Reader Phil Rogers has more images than he cares for. He writes:
Because digital photos are so easy to save, my wife and I developed the bad habit of downloading, and downloading, and well, downloading. If we needed to show each other something at the store, we’d snap a photo and email it. Then at some point, that orange, or stapler, or whatever, would eventually get downloaded. Net result? Over 50,000 photos in iPhoto, with many duplicates.
How does one even begin to cull the herd? I’ve tried many of the duplicate-finder programs with varied success. But what about just plowing through to get rid of the clunkers?This is a common problem, particularly now that so many of us carry around cameras (in the form of mobile devices) each day.
Detective work
With that done I’d then create a strategy for eliminating the clunkers based on their EXIF (EXchangeable Image Format) data. When you take a picture with a digital camera, metadata (the EXIF data) is embedded in it. This metadata is searchable within iPhoto and other apps and if you can pinpoint those images that are likely to be crummy based on information in the EXIF data, you’ve made a better start.For instance, if you enter
240
in iPhoto’s Search field,
any 240 by 180 thumbnail images will appear. These are surely candidates
for the scrap heap. (Note that such a search will also cause 2400 pixel
images to appear in the list of results, so be sure you’re tossing an
actual thumbnail rather than a larger image that has 240
somewhere in its EXIF data.)
Or consider the situational camera. You say that you snap pictures of items at the store. I'm going to guess that you didn’t do this with a DSLR bur rather with your phone. If this is a habit, maybe you should search for any images taken with an iPhone 4s (or any iPhone model you’ve owned) and remove its worst efforts from the results.
Get smarter
This is all well and good, but sometimes it helps to search for more than one bit of information. For example, pictures shot in really low light with your iPhone 4s. The Search field does no good because you can’t combine queries. But you can with a smart album.Choose File > New Smart Album and in the resulting sheet configure the first condition to read Camera Model is Apple iPhone 4s. Click the plus button to create another condition and configure it to read ISO is greater than 1250. Make sure that the Match pop-up menu reads All, name your smart album, and then click OK.
You can use this smart album technique with a wide variety of conditions. For example, if you’ve used iPhoto’s Faces feature to identify the people who appear in your pictures and never want to see that miserable worm JoJo again, just search for any images that contain him and banish them.
Another option is to select all the images you don’t care for within the smart album and then rate them with 1 star (once they’re selected press Command-1 to assign the rating). Repeat this process with other smart albums and images. Once you’ve finished the job, select Photos in the Library column, click on the Search icon in the bottom-left corner, choose Rating, and click on the first star. Any images you’ve assigned a single star rating to will appear. These you can select and delete.
Finally, at the risk of appearing to be a scold, you may wish to be a bit more careful about which images you choose to import in the future. Do so and you won’t have to go through this kind of thing five years from now.