Corrupt Photo/Image
Recovery Freeware

Quick Clips

• http://www.floborecovery.com/ - "Flobo PSD Recovery is a UNIQUE FREE application that performs recovery of PSD Photoshop file format to new jpg files. If your graphic files needed for your web site or graphic designed are corrupted this is the right solution."

• http://www.s2services.com/jpg-repair.zip - "...During my testing, I discovered that by adding one byte at a certain position in the jpg file the corrupted picture was restored. So all we need is a tool that would add a byte at a user-defined position. JPEG-Repair, the program I wrote, will allow you to do this..."

• http://ddsv2.xhost.ro/  - I don't know how to use it but there is a JPG artifact remover on the "Effects" Menu of DDS, under the Retouch entry.  By the way another kind of repair that can be done on JPGs is deconvolution, which is a way to get rid of motion blur in these images.  My experience with both of these, just hacking really though, is it doesn't work very well.

• http://filerecovery.biz/files/hosted-freeware/zefrjpg.zip - "Demand continues for this widely used tool, which recovers JPG images after they have been lost to a LoveLetter worm attack (or any other reason). Archive now includes an NTFS version along with the FAT version. Millions (by now perhaps billions) of files have been successfully recovered by ZefrJPG over the years."

• http://www.awaresystems.be/imaging/tiff/astifftagviewer.html - "It does not contain an actual pixel color data codec, and thus it is not sensitive to raster encoding and decoding issues, making it the ideal superfast and robust solution for discovering what TIFF tags and values are actually present in any TIFF file. Whenever a customer reports your software doesn't handle this or that particular TIFF, use AsTiffTagViewer and discover why."  May help with TIFF Files that appear to be corrupt or otherwise won't open in certain programs. Appears to be an expert level program.

• http://www.mediachance.com/digicam/hotpixels.htm  - " Hot pixels is a known problem of all CCD cameras during long exposures (1s and up). A hot pixel is created by an element with a higher rate of charge leakage
  than its neighbors.  On long exposure the leakage may cross the exposed value threshold thus producing a white dot on the image. HotPixels, the program removes such noise with preserving details."

• http://www.mediachance.com/digicam/blackframe.htm - "Hot pixels is a known problem of all CCD cameras during long exposures (1s and up). A hot pixel is created by an element with a higher rate of charge leakage
  than its neighbors. On long exposure the leakage may cross the exposed value threshold thus producing a white dot on the image. BlackFrame NR uses a black-frame method to removes such noise with preserving all
  details."

• http://luminous-landscape.com/contents/DNG-Recover-Edges.shtml - Solving a problem that few people knew even existed, Thomas Knoll, one of the original authors of Photoshop, and the creator of Adobe's Camera
  Raw, has written a free utility program which recovers all of the pixels that any supported digital camera records, whether it's hidden edges or intentionally cropped formats."

• http://udpix.free.fr/ - "This program helps to locate and fix LCD screens dead pixels. You can fix the stuck pixels by calling them to do rapid changes. You need to run this program for a couple of hours. There is no warranty on the result, but you don't really have anything to lose trying it out."

• http://www.hketech.com/JPEG-recovery/ - will give you an idea of how http://www.s2services.com/jpg-repair.zip works, because I think it's the same process.  The 15 day trial does not allow saving fixed
  pictures, but you might get an idea of the possibilities with Jpeg-repair.

• http://www.mjm.co.uk/freephotorecoverysoftware.html - The software will only recover jpg photographs from formatted memory cards, deleted photos or corrupt memory cards. It is unable to recover photos from memory cards that are not recognized by windows as a device.

More Details

Images don't generally get corrupted.  If you have one of these 3 problems freeware would appear to be the answer as even commercial solutions may be hard to find.  Jpeg-repair is difficult to use, since it is written in Dutch.

• PSD Image Repair - this section contains a neat little free program if you have this problem.

• JPG and BMP Image Repair - this section only contains expert level programs.  There is such a thing as a corrupt JPG, repairing this is difficult.  Included is also a program to work with JPG artifacts induced by blowing up the size of the photos.  The same program has a tool to "deconvulate" which supposedly can get rid of motion blur in an image.

• Tiff Image Repair - the tool here may only repair the tags or metadata of tiff images, not the images themselves.

• Specialty Image Repair Tools - there are two tools here to repair hot pixels, which are artifacts that appear when digital cameras take long exposures say of a night sky.  Light dots appear where they should not be, and seem to be an effect of the pixel auto-firing.

The Google Adsense Ads displayed on the pages should lead you to the standard commercial software and services available for the problem you are having. You can also try the commercial links by clicking on the Navigation Bar by that name on the left. It's also here.

To see if the program works before buying, always be sure to try the demos of commercial software first. Also the difference in prices for software that does the same thing, for instance recovering PowerPoint Presentations, can be a large range like with PowerPoint case $50 - 299. If possible, try several software solutions before buying.  For services, be sure there is a no data, no fee guarantee, and a recovered file preview available.

I can also provide help but am limited ethically and financially (and legally in many cases) to using freeware too. I am perfectly within bounds to use most of the existing commercial office suites to recover corrupt office files since I paid for licenses for all of them. If you need help, I charge $22 for the first half hour and $22 for unlimited time after that. You can E-mail me at socrtwo@s2services.com.