Photography Tip—How to Restore Pictures Deleted from a Memory Card

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Digital photography technology is convenient and provides you with an enormous capacity to shoot and store many pictures on your camera’s memory cards. If you’re not careful, however, those thousands of pictures on multiple cards can be lost forever for a number of reasons. You can accidentally delete them when you meant to erase other pictures. It could also happen because you didn’t format the card correctly. Camera batteries or its systems can malfunction. If you’re not paying attention, then files can be compromised if you remove a card during an active operation to store a new picture.

Fortunately, there are a number of software programs that will restore your deleted digital photos. Some of those programs are free and others can be obtained at a reasonable cost. The free programs have some limitations, such as only recovering JPEG files, but not your RAW files. Purchase other programs and you can retrieve video and animation files. Any of them can easily be found with an online search.

Generally, the restoration software programs are easy to use, but read the instructions carefully and don’t skip any steps. Some of the programs include more than one recovery level. Although the better restoration programs produce better results, none of them is guaranteed and may only partially restore your digital photos.

When you find a few such programs during your online research, it’s a good idea to read all of their Web sites before using a free program or purchasing one. Some will provide you with a 30-day free trial, while others could limit how much you can restore.

Another convenient option is to pay a professional recovery service, especially if you’re not ready to tackle the project or don’t have the time to do it yourself, or your rescue attempt didn’t work as well as you hoped. Be prepared to pay handsomely for professional assistance.

You should find, however, that many of the digital photo restoration programs have just a few simple steps. One of them works as follows:

  • Use a memory-card reader connected to your computer.

  • Once you insert the card from which the photos were deleted, create a folder into which you’ll put your restored files.

  • Open the software, which will recognize the memory card.

  • Click on the “OK” button and the software identifies and restores your digital photos.

  • Once the process is completed, you’ll see a folder that contains the rescued files, which you can then view.

  • Copy that folder’s content to the one you first made to accept the restored photos.

  • If you have any problems, then many of the programs’ manufacturers have help desks and/or FAQ sections on their Web sites.

Knowing how to restore deleted pictures is another essential skill if you want to be a complete digital photographer.