If try to open a JPEG file with a corrupt header in the Windows Photo Viewer it will tell you: “Windows Photo Viewer can’t open this picture because the file appears to be damaged, corrupted or is too large.” This message indicates that at least the header of the JPEG is corrupt. If damage is… Read More »
Something I have been doing lately is looking into repair of damaged and corrupt JPEG photos. I have been offering a JPEG repair service for a while now. Learning from that I have created a utility that addresses most common issues with corrupt and damaged JPEG files. Basically there are two types of issues I… Read More »
GoPro video recovery is difficult but do-able using software like JPEG recovery LAB.
Can corrupt Canon CR2 RAW photos be repaired? Unfortunately I know of no software that can successfully repair corrupt Canon CR2 RAW Canon files. Please leave a comment if you do because I’d love to link to it! That being said, depending on your situation there may be options: If the corrupt CR2 file is… Read More »
There’s basically three things that can be wrong if a JPEG opens but is partially grey:
1. File is too small. Let’s an average JPEG shot with same camera and settings is 4 MB and the ones that are damaged are like 1 MB or 2 MB. Then probably half the data is simply missing. These files can not be repaired.
2. Normal file size. Either part of the file does not contain image data or file does contain image data but is interrupted by some invalid data.
If part of the file does not contain image data then this is sometimes easy to spot using a hex editor. All of a sudden ‘random’ binary data stops and changes to FF FF FF or 00 00 00 etc.. Repair: Impossible.
In case the data is however is there but it is interrupted repair is often possible. JPG-Repair tries to detect and will try to get rid of the invalid data, however this does not always work. Current version detects invalid JPEG markers, common damage due to bad sectors and some type of corruption I observed a few times with images shot with certain Samsung phones.
Raymond.cc’s JPEG repair challenge If you have googled for software to repair corrupt JPEG photos, then there’s a good chance you have come across this article on Raymond.cc: 5 Tools to Repair Corrupted JPEG Photos and Images. Raymond, or the article author HAL9000 (utterly cool nick!) set up an artificial test to test various tools that… Read More »
When you discover photos on your SD card are corrupt you should: Do as little as possible (read: nothing) with the card. Do NOT run chkdsk on the card itself! Create a disk image of the card immediately! To create a disk image use the free version of ReclaiMe or Win32 Disk Imager. The image… Read More »
Recover Canon CR2 RAW photos. Canon CR2 raw files contain unprocessed raw sensor data. Depending on the camera’s resolution they tend to be quite large and due to typical usage patterns (preview photo > dismiss/delete file > shoot new file etc.) the files become easily fragmented. Shoot video too? Then fragmentation is very likely to… Read More »
Creating an image file for the purpose of data recovery An image file of a disk for the purpose of data recovery is one that captures each and every sector from the source medium. Used and unused. It is also referred to a bit-stream image, a sector-by-sector disk copy or a raw image. Creating an… Read More »
MP4 Video recovery and corrupt video I recently did a MP4 video recovery from a memory card (SD). It contained combined JPEG photo and MP4 video data, shot with a Canon EOS 600 D. Previous recovery attempts done by the customer resulted in the majority of the files being corrupt. All MP4 video was unplayable.… Read More »