Recover SEVERELY damaged and PRECIOUS photo?!

[♥Charlotte♥]

Hi All,

To view my previous thread on this, see 'Important image is corrupted - help!'
Didn't get many replies and some things have changed since then so this is basically to sum up all the additional details in one thread without keep adding replies to my old thread.

WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?

Without boring the hell out of you, on Friday I accidentally (AND VEY STUPIDLY) deleted an INCREDIBLY PRECIOUS photo (on my phone). I managed to recover it using ZAR Software, however it must have gotten corrupted or damaged somehow along the way. (Heard this is popular when using recovery softwares...) I'm not talking the whole 'half of my image is missing' or 'it's black and white' ... I mean SEVERELY corrupted. No image. The thumbnail is very clearly visible on MY PHONE, but when I go to click it,m it says 'cannot read file'. Whilst on my COMPUTER, the thumbnail is a simple icon, and it says 'no preview available'.

WHAT HAVE I TRIED ALREADY?

Flaming heck, too much to list no doubt! I very much doubt that I can remember every single software that I have tried but if you do post one in a suggestion it will jog my memory of whether I have or haven't already tried it out.

PixRecovery - The demo said that the image couldn't be recovered.

IrfanView - When I tried to open the image it said 'file contains no image'.

PictureDoctor - Just a simple message saying that it couldn't recover and that there was something missing.

StellarPheonixPhotoRecovery - AHA! The closest I have come to victory. The image DID appear to recover in the little preview, with no marks or damage or anything. BUT you have to BUY the programme to save it and I am still in school, I wouldn't be allowed to buy something like that for ONE photo that I STUPIDLY deleted. Is this proof that my photo CAN be recovered though?

There you go. I think I tried a few more, but I cannot remember - just note that none of them successfully worked! I am tearing my hair out here, this isn't just a stupid photo, and it definately isn't one that can be taken again. I am never going to see this person again, this was a MEMORY. Everyone else is plastering photos over facebook with this person and I am going through hell trying to get mine back! Serious help is needed!

IF YOU TELL ME THERE IS NO FREE, POSSIBLE WAY TO GET THIS BACK IT WON'T BE YOUR FAULT BUT I WILL BE UPSET. IF YOU SAY THAT THERE IS A WAY TO GET IT BACK BUT I WILL HAVE TO PAY THEN I WON'T BE PAYING, BUT I GUESS I'LL FEEL BETTER KNOWING THAT IT'S REPAIRABLE. ALL I WANT IS THIS ONE PHOTO BACK! CAN'T BELIEVE HOW HARD THIS IS BEING MADE!

Thanks in advance for ANY HELP what-so-ever! I appreciate it

[crazyfly1]

Re: Recover SEVERELY damaged and PRECIOUS photo?!

Charlotte, try pandora recovery, that's what I use. I would also suggest taking the storage card (assuming you saved it there originally) out of your phone and not using it anymore until you recover the pic. Technology advances and who knows, in 5 years you may be able to recover the image easily, but, not if you write over it for 5 years.

[srbh7559]

Re: Recover SEVERELY damaged and PRECIOUS photo?!

sounds horrible, for next time use some cloud storage facility like Dropbox or Sky Drive or any other... this is only what I could suggest. by the way I've been through this situation...

[Flotsam2]

Re: Recover SEVERELY damaged and PRECIOUS photo?!

If you're working on a Mac you could try Graphic Converter.

http://www.lemkesoft.com/

[pixelpaintbrush]

This is interesting. I know its a very old thread but still....Recently I had some files to try to salvage. The images are ALL corrupt. There are many of them . The owner thinks the camera malfunctioned. Anyway, I have run them through every poss thing I can think of and the best I could manage was to put them through jpeg medic viewer (a free program) and use the resulting files to reconstruct a semblance of an image for each one. The files in some cases had a picture but massively corrupt with bands and blotches etc but in most of them there is very little original picture left. The free program will allow viewing the thumbnails and if there is any picture left in the main body of the jpeg, it makes a composite image which can be saved. Then that at least can be viewed instead of the image being gone forever and if you have any photoshopping skills, sharpening and cleaning up helps a LOT. I tried some quite nice programs first to botch the corrupt files back together.
Nothing gave a better result so if anyone is in the position of the person who originally posted this Thread, its worth a last attempt with the little free program jpeg medic viewer which is not my program or anything to do with me but was found quite by chance by searching for solutions.

[Joep]

If a photo is corrupt after it was recovered, 9 out of 10 times it is due to incorrect recovery. Now depending on how much of the original file was recovered some form of repair may be possible, sometimes the embedded thumbnail can be extracted as demonstrated. Specially with older photos, it will be tiny and in such cases the JpegMedic tool may not be enough. In this video I do this manually, more or less: https://youtu.be/7H_fSTwEKNU.

What would be a better way is:
- Image the memory card (sector by sector drive image).
- Try recover the file again. ZAR's image recovery mode does a RAW scan. As such it tries to detect JPEG headers, and the method assumes files are in one piece in a contiguous block. If the file is not, it is fragmented. Another option is that part of the file was simply overwritten.

Some times a specialized tool may be able to piece together the fragmented photo. You can also try doing it manually. Example, tedious, and success not guaranteed: https://youtu.be/o8hmI5fP0rg