Help!! Is there a way to get damaged pictures restored like they were before?

kitten11178 · Sep 6, 2011

I just got a new camera and memory card for my birthday. My daughter turned one about a week ago. I just plugged up my camera to my computer to take all the pics off of it and up load them in a book I was going to have printed and sent to guest as a thank you. When I copyed them to the computer and tryed to open them I was told that they were corrupt by one program I use and the other shows some of the pics perfect, some half of it is gray and others most of them are gray. Thought that it might be the camera so I took the card out and placed it directly in the computer and they're still the same. Is there a way to get the pics back to the way they looked when taken? I can look at them on the camera for lik a second, but then it goes blank and says file contains no image data. Help what can I do?

Zrock · Sep 6, 2011

Have you tried to copy them over to your computer? Copy and paste leaving the originals on the card. I have seen it before were things were corupt on a card or memory stick but once they were on the computer they were fine. Did you format the card before use in the camera?

480sparky · Sep 6, 2011

The most important step right now is to NOT USE THAT MEMORY CARD for any more shooting!

After that, you'll need to look into some sort of recovery software. There's freeware on the 'net you can download and try. If the image are important enough, you may need to pony up and send the card to a recovery specialist.

thomas30 · Sep 12, 2011

Yes, The restoration of damaged pictures are possible by using some repair tool. Last time, I used Stellar JPEG repair tool to repair my JPEG images. But, It only repairs JPEG images.

KmH · Sep 12, 2011

Some memory card best practices:

Format the card in the camera, not on the computer, so the FAT (File Allocation Table) in the card controller is formattted properly for that specific camera make and model. Re-Format the card after verifying all the photos on it uploaded successfully. Re-formatting not only re-writes the FAT, it also identifies, and makes unusable, any bad memory adresses.

Use a card reader to upload the photos to the computer. If the camera battey is low when trying to upload, image files can get corrupted during the upload.

Be sure to read the camera user's manual. The user's manual usually needes to read cover-to-cover several times, and kept handy for reference.