i'm more than sure that i have duplicate pictures in my galleries. does anyone here use a program to find duplicate pictures that they would recommend me using? I've used a few in the past but they're hideously slow to use and very inefficient

Well, two things.

First, I use Auslogics Duplicate File Finder as it is available in a free version and even the free version comes with a nice set of options.
The only problems are that it has no dedicated duplicate image support, means you don't get a small preview of the picture and it doesn't find duplicate pictures with different resolutions.

Second, you realize what exactly you want the programs to do?
Programs can't look at a image and say, "ok, this is a fox, let's see if we find this fox again." they have to do this on a bit by bit basis. To speed this up they use most often either md5 checksums, wich need to be calculated first, or something similiar but it is still a shit ton to calculate.

Now, you can do something to speed it up a bit, one search for duplicate filenames alone and then a search for duplicate filebodies, however that will take a long time although it gives the best results.

NotMeNotYou said:
Now, you can do something to speed it up a bit, one search for duplicate filenames alone and then a search for duplicate filebodies

Not to mention searching for identical file sizes.

actually, at one point i had a program that would check similar images, and show thumbnails. it would check for visually similar, even if they were different resolutions or filetypes, then it displayed them side by side with the difference stats. its just that i lost it in a harddrive crash a few years ago and i can't remember its name ;_;

Hm, maybe this one ?

found my old program :D in case anyone is interisted in trying it out, it's called visipics