[Leica] Re: Done with picture sorting

[lrzeitlin at optonline.net (lrzeitlin@optonline.net)]

I would like to thank all those LUGers who responded to my quest for a way 
to sort through and eliminate duplicates from a database of 6000 historical 
industrial pictures. The programmers I talked to told me that it could be 
done fairly easily along some of the lines suggested, but unless I had to do 
the job repeatedly, I could do it manually long before the program was 
completed. So I used the brute force approach. So much for automation.

All of the pictures were loaded into iPhoto on my new  20" MacIntel. The 
magnification was adjusted to display 84 images at a time, each about the 
size of a 35 mm contact print. I examined each array and trashed the 
duplicates, averaging about 20 images in each set. This took about five 
minutes. Then the next block of 84 was loaded and the process was repeated. 
Scanning through the entire batch took about six hours. Another pass through 
the data base to pick up those I missed on the first go around took a couple 
more hours. While iPhoto 
isn't a great cataloging system, it does have enough manual control of the 
display to make this type of image sorting relatively easy.

It was pouring wind driven rain outside and the weather was far too nasty to 
take pictures of flowers anyway. Where is global warming when you need it?

Larry Z