Today let’s see how we can scan photos that belong to the PEF, PTX, PXN and R3D type, and delete them through a comprehensive and speedy solution. We will be looking at the manual way out as well as an automated method as well.
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PEF
PEF stands for the Pentax Electronic Image file. It is commonly used by Pentax digital cameras that are widely used by commercial photographers to shoot photos. As an unprocessed image file, the contents are stored in an unedited form. It is classified as a Raw file format. This file can be opened by a special editing program that comes with the purchase of a Pentax digital camera. You can grab it from its official website. You can also use Windows Live Photo Gallery, or other third-party software like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Elements, Able RAWer, UFRaw, to view and process these files.
PTX
PTX is yet another RAW file format from Pentax. PTX files contain information in exactly the same form as captured by your Pentax cameras. It is an unprocessed image file and can be opened through the PTX viewing app that comes with your digital camera. It can also be opened by multiple third-party image viewers.
PXN
PXN is a Logitech Fotoman Pixtura Photo. It is an unprocessed, RAW image captured by Logitech Fotoman digital camera. PXN images are typically in black and white colors with only lower resolution. You can use the developer kit that you got with the camera to open PXN files.
R3D
R3D is a proprietary file format of Redcode RAW. It is commonly used to shoot images from RED Digital Cameras, Red Epic Dragon, Red Scarlet and Red Epic. The data stored in R3D files consists of Wrapper, camera configurations, and other unprocessed RAW data stored by your camera and it’s sensor. In addition to Wrapper, you can also find other metadata supporting the file, color code information, etc. It is possible to map color space using Redcode’s own Redcine-X Pro software.
Find Duplicate RAW Photos
Method 1: Manually Sort & Identify Duplicates
There are different ways of finding duplicate RAW images. One of the most commonly used methods to find duplicates is to use Windows Search. The search feature in Windows allows you to sort files using different parameters (such as name, size, etc). Use the Name parameter and sort files alphabetically to identify duplicates. Of course, this method has its own drawbacks. Skip this method and jump over to the next method to get faster, and more accurate results.
If you still want to try out this method, here is what you need to do.
- Open This PC/ Computer.
- Open the drive/ folder that contains your RAW image files.
- Locate the downward arrow on the Ribbon interface of your screen. Ignore if the Ribbon is already expanded.
- Select View and choose Details.
- Now, click the Sort by drop-down icon and choose the Name parameter.
Sorting the images by their name - Find and take action on duplicates that appear with similar names. For example: IMG001.PEF, IMG001- Copy(2).PEF, IMG001- Copy(3).PEF, etc. It is recommended that you DO NOT directly delete any of these files without reviewing them. Blindly deleting any files can cause unexpected data loss.
Method 2: The Most Accurate & Easy Way to Find Duplicates
The second method is the easiest and safest one. With advanced technology and use of hashing algorithms, you can find thousands of duplicate RAW images within minutes. PictureEcho is a user-friendly tool that does this task for you while giving you an option to view file previews, use various selection patterns. With just a few clicks, you can get rid of duplicate images- whether they are stored in the same drive/ folder, or in another.
3 simple steps are all that you need to fix duplicate files on your HDD:
- Visit the PictureEcho official website and download the setup file.
- Double-click the downloaded file and install the program on your computer. Once the installation is over, launch PictureEcho.
- The header part of the program user interface provides you options to add new directories for scan, exclude any subdirectories from the scan, select the scan type etc.
- Once you’ve added required paths, choose between Exact Match and Similar Match. Exact Match compares files bit by bit, pixel by pixel. Similar Match, on the other hand, detects closely resembling images. With Similar Match, you can detect a huge number of similar images by trying out all the Similar Match levels 1 by 1. Click the Similarity Settings link to select the scan level.
Choose a Similar Scan level of your choice - Once you’re done setting up your scan, hit the Start Search button. The scan is designed to be super fast and accurate and gets over very soon.
- When the scan is over, you will be able to see image thumbnails with basic information about each file: File Name, Extension, Size and Path. A preview also appears on the right for the selected image, if you check the Show Preview option just under the Start Search button.
The scan results will be laid out like this - Click on Select Duplicates and choose the selection criteria of your choice to retain images. PE is built with helpful selection criteria that mark images located in a specific directory, newest/ oldest images in each duplicate group, bigger/ smaller images in each duplicate group, high/ low-resolution images in each duplicate group, and so on. Remember that PE will always leave one file unchecked in each duplicate group, and this image will be retained while all the others will be processed in the next step.
- After making your choice in the last step, click on Select Action. Now you can choose if you want to delete the selected duplicate images for good or move them all to a folder. If you want to move them, you can select that folder in the subsequent dialog.
