Guides

Organizing a lifetime of photos, step by step

Practical, tested guides from the project that started PictureAttic — no fluff, written from doing it for real on nearly half a million photos.

How to find & remove duplicate photos without losing the ones you want

Why duplicates pile up, the crucial difference between exact copies and look-alike shots, and the safe way to remove only true duplicates — with a report proving nothing unique was lost.

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How to organize photos from old hard drives, phones & backups

Why file dates go wrong after copying and how EXIF capture dates fix it, a folder scheme that stays sane, de-duplicating overlapping backups — and doing it all privately on your own computer.

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How to organize a Google Takeout photos export

Why a Takeout export arrives as dozens of zips, albums duplicated across year folders and stray JSON — and how to fold it into one clean library sorted by date and camera.

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How to download and organize your iCloud photos

How to get your photos out of iCloud, why the download is a jumble of HEIC files and duplicates, and how to fold them into one library sorted by date and camera.

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How to sort your photos by date taken (not the file date)

Why copied and downloaded photos lose their real date, how EXIF “date taken” works, and how to sort thousands of photos into the right year automatically.

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How to back up photos from your phone to your computer

The reliable ways to copy photos and videos off an iPhone or Android — and how to keep them as one organized, de-duplicated library instead of a dumping ground.

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