When you delete photos to make room in the memory of your smartphone or digital cameras, you no longer have the possibility to recover the photos in a sort of "file basket" as happens in Windows or Mac; this means that once you press the "delete" button, the photo disappears and there are no options to restore them and make them visible again in a simple way. However, the deleted photos are not completely lost: they are still in the memory, ready to be overwritten by new files that will be generated.
In order to recover the deleted photos, we will have to use a file recovery program that recognizes the presence of the photos on the memory card, restoring them even if they have been deleted (within a certain period of time).
Let's find out together the best programs to recover deleted photos on smartphones and digital cameras .
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How to recover deleted photos from cell phones and digital cameras
The success of the recovery operation depends on a number of factors, but above all it depends on how much the digital camera was used after deleting some images.
As we mentioned in the introduction, the deleted photos are not immediately physically eliminated, but the space assigned to them is labeled as writeable so each new shot made could lead to the cancellation of a photo or parts of photos deleted.
So timing is everything: finding photographs deleted after filling the memory several times with new shots could be almost impossible, while acting a few minutes after accidental deletion usually allows a good recovery.
Let's see together the best free programs that we can use on PC to recover deleted photos.
1) Recuva
One of the best programs we can use to recover accidentally deleted photos is Recuva, from the same software house as CCleaner; the program is available in a portable version (so we don't even have to install it) from here -> Recuva Portable .
Once the ZIP file has been downloaded, simply extract it to the desktop or any other folder of your choice and start the Recuva executable .exe to start the recovery wizard.
Select in the window for choosing the type of images file, then click Next to open the screen where you can choose the location of the device on which we want to recover the deleted photos (the smartphone, the camera or the memory card already connected to the PC).
Once the path is specified, click Next and in the final screen select Deep scan to obtain a very effective recovery (at the expense of the scan speed, which will be much slower).
At the end of the scan the program will show you all the image files that it managed to recover from the path provided, indicating the ability to recover the single file with colors (fully recoverable green, fairly recoverable yellow, poorly recoverable orange and unrecoverable red).
We select the files to be recovered (perhaps helping us with the preview of the same) and click on Recover to save the deleted files in a new path.
2) Digicam Photo Recovery
Among the best photo recovery software there is Digicam Photo Recovery, a free and very simple program that allows you to find deleted image files from USB sticks, memory cards, cameras and smartphones that can be connected to the PC.
We can download it for free from here -> Digicam Photo Recovery .
The program recognizes the device connected to the computer in the same way it is indicated in Windows Explorer, so just select the device from which we want to recover photos in the drop-down menu and press the Find my images button to start the process recovery.
Compared to other similar programs, Digcam Photo Recovery is really simple to use for anyone since a button is enough to start the complete recovery of deleted images.
The program detects and recognizes most USB storage devices, Android smartphones and cameras.
After pressing the Find my images button Digicam asks to indicate the folder in which to save the photos that will be eventually recovered.
You can stop the recovery at any time by pressing the Cancel button.
3) Photorec
If Digicam and Recuva should fail, you can use other software including the famous Photorec, a very powerful free and open source program, capable of recovering virtually any type of image even from partially damaged devices and memories.
The program can be downloaded for free from here -> Photorec .
Once downloaded, simply install it on the PC and start the graphical interface program qphotorec_win.exe, which starts the interface created specifically for the program (which normally acts at the terminal level).
Once the program is opened, we will find ourselves with an interface similar to the one shown below.
Making sure we have connected the device (smartphone or digital camera) or the memory card from which to recover the deleted photos, we select the right drive among those available at the top of the program, we select FAT / NTFS and Whole, we indicate the recovery folder files by clicking Browse and finally clicking Search .
The search for image files will be quite slow, but this program has worked in many cases even on completely damaged file systems, difficult to find another one so powerful.
At the end of the scan we will have all the deleted image files directly in the folder indicated on the start screen, we will only have to open it to see the recovered photos.
4) DiskDigger
Another good program that we can use to recover deleted photos from mobile phones and digital cameras is DiskDigger, available for free download from here -> DiskDigger .
The program is very simple to install and use: once installed on Windows, all we have to do is open it, select the drive or device where we intend to recover the photos and click Next; we indicate the folder where to save the recovered files and start the recovery process, which will proceed quite slowly (given the type of deep scan it performs on the file system).
At the end we will have our photos recovered in the indicated folder.
5) Lazesoft Recovery Suite
Among the most complete programs to recover files, Lazesoft Recovery Suite certainly stands out, downloadable for free for personal use from here -> Lazesoft Recovery Suite .
Among the many programs included in the suite we can use Data recovery, which will allow us to recover files deleted by mistake, just use one of the options offered ( Fast Scan, Undelete or Deep Scan ).
Choosing the preferred recovery option, all we have to do is select the partition or drive on which to act (even smartphone or memory of a camera) and wait for the scan to end.
Eventually we will be able to view all the recovered files, proceeding with their recovery.
READ ALSO: Best programs to restore photos
