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# Find Duplicates overview

Using the Find Duplicates feature in iPhoto Library Manager consists of three main steps.

1. Searching for duplicates

The first step is to tell iPhoto Library Manager what libraries you would like to search for duplicate photos, and how you would like it to compare photos to determine whether they are duplicates or not. You can read about this step in “Starting the duplicate finding process”.

Once you start the duplicate finding process, iPhoto Library Manager will perform an analysis of your photos and try to determine which photos are duplicates of each other. The result of the analysis is a list of duplicate groups. Each duplicate group contains two or more photos which have been identified as duplicates of one another. These groups will be shown to you in iPhoto Library Manager’s duplicate browser.

2. Choosing keepers

Next, iPhoto Library Manager will choose a keeper from each duplicate group. You can customize how keepers are chosen from each duplicate group by choosing a duplicate rule, which will look at various attributes of the duplicate photos and choose one of them based on those attributes. A bunch of built-in duplicate rules are included with iPhoto Library Manager, or you can create your own custom duplicate rule. You can read about this step in “Choosing keepers with duplicate rules”.

3. Performing actions

Typically, the keeper will be the instance of the photo you want to keep around, and you will perform actions on the rest of the photos in the group. The most common action is to move the extra duplicates to the trash in iPhoto, but other actions are also available, such as flagging the photos, tagging them with a keyword, or adding them to an album. You can read about this step in “Performing actions on duplicate photos”.

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