What should actually be happening is that if a duplicate is marked for deletion and includes pointers to the photo in one or more albums, a “symbolic link” or pointer from the marked photo to be deleted to the remaining original photo should be created before deleting the duplicate in order to preserve the “copies of the photo” that occur in “Albums” or all its pointers within albums should be remapped to the remaining original photo. Sofar so good, BUT lets say it marks photo #2 (the duplicate) for removal and a photo inside an “Album” points to photo #2 (the duplicate) then the photo in the “Album” will also be gone. Photos Duplicate Cleaner - seems to work smarter, it only looks for true duplicates inside the “originals” folder of the library, ignoring duplicates (pointers in the albums) It also AutoMarks duplicates from its discovery.

Therefore I’m dismissing PhotoSweeper as a workable solution. BUT if you let it delete the original photo, then all other occurrences of the photo that might be in albums will also be gone. (The album will have a pointer left that points to a deleted original and therefore can’t be displayed)

Its “AutoMark” feature marks photos in albums or the actual original photo for deletion. PhotoSweeper - finds all duplicate photos regardless whether they are stored as the original photo or displayed in “Albums”. I’ve tried using the “PhotoSweeper” and “Photos Duplicate Cleaner” apps, but neither one removes duplicates correctly. Copies of these photos that are put in “Albums” are actually not photos but instead pointers back to the source photos. The “Photos” app stores the original photos in the “originals” folder and utilizes a sqlite DB to manage pointers to photos inside “Albums”

Photos allows for creating “Albums” that are made up of photos stored in the top level “Photos Folder”. I’ve been struggling with finding the best method to delete duplicate photos within my “Photos Library”

Remove duplicate photos mac os