Duplicates are inevitable in family archives
If you've been digitizing old family photos over time — scanning a few here, importing some there, capturing with your phone at a family gathering — you've probably ended up with duplicates. Same photo scanned twice at different resolutions. A phone capture and a flatbed scan of the same print. A true duplicate sitting beside a better scan.
Manually hunting through hundreds of photos to find candidates is tedious. Nostalgia does the detection work, but cleanup stays review-first: you choose the Keeper before anything is merged.
How duplicate detection works
When you upload a photo, Nostalgia generates a perceptual hash (pHash) — a compact fingerprint based on what the image looks like, not its file properties. This means it catches duplicates even when file sizes, resolutions, or formats differ.
The system clusters duplicates into exact duplicates and same-print recaptures. Restored outputs and source Originals stay linked as Versions of the same photo, not as duplicate photos to merge.
Finding duplicates in your Archive
There are three ways Similar Photos appear:
- Restore Progress & Review — the Similar Photos lane shows detected review groups across your collection. Each group shows the candidates side by side with a recommended Keeper
- Manual Mark similar — select 2+ photos in Archive, tap Similar, and Nostalgia creates a Restore review group instead of merging immediately
- Scan review — when importing or scanning a batch of photos, likely recaptures can be flagged before you start restoring
Review, choose Keeper, then merge
Instead of just deleting the worse copy, Nostalgia recommends the strongest candidate as the Keeper and shows why. You can accept that recommendation or choose a different Keeper before confirming.
After you confirm a merge, Nostalgia transfers metadata from the absorbed copies — tags, album memberships, collection assignments, favorites, notes, shares, vault links, versions, and provenance — onto the Keeper. The absorbed copies are soft-deleted with a recovery window, so nothing is permanently lost until trash is emptied.
Tips for keeping duplicates under control
- Open Similar Photos in Restore Progress & Review after any large import — especially if you're bringing in photos from multiple sources like Google Photos, a scanner, and phone captures
- Use Mark similar when you notice two photos that belong in a review group. The grid action creates the group; it does not merge immediately
- Don't worry about restored versions — the Original and restored Keeper stay together as Versions of one photo, not confusing duplicates
- Merge is reversible within the trash recovery window, so you can recover absorbed copies if something was merged incorrectly