The simplest technique is to open a Finder window and right-click the Pictures folder under Favorites, choosing Get Info. If you’re not sure just how much space your photo collection is consuming on your Mac, there are two ways to figure it out. I’ve used both apps, as well as many others, and can help you choose the one that’s best for your needs…

That’s an incredible amount of wasted space attributable to duplicates, so it’s no surprise that a $1 utility called Duplicate Photos Fixer Pro has recently become the #1 paid Mac App Store app, while a superior alternative called PhotoSweeper ($10) is in the top 50. After installing OS X 10.10.3, the new Photos app converted my 90GB Aperture library into a 126GB Photos library, and left both on my hard drive.

Particularly after installing OS X 10.10.3 with Apple’s new Photos app, you might be surprised to learn that you’ve lost a lot of hard drive space, and that there are suddenly tons of duplicate photos on your Mac. Today’s How-To is focused on something very specific but with a lot of optimization potential: trimming down your Mac’s photo library. I’ve focused a lot over the last few months on helping readers to speed up and optimize Apple’s Macs - everything from adding RAM to recovering hard drive space and upgrading old hard drives to faster SSDs.

Mac photos delete duplicates