Suggestions for Duplicate Cleaner

Jim · Post by **Jim** » Sun Nov 29, 2009 2:59 am

Hi James,

Thanks for the great software.

I think much of what I have to say here has already been said and/or is slated for the 2.0 release, so consider anything you've heard before a positive vote for that feature.

I scan over 300,000 photos for dupes. Honestly, I can't remember if I have tried it with Duplicate Cleaner yet - I think I tried a large portion of it and it came close to using all available memory. I used to scan all the photos using Heatsoft Clone Cleaner Lite but am unable to use that anymore because, to put it politely, they can't seem to get their act together. Clone Cleaner used byte for byte comparison and scanned approximately 330,000 images in roughly 2 hours and 40 minutes and was pretty good about resource use. I liked to use Clone Cleaner to quickly weed out the clones and then I would use an older program I have called ImageDupe that would find similar images (as well as dupes if you set the threshold to 0). The problem with ImageDupe is that it can't scan the entire collection without crashing. It does however, do a great job finding similar images in smaller collections and displaying them side by side for deletion.

If Duplicate Cleaner could scan in multiple modes - for dupes with same content using byte for byte for accuracy (or a trustworthy hash) AND for similar images - I would consider that a great help (I'd even start to consider paying for it). I also agree with the calls for a caching system using a database so that scans can be stopped and returned to at anytime. I've seen caching use before in a program called Similar Images. It was definitely a step in the right direction and worked well - unfortunately, the program as a whole was not stable. It seems there is always some features missing or some quirkiness that makes these programs fall short. Duplicate Cleaner seems to be steadily improving and I would like to encourage you to continue working on it. It has been a while since I read through the forum but I remember you mentioning items that were slated for version 2.0 and thinking "yea! that's exactly what I want!" - so go for it!

I used Duplicate Cleaner again today and found myself wishing for a few other things:

1) There was a point at which I was looking at the status bar hoping to see how many items were checked.

2) I also needed to check (place check in the checkbox) a rather large contiguous group of images and found no easy way to tick the boxes. How about being able to select (highlite) multiple contiguous or non-contiguous groups of items and then right-clicking the items and choosing "Select" (place a check in the checkbox)? That would be sweet.

3) Also, being able to highlite a portion of a path and copy it would be a great help when using the selection assistant. Perhaps a special key combination could be used to select only a portion of the field using the mouse rather than selecting the entire field as happens when left clicking alone.

4) As above but a context-menu command to copy the entire path of an item in the results list.

Furthermore, if you should decide to add the capability to find similar images, improving the display of similar images would be extremely helpful. A window that would display at maximized size or even full-screen would be important. Displaying the images side by side would be necessary. Allowing the user to tick a radio-box to fit the images to their viewing space or to zoom to 100% would also be important. When the images are full size they most likely won't fit in the space provided them so it would also be important to allow the user to move them - preferably using the mouse and moving them simultaneously (as ImageDupe does (the mouse pointer changes to the Move arrows and allows dragging the images - as one image is dragged the other image also moves relative to it)). Dimensions, size, absolute path and relative path would be helpful, especially relative path so that the user could easily see exactly where one image is relative to the other image. Finally, an "Abort" button to close the image display window and stop comparison and "Delete" buttons under each image (one for each image) and a "Delete None" (keep both and move to next set of images) button would be necessary.

Thanks again for the fine program and I look forward to version 2.0 of Duplicate Cleaner!

Jim

DV · Post by DV » Wed Dec 02, 2009 4:50 pm

Thanks for all your suggestions. Glad you like the program. I usually re-read all these comments when working on updates, that way nothing gets missed!
I have a road map for version 2.0 - basically it is being completely re-written in .NET which will solve a lot of issues straight away.
Can't give a timescale yet though!
thanks

Jim · Post by **Jim** » Thu Dec 03, 2009 2:48 pm

Great! Look forward to it.

I just opened DC and noticed something I forgot to mention. If the paths in search path panel are longer than the space provided for them they can't be fully seen. Could you add scroll capability and maybe a column that shows the relative path - the final folder?

Thanks

Jim