5.2 Finding Duplicates

GQview provides a utility to find images that have similar attributes or content.

To display a new Find Duplicates Window press D or select Find duplicates from the File menu.

Adding files to be compared

Add files to be compared using drag and drop. Drop files or folders onto the Find Duplicates window to add them to the list of files to compare. When one or more folders are dropped onto the window a menu will appear allowing you to choose the desired action:

Add contents: The contents of dropped folders will added to the window.
Add contents recursive: The contents of dropped folders and all sub folders will be added to the window.
Skip folders: Ignore folders contained in the drop list.

When files are added to the window, the comparison is restarted to include the new files.

Comparison methods

The attribute to use for two images to match can be selected with the “Compare by:” drop down menu. Each method is explained below:

Name: The file name.

Size: The file size.

Date: The file date.

Dimensions: The image dimensions.

Checksum: The MD5 file checksum.

Path: The complete path to file.

Similarity (high): Very similar image content.

Similarity: Similar image content.

Similarity (low): Slightly similar image content.

Similarity (custom): Similar image content, the value to use to consider two images a match is configured in the Advanced tab of the preferences dialog by setting the “Custom similarity threshold”.

Results list

Files that match with the selected comparison method will appear in the list. Matching files are grouped in alternating color.

The order of the result list can not be changed, files will appear in the order of the search. When comparing by image content similarity, the matching groups will be sorted by order of rank starting with the files that are most similar.

A context menu is available for the result list by right clicking the mouse or pressing the Menu key when a row has the focus.

Keyboard shortcuts available in the results list:

The selection can be changed using the keyboard and mouse the same as in a file pane of the main window.

The image Dimensions column of the result list will only contain dimension information when comparing by dimensions, or when the data is easily available from memory or has been read from the cache.

Status bar

Along the bottom of the Find Duplicates window is an area that displays the count of files contained in the window, and the number of files in the result list.

The status bar will also display the status of an active compare operation using the progress bar. A compare operation involves 2 or 3 stages, depending on the type of comparison. These are the stages in order:

1) If necessary, extra data is read into memory for the comparison stage, the progress bar will indicate this stage with text that resembles “reading dimensions...”, “reading checksums...”, or “reading similarity data...”.
2) The images are compared using the selected method, the progress bar will indicate this stage with the text “comparing...”.
3) The results are sorted for display, the progress bar will indicate this stage with the text “sorting...”.

Stage 1 is only used for the Dimensions, Checksum, and Similarity compare methods.

If the time to complete a stage will be significant, an estimated time to completion will also be displayed in the progress bar. The estimated time only refers to the current stage, other stages are not included in the estimate. The time estimate is displayed using the format MINUTES:SECONDS.

Thumbnails

Thumbnails can be displayed beside each image in the result list by enabling the Thumbnails check box.

Compare two file sets

Sometimes it is useful to compare one group of files to another, different group of files. Enable this check box to compare two groups of files. When enabled a second list will appear, files can be added to this list using the same methods for the main list.

When comparing two file sets the results list will display matches between the two lists. For each match group, the first file is always from the main group, and the remaining files are always from the second group.

Drag and Drop

Drag and drop can be initiated with the primary or middle mouse buttons. Dragging a file that is selected will include all selected files in the drag. Dragging a file that is not selected will first change the selection to the dragged file, and clear the previous selection.