Grey areas, shifted bands, wrong colours? JAR finds where your photo broke, puts the picture back in place and corrects the colour. You open the photo and click Repair. For the hard cases you can step in yourself.
- Works offline: your photos never leave your PC.
- Pay once, repair as many as you like.
- Automatic first, full control when you need it.
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Made by Joep van Steen of DiskTuna, maker of JPEG-Repair, with 20+ years in photo and data recovery. Windows 10 and 11, no installation. Your original file is never changed.
COMING SOON!
What JAR does
JAR repairs JPEG photos that open, but look broken. When a few bytes of a photo go missing or get damaged, everything after that point goes wrong: the rest of the picture slides sideways, turns grey, or changes colour. The photo isn’t lost. The picture data is still there; it’s just out of place. JAR puts it back.
A JPEG is built from small tiles, stored one after another like text on a page. Damage knocks the tiles that follow out of line. JAR finds each spot where that happens, works out how far the picture moved, shifts it back and fixes the colour. It does this for every damaged spot in the photo, automatically.
Typical damage JAR repairs:
- the bottom part of the photo is grey or a single colour;
- the picture breaks into bands that are shifted sideways;
- from some point on, the colours are wrong (too pink, too green, too dark);
- photos recovered from a damaged card, USB stick or drive that look “glitched”, including photos recovered with PhotoRec, Recuva, Disk Drill and similar tools;
- photos with chunks of other data mixed in, or cut off at the end;
- photos whose header is damaged, using an intact photo from the same camera as a reference.
What it can’t do: bring back picture data that is truly gone. Where data is missing, JAR fills the gap from the row above so the rest of the photo lines up again, and small holes are hard to spot. Photos that won’t open at all because nothing of the picture data is left are beyond any repair tool.
Expect some scars on badly damaged photos. Where picture data was lost, the repair leaves traces: a thin line, a slightly blurred strip, or a small patch that doesn’t quite match. On a lightly damaged photo you’ll rarely notice them; on a badly damaged one, a few minutes with the healing brush or clone tool in a photo editor finishes the job. JAR gets the photo back in one piece; the last polish is yours.
How it works
Three steps, no technical knowledge needed:
- Open the damaged photo, or drag it onto the JAR window.
- Click Analyse. JAR cleans up the file and finds every damaged spot. Red lines on the photo show where.
- Click Repair. The repaired photo is saved next to the original as name_auto.jpg. The original stays untouched.
Most photos are done here.
When automatic isn’t perfect: assisted mode. Some photos are harder than others. On a plain wall, a clear sky or a white background, there’s little in the picture to line things up by. For those spots JAR lets you take over, one damaged spot at a time:
- pick the spot from the list, and JAR can show it zoomed in at full size;
- shift the picture left or right with + and − until it lines up;
- slide brightness and colour until the part below matches the part above;
- click Apply and see the result straight away.
JAR keeps everything it got right, so you only fix the one or two spots it couldn’t judge. A ruler and red markers show you exactly where you are.
Built-in diagnostics. A byte map, entropy graph and byte histogram show what’s inside the file: where the photo data is, where something else got mixed in, and whether a file is worth repairing at all.
Desktop software, not an upload service
Automatic like an online repair service, private and unlimited like desktop software. Most JPEG repair services online ask you to upload your photos to their server and pay per photo. JAR runs on your own PC instead.
- Your photos never leave your computer. No uploads, no copies on someone else’s server, nothing to delete afterwards. That matters for personal photos, and even more for clients’ photos.
- Pay once, repair as many as you like. No credits, no per-photo fees, no subscription.
- No upload limits on file size or number of photos. Repair a single photo or, with JAR Pro, a whole folder at once.
- Works without an internet connection, also on photos you can’t or won’t upload.
Built on 20 years of photo recovery
Photos don’t break at random. They break in the ways storage fails. For more than twenty years DiskTuna has repaired JPEGs by hand, for private clients and for other data recovery labs. Over thousands of files, the same patterns kept coming back: damage that follows the way cards, drives and disk images store data, gaps left by tools and devices that skipped over unreadable areas, and fragments of other files that ended up inside a photo.
JAR is that experience, turned into software. Before it repairs anything, JAR recognises these patterns, removes what doesn’t belong and knows where to look for what’s missing. That’s why it can repair photos that leave generic tools stuck, and why it gives you the controls to finish the job when a photo is truly hard.
For photographers and data recovery professionals: JAR Pro
A damaged card rarely means one damaged photo. After a recovery you’re often looking at hundreds of JPEGs, some fine, many broken, and a client waiting. JAR Pro is made for that.
Batch repair a whole folder. Point JAR at a folder and click Start. Every JPEG goes through the same automatic repair, without questions. Repairs land in a JAR_repaired folder; photos without damage are left out, so what you get is the work that was done. A log lists every file: repaired, no damage, or skipped, and why. Then you know exactly which few photos to open in assisted mode. Photos with a damaged header? Give JAR one intact photo from the same camera and it uses that for the whole batch.
Extract the JPEG from RAW photos. Almost every RAW file carries a JPEG inside it, often at full size. JAR Pro pulls the largest one out of every RAW in a folder: Canon CR2 and CR3, Nikon NEF, Sony ARW, Fujifilm RAF, Olympus ORF, Panasonic RW2, Pentax, Leica, Sigma, DNG and more. It works on RAW files that are damaged and won’t open in a RAW editor, as long as the embedded JPEG survived. Where the camera leaves the Exif data out of that JPEG, JAR copies it from the RAW, so date, camera, exposure and rotation come along and portrait shots show upright.
Why pros choose JAR:
- It saves hours. Automatic repair does the bulk; you only touch what needs a human eye.
- It’s non-destructive. Originals are never changed; output goes to its own folder; read-only sources are no problem. No per-photo credits, no uploads, no file-size limits.
- It recognises recovery damage. JAR knows the traces that imaging tools, card readers and failing devices leave in photos, and cleans them up before the repair.
- It shows its work. Gap list, logs and diagnostics tell you what was wrong and what was done.
- It comes from the trade. Built by a data recovery specialist who has repaired JPEGs for clients for years, and the maker of JPEG-Repair.
JAR or JAR Pro?
Both repair exactly the same way. The difference is what you do with them: one photo at a time for your own pictures, or folders full of them for clients.
| JAR | JAR Pro | |
|---|---|---|
| For | your own photos, one at a time | photographers, labs and repair services |
| Automatic repair | ✓ | ✓ |
| Assisted mode for hard cases | ✓ | ✓ |
| Header repair from a reference photo | ✓ | ✓ |
| Diagnostics (byte map, entropy, histogram) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Full-size repaired photos | ✓ | ✓ |
| Batch repair of a whole folder | ✓ | |
| Extract JPEGs from RAW photos, with Exif | ✓ | |
| Use for paid work | ✓ |
Already have JPEG-Repair? Your JPEG-Repair license key works in JAR.
Try it free first
The free trial is the complete program: automatic repair, assisted mode, diagnostics. You see the full repair on screen before you buy. The only limit: the trial saves the repaired photo as a smaller, lower-quality copy (up to 1024 pixels). Buy a license and you save it at full size, with the same result.
Download the Free Trial
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Get JAR Pro
Frequently asked questions
My JPG opens halfway and then turns grey. Can JAR fix it?
Usually, yes: open it in JAR, click Analyse and then Repair. A grey lower half usually means a few bytes of the photo are missing or damaged, so the rest of the picture data is out of place. JAR finds that spot, moves the picture data back and corrects the colour.
The bottom of my photo is shifted and has the wrong colours. Why, and can it be fixed?
Because part of the file is damaged, and everything after that point is read out of place. A JPEG stores its picture as a chain of small tiles; one broken link shifts or discolours all the tiles after it. JAR repairs the chain at each broken link, so in most cases it can be fixed.
My photos recovered with PhotoRec, Recuva or Disk Drill look broken. Can JAR repair them?
Yes, that’s the main thing it’s made for, whether they came from a damaged SD card, USB stick or drive. Recovered photos often have small holes, chunks of other data mixed in, or a cut-off end. JAR’s clean-up step removes data that doesn’t belong, and the repair puts the picture back in line.
Will JAR change my original photo?
No. JAR always saves the repair as a new file and never writes to the original.
Do I have to upload my photos?
No. JAR is software for your own PC; your photos never leave your computer, and it works without an internet connection.
Can JAR recover deleted photos?
No, that’s a job for recovery software, which finds deleted photos on a card or drive. JAR repairs the photos that come out of a recovery broken: grey, shifted or wrongly coloured.
Can every corrupt JPEG be repaired?
No. JAR can put picture data back in place and correct colour, but it can’t recreate data that is truly gone. When almost nothing of the picture data is left, no tool can bring the photo back.
Will the repaired photo look exactly like the original?
Often yes, but not always. When picture data was lost, some traces of the damage can stay visible: we call them scars. They’re usually small and easy to touch up in any photo editor.
Why does one photo repair perfectly and a similar one doesn’t?
Because the damage lands in a different spot. Damage in a detailed part of the photo is easy to line up; damage in a plain area such as a wall or sky gives JAR little to go by. For those spots, assisted mode lets you finish the repair by hand.
Can I repair many photos at once?
Yes, with JAR Pro. Batch mode repairs every JPEG in a folder and writes a log of what it did.
How do I get a JPEG out of a RAW file (CR2, CR3, NEF, ARW)?
Use JAR Pro’s RAW extract. It saves the largest JPEG embedded in each RAW file in a folder, with the camera’s Exif data, also from RAW files that are damaged.
What does JAR need to run?
Windows 10 or 11. JAR comes as a ZIP file: unpack it into a folder and start it. No installation.
Does JAR work on a Mac?
Not directly: JAR is Windows software. On a Mac it runs in a Windows environment such as Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion.
Is there a free version?
There’s a free trial with every feature. It shows the full repair on screen and saves a smaller copy, so you can judge the result before you buy.
Your photo isn’t lost. It’s out of place.
Download the free trial, open your damaged photo and see the repair on screen in a minute. Like the result? Buy JAR to save it at full size, or JAR Pro to repair whole folders.
Download the Free Trial
Get a Lifetime License
Get JAR Pro
Read more: How to use JAR · List of JPEG markers