multiplication of .jpg's

A

andrewhorwitz

Registered
hello, images scanned in canon photostudio and saved as jpg's keep multiplying on my mac. specifically, I scan images and save them in a folder called "archive". when I need these images I open "archive" and drag the images to a new folder called "current". I do this because "archive" contains 1000's of images and is unwieldy to work in. both folders are on my desktop. when the image is dragged into "current" the original image remains in "archive" and a another copy of the image is generated and saved in "archive" as well. a single image thus becomes three images, and so on... what can be done to alleviate this issue? thank you, andrewhorwitz
 
Holding down the Command key while dragging will move rather than copy the file.
Holding Option key makes a copy regardless of where you are dragging.
 
tried it both ways. now I have three more copies. one in the destination folder and two more in the origin folder. any other ideas? andrew.
 
You said the folders are on the desktop but are they from the same volume/partition?

Does this happen with any other files or just the scanned images in that folder?

Are these images a specific Canon format or jpg?

It's possible your finder.plist is corrupted. You could move it to the desktop and see if things work as they should. User/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist.
While your at it, move out the two folder actions plists also.

If that doesn't help try creating a new account in System Prefs and see if the same thing happens. This will help narrow possibilities.

Doing an Archive and Install would be a last resort.
 
kbear said:
You said the folders are on the desktop but are they from the same volume/partition?

Does this happen with any other files or just the scanned images in that folder?

Are these images a specific Canon format or jpg?

It's possible your finder.plist is corrupted. You could move it to the desktop and see if things work as they should. User/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist.
While your at it, move out the two folder actions plists also.

If that doesn't help try creating a new account in System Prefs and see if the same thing happens. This will help narrow possibilities.

Doing an Archive and Install would be a last resort.
Click to expand...
I appreciate your suggestions but am a bit of a novice at this. both of the folders were on an external hard drive used with my pc. when I switched to a mac, these folders were moved to my desktop. I believe that each is on the external hard drive as well as the mac hd. as for partition, yes, the same. volume? not sure what you mean by that. what is the finder.plist and how does it come into play? I tried downloading an image from the internet and the problem did not occur. the software used to scan these images is canon scan ware but saved as .jpg. the action that I'm performing is identical to what I did on the pc for years with no issues ever. andrew.
 
Sorry to take so long to reply, been away.

Partitions are divided parts of a drive and volume can refer to either partitions or if a drive is not partitioned, the whole drive itself. I apologize if I confused you.

From your description it sounds like you might have mounted the archive folder on the Mac desktop by opening it from the external. Then you created a new folder called current on the Mac desktop. Dragging from the archive to current under that situation would cause a copy since the archive folder is technically on the external. If this isn't the case... oh, well. IF your external is formatted as DOS it might have something to do with the third copy though I really am just guessing.

IF this isn't the situation, try removing the finder.plist. It is a preference file that holds certain information about how things are handled while in the Finder... which is the basic application that is running while you are moving things about your Mac and looking for things in the windows, list view, icon view, etc. By removing the plist to another folder or to the Trash (don't empty it). You will probably have to log out and back in to make the Finder create a new preference file. If you have made specific choices as to what size the icons are or the text for files, folders, you may have to redo them as they will be set to whatever default setting comes with the OS. Then try to move some of those files and see if there is any difference. If no difference you could put the finder.plist back if you wish. The system may ask you if you wish to replace the older, etc. and you may have to use your password to do so, not sure.

Otherwise I don't know of any particular reason why you are getting those duplicates. Maybe you could describe your drive setup a bit more clearly and how you created those folders.
 
my fingers are crossed but this seemed to do the job. I copied the original archive file from my pc onto a flash drive, and then installed the files into a newly created folder on the desktop of the mac called archive backup. all files transfered without duplication. I then moved the original archive file into trash, and took the backup of archive, on my external hard drive, and moved it into trash as well. the new folder, entitled archive backup, has no duplication. prior to emptying the trash I'll play with this for a while but it seems good to go. thank you for your help. andrew.
 
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