pro. Nothing I do stops the emails.

Henrie, Visipics is free and does work with RAW. http://www.visipics.info/index.php?title=Main_Page

Hi, Spring cleaning Tool today!:)

When it comes to keeping duplicate (or multi) Files, mostly images, as majority of them can 'clutter' our systems to brim - it's a matter of habits: being over-protective, or cautious, or reckless..? Working on Images and saving every slightly altered picture of almost 'the same' is also a matter of habit (in defense - not totally without reason), even with help of Programs such as Corel PSP which introduced own Folders to keep originals, or Win7 forever asking if one wants to move pic file (or any) replacing the other, or keeping both..(useful feature especially where it comes to shortcuts to Programs' icons when people keep different versions of same Software, or on different drives, or more seriously - when important sys Files are about to be wrecked.., side comment mind, as today's Software deals with photos only) - all taking toll on physical memory, but good or bad?? What about banging on in anger when Photo Software doesn't save original pics forcing us to work with copies? What with all Recovery Programs finding forever same images to be sorted out later.. just in case, but kept religiously on drives? What about emptying cameras mem cards in various stages into Folders of different dates, only to copy 'the same' when more pictures are added?? What about periodically storing post (e-mails with images, all in the same bundle) and carrying on not deleting much, so references are there at hand? This mountain of multi duplicates can reach heavens and list of our habits go with it - hand in hand!

So the question is: do we keep this jungle wild (and wilder still) - or employ some help to sort it all out? I personally shy away from being found..:), but welcome Today's Offer, as.. reminder and a Tool, especially that it finds, but doesn't automatically delete anything, oh dear. Habits then don't die easily, but spring cleaning is what our PC offices deserve from time to time. Looks like Duplicate Photo Finder Plus 2.0 works with remarkable speed, and I suppose finds 'enough' to relief drives from portion of duplicate pics, if not all?? And it's free today! Recommended on wise principle and to be kept (small enough) in my pc broom cupboard for gradual use. My only concern would be if.. yet next Photo Recovery prog would find all waved goodbye photos that this Software got rid off, perish the thought:)

Thanks GAOTD and TriSun Software Inc. for today's Offer.

Peter O Fool, someone mention the awesome duplicate photo finder and I looked it up and they also have an awesome mp3 dup finder heere http://www.duplicate-finder.com/mp3.html. Hope that helps. May try this as well as the awesome one...

When I see the manufacturer/developer make glaring spelling or grammar mistakes and/or use pidgen English in their advertising, I automatically pass on their product. I realize that we all make mistakes sometimes and that English is not the native language for the world, but when you are marketing your product to the English I speaking world you have an obligation to ensure proper grammar and spelling. Same goes for any other language. Failure to do so reflects poorly on your attention to detail and actually is offensive to our prospective audience. If that is your way of doing business then the quality of your product and the customer support to be expected is highly suspect. This is why I'm not downloading and trying your product - I'm not willing to introduce potential problem applications to my system.

@Giovanni: Your suggestions are always useful. Tried slim cleaner, remo's do more [loved it], gimp [superb], searchmyfiles by nirsoft [outstanding] and found all of them were really good. Thanks!

Where's @Ashraf? I'm waiting to read his review & decide if I should download this giveaway or not.

#7
The download link on the page you listed goes to another page
http://www.duplicate-finder.com/photo-download.html, where it's download link for the file
http://www.duplicate-finder.com/files/awesome_photo_finder.exe

triggersa warning from my antivirus software (Trend Micro) that this is a dangerous page confirmed to transmit virus or involved in spam or fraud

#5 ronni, I just tried Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder (Thanks #4 John and #7 xp-man) on 2000+ photos. It found 78 duplicates, many with different size, brightness and contrast. Only took about 4 minutes. It truly is awesome. I did not find OPENCANDY in the portable download. This FREE program will make my life much easier.

Visual Similarity Duplicate Image Finder will find all similar and duplicate images, pictures and photos in a folder and its sub folders, computer or network in order to organize photos.
The duplicate image finder uses advanced algorithms to find duplicate photos in a way that a human does. Due to that fact it can find duplicate images even if they are in different image formats, different bit depths and image sizes.

Specify a percent of image similarity that will be used during the scan. It can broaden your results or specify exact match varying only in image format and/or size.

When the scan process is finished the program shows all the duplicate images in groups and can automatically mark the smaller resolution and/or smaller file size images for deletion.

Get rid of all duplicate images and save valuable disk space. It supports most popular image formats plus 300 RAW camera formats. VSDIF has an intuitive user interface and is well documented. Due to its innovative and optimized algorithms it is the fastest and the most precise product of this type on the market. It allows you to process huge amount of images in less time. Organize images and save valuable disk space.

Installed fine on my XP SP3 but when tried to open the program I only received an error:
"The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135). Click on OK to terminate the application."
Guess it just wasn't meant for me.

Best freeware duplicate finder I've ever used is Visipics.

I tried #9 Giovanni's Duplicate and Same Files Searcher on my C drive. Took about 20 minutes and I now have this list of 131538 files - and no idea what to do with them because there do not seem to be any Help files. Do I replace duplicate files with NTFS hard links? And how do I do this? Do I Check them all, or only the second (Last) files?

Also downloaded Awesome - #4 John's recommendation (Thanks #7 XPMan for the link) It's still running after 45 minutes. I have a LOT of photos, so the visual comparison is necessary. Will let you know.

Thanks to ALL members who post feedback because that helps me to not waste my time downloading any program that contains stuff like OPEN CANDY , ETC. ETC.

Also a Thanks to people who post links to other FREE ! software that might be even Better than the Giveaway .

All Information is Appreciated !!

#3 Peter O fool. You sure attracted a lot of negative votes Peter. Anyway, a year or so ago my hard drive failed. Got a new one and then BY ACCIDENT deleted my backups!!!

So I had to scrape my external hard drives where the backups were to find my stuff. Trouble was, the program I used found over a million files and file fragments, with up to a dozen copies of the same files.

So I hunted around and found "Duplicate Cleaner" (free) and turned it loose on all of these recovered files, and it did an amazing job.

Now back to your question about mp3's. Duplicate Cleaner will find duplicates of just about everything, and you can tell it where to look and what to look for. You can even make it peek inside the files you're comparing if you want to.

So don't worry about the negative votes if this helps you at all. I'm probably going to get a heap too. We'll just ignore them, hey?:)

Awesome Duplicate Phot Finder is good (from memory) but comes loaded with OPENCANDY, at least from the website. Use the /NOCANDY option to install. Basic test with the giveaway is not very encouraging; little feedback about progress and appears slow (I need to test with a smaller population to be fair).

I used Visipics on a collection of over 8,000 pictures containing a very high number of duplicates and it did a very good job and took about 45 minutes with excellent feedback, visual indication of progress and final report (the report grows as the program progresses).

I will try some of the other duplicate finders mentioned here and try to provide some feedback.

I have many stereo pairs, which at first sight seem may very similar to non-stereoscopists and ignorant programs.
Will pass this one.
A. K.

#9 Giovanni

This program does not find duplicates by content. This is misleading on their homepage. It can only find duplicates by the exact size, NOT by content, NOT by checksum.