Find the duplicates and bursts in this folder and keep only the best frame from each group.
Every shoot carries frames that are almost the same photo: a burst of one moment, a re-take of the same pose, the same file imported twice from two cards.
imagic groups those and scores within the group, so the question stops being which of these four thousand and becomes which of these four.
What happens, step by step
Ingest everything
scan_directory picks up both cards. Re-scanning is safe, and files already known are recognised rather than duplicated in the library.
Group and score
analyze_photos detects near-duplicates and bursts alongside the quality pass.
Keep the best of each run
The auto-cull marks the strongest frame in a group as the keeper and the rest as rejects, all reversible.
Why it is worth doing this way
Duplicate frames are the biggest single waste of time in a manual cull, because each one demands a comparison you have already made. Grouping turns thousands of decisions into dozens.
The tools behind it
Nothing here is a black box. This workflow is these tools, in this order, and you can read exactly what each one does:
Getting set up
You need imagic Max and an MCP client. The free 7-day trial includes Max with no card, and connecting a client takes about three minutes:
Questions
Is this exact-match deduplication?
Both: identical files imported twice, and near-duplicates such as burst frames that differ slightly.
Does it delete the rejects?
No. They are marked in the library and stay on disk until you decide otherwise.
Other things to ask for
- Score and rank photos automatically
- Cull a wedding shoot with AI
- Teach an AI your editing style
- Batch edit RAW files with an AI agent
Try it on your own shoot
Free for 7 days, everything included, no card. Then imagic Max is €99 once, with no subscription.