Trying to find and delete duplicates in a Flickr account is not only an annoyance, but also damaging towards your personal productivity. Proper planning when uploading files, even if you have to draw out your file structure, will save you lots of headaches later on when you need to purge extra pictures for one reason or another. There are a few ways to do this. Specifically, you can manually edit your photos, use third party software, or use Flickr tools to keep your duplicate images to a minimum.

Manual Edit

You can manually go through and edit your photos, looking at thumbnail after thumbnail to make sure each photo isn’t a duplicate. This is the least favorite way, as it is not only time consuming, but utterly tedious.

Third Party Software

There are third party software applications that you can download as well to make this an easier process. To find them, use an Internet search as Yahoo! or Google and as always use precaution when downloading.

Flickr Organizr

Flickr has it’s own interface called The Organizr, located at the top of any page once you log into your account. This page looks
intimidating at first, but with a little practice, it can be easy to master.

1. First and foremost, remember that everything is given a date when you upload the file. This is extremely helpful if you need to look at
   batches of photos instead of everything you ever uploaded.All of your photos will be listed at the bottom of the Organizr in
   the Findr; your pictures are organized by newest on the left and older uploads on the right. There is a drop down menu that can help you
   filter your photos by using search words to find what your looking for.
2. Next, you want to create sets and batches to further organize your work. From the Batch Organizer, you want to drag and drop pictures from the Findr at the bottom to the middle of the page; this is the start of organizing your photos into sets.
3. Along the top menu starting with Edit Photos, you can click on the down arrow and select delete; you’ll be given a confirmation window to
   delete the photos that you have dragged and dropped into the center of the page.
4. If you accidentally added a photo to your current batch, you can always click and drag it back down to the bottom to remove photo to
   save it from your purge later.

FlickrDeDupr

FlickrDeDupr is an application to automatically identify duplicate images in a Flickr account. It’s nothing fancy and relies on the Title being the same along with the DateTaken attribute. This did the job for me to clean up the mess from the Windows FlickrUploadr which has a habit of failig to upload and then offers you the option to “Try Again” but fails to remove photos that had already been uploaded before trying again. Hopefully it works for others to help clean up their accounts.

As you can see, there are plenty of options to help keep the number of duplicate images down to a minimum. Organization is key when you’re
dealing with a lot of images at once or working on several projects simultaneously. If possible, set up your file structure like you would
your filing cabinet and organize accordingly. You can set up your sets and batches for different themes or events. Choose the option that
seems best for you when trying to cull images from your Flickr account.