I screwed up--Big Time

[jvgig]

So I just got back from France & Italy with 1200 pics. Several of my friends wanted me to post them online so I figured I would make the file sizes smaller to save uploading time. Firstly, to ensure that my orginals would be safe, I made a copy of all of the pictures to another folder called "small Europe" instead of just "Europe" thinking that that would be easy enough for me to tell the difference. So, I went through and bumped up the jpeg compression on "small Europe", and figured I would just resize them to 600x800. So I made my new action, quickly went through the process only to come to a file that ended up as a read only which caused the automation to stop. So I went through on the "small Europe" folder and changed the access info and redid the action on "small Europe". I began uploading the images to my free flickr account only to find that I could only do 200 at a time as I am unwilling to pay, so I was bummed to begin with. Then later, after doing some computer maintenance since my bothers were left with the pc while I was away for 2 weeks, I went to my originals to do some work only to notice that the file size was 37kb on the image. Confused, as the files are normally north of 3mb, I looked at a few more and the first 2/3 of my original images got resized to 600x800 as well as all of the files in "small Europe". Needless to say I have not been happy. :banghead:

Is there any way to restore some of the detail to the shots. I realize that the resize is probably permanent, but is there anyway to undo some of the compression? (I took it from 12 to 5 in photoshop)

Fortunately, the images from the trip were more of an experiment with lighting and composition than actual photographs for printing, so I did not lose too much in terms of quality when viewed on a computer monitor. After all, I only had a few shots that I would have even considered having printed. So I only really lost about 20 good shots, and since I lost the first 2/3, the last 1/3, which consisted of many of the better shots, is still in its original form.

Next time, the orginals will be stored in a different folder from the copies and on a different drive with backup. Always learning the hard way. :meh:

Sorry for the rant, but it has been a rough day.

 

[Rachelsne]

There are some enlarging programs on the market-names escape me at the moment, but I have heard good results.

It must be frustrating, hopefully someone has a better answer than me

 

[Garbz]

That sucks big time, it's horrid to lose photos, especially that many.

The program Rachelsne is probably thinking about is Genuine Fractals Pro, but while it does wonders it can't work magic. It is unfortunate that we learn this way, but I feel your pain. I have done this before on a hardware level, mixed up memory cards and formatted the wrong one. Now my cards are numbered.

 

[dEARlEADER]

Can't you just restore your computer to the day you downloaded the original images?

 

[shorty6049]

or try to recover the files form a memory card using PC inspector.

 

[jvgig]

I have my restore set to update at midnight as I am already very low on disk space, so that option is past. I did not know that that could undo file changes, I thought it just reset system settings. Something to look into for the future.

The memory card has been used several times since unfortunately and it was only a 256 card so the transfer from laptop, which has no system restore that I can access, took a while.

Oh well, I guess this was just a learning experience. At least I still have the pictures and can see what I did correctly and incorrectly which is much more valuable than being able to see every brick on the top of the towers of Notre Dame. Ill just have to think of it as saving me $50 in printing costs for just above average images that will be replaced in a few months anyway by better shots.