Can Everything help sort out this mess.

[phototaker]

I have a very unusual problem that maybe you're program can help me with. I'm trying to get my photo catalogue up and running.

The program with it's catalog crashed many times and I had to start over again & again. I have had lots of  problems with Photoshop Elements keeping my catalogue straight and this has even been exacerbated by the fact that Windows is constantly doing strange things as well.

I started by collecting all of the various files and catalogs on different drives & put onto new one.

These have all of my photos and the catalogues that were associated with them so at least everything was in one place.
I know I have a drive with everything that I would need to create a new file from scratch.  This has perhaps thousands of duplicates.  All the files are JPEG.

Despite requesting Photoshop Elements to write all of my previous changes to my file and update any pictures with tags. I doubt if's happened.

I also used to find the Windows had the wonderful habit of loading my pictures into the catalogue and using the date that this was done as the date that the photos were taken which is wrong. But then again I've already got pictures that Windows tells me that were taken in August this year.

So what I'm asking is perhaps what is the best way to sort all of these files and catalogues and jpegs and then try to create one file that's new and eliminate as many duplicates as I can. 

Does anyone have any idea as to where to start?

[void]

Everything is not a photo categorizer.

Some things you could try with the current version of Everything (1.4):

Find jpg files with duplicated date modified duplicated size:

• In Everything, type in your jpg search. For example:
  c:\pictures ext:jpg;jpeg
• From the File menu, click Export....
• Change save as type to EFU Everything File list.
• Choose a filename and click Save.
• From the File menu, click Open File list....
• Select your file list from above and click Open.
• Type in the following search:
  dmdupe:
• From the File menu, click Export....
• Change save as type to EFU Everything File list.
• Choose a new size-dupe filename and click Save.
• From the File menu, click Open File list....
• Select your file list from above and click Open.
• Type in the following search:
  sizedupe:
• Sort results by size descending.
  This will give you a list of possibly duplicated photos.
• When you are done with the results, close the file list:
• From the File menu, click Close file list.

There are better programs out there to do this.

[phototaker]

Thanks so much. I will give your instructions a go.