Top 15 Best Photo Recovery Software for Windows & Mac (2021)

CHOICE FOR SEPTEMBER

1. Disk Drill

Disk Drill is a popular photo recovery software application for Windows and macOS. It has been downloaded more than 10 million times by home users and professionals alike, who like its powerful undelete capabilities and one-click approach to recovery, among many other things. With Disk Drill you can recover all popular image file formats, as well as image file formats you’ve probably never heard of.

Free trial

Windows

macOS

iOS

Android

Pros

Reputable software to recover deleted photos with excellent user reviews.
Support for nearly 100 image file formats.
Comes with multiple extra tools.
Android and iOS support.
Easy to use and reliable.

Overall experience

Recovering images with Disk Drill is a piece of cake because all you need to do is click the Recover button and wait for the photo recovery software to take care of the rest. Included with Disk Drill are multiple extra tools intended to safeguard your images and other files against data loss and help you keep your storage devices in good shape.

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OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE

Free download

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2. PhotoRec

PhotoRec is the best free deleted photo recovery software distributed under GNU General Public License (GPLV v2+). Being a command-line application, it can easily scare away less computer-savvy users, who prefer the comfort of a graphical user interface. However, the absence of a GUI is also one of PhotoRec’s biggest strengths, allowing its developers to port it for all popular and not-so-popular operating systems.

Freeware

Windows

macOS

Linux

FreeBSD

Sun Solaris

Pros

Outstanding portability.
Open source image rescue software solution.
Completely free photo recovery app.
Works even with severely damaged file systems.

Overall experience

Judging by its name, you might think that the only purpose of PhotoRec is to recover images, but that’s not the case. In fact, PhotoRec can recover hundreds of file formats from FAT, NTFS, exFAT, ext2/ext3/ext4, and HFS+ uses read-only access. Make sure to also check out TestDisk, a companion to PhotoRec whose purpose is to recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again.

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POPULAR AMONG WINDOWS USERS

Free download

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3. Recuva

Recuva is a free photo recovery software tool from the developers of CCleaner. It features a similar user interface, so all CCleaner users should feel right at home. Recuva can recover pictures from damaged storage devices, and its advanced deep scan mode is intended to recognize even minute traces of deleted files.

Freeware

Windows

Pros

Virtual hard drive support.
Automatic updates.
Deep scan for buried files.
Free photo recovery software with unlimited recovery.

Overall experience

Recuva used to be completely free, but that changed when its developer was acquired by Avast. After the acquisition, a Pro version of Recuva was introduced, featuring virtual hard drive support, automatic updates, and premium customer support. Paying for extra features and premium support would be fine if Recuva was still in active development. Unfortunately, that’s not the case, which is why we recommend only the basic version, which is still available for free.

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Free download

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4. Stellar Phoenix

Previously known as Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery, this software to recover deleted photos recovers deleted photos, videos, and audio files from all storage devices. It supports image file formats used by leading camera manufacturers, such as Canon, Nikon, Sony, Kodak, GoPro, and Olympus. Enterprise users apricate its ability to recover lost images and other data from BitLocker encrypted storage drives. You simply select the encrypted drive and enter your BitLocker password.

Free trial

Windows

macOS

Pros

Recovers from formatted, corrupt, and encrypted storage devices.
Restores photos with original date-timestamp and names.
BitLocker support.

Overall experience

Stellar Photo Recovery works even with extremely large storage devices, and it can instantly obtain SMART information of your storage device, volume, or partition. Its user-friendly interface takes no time getting use to, and all features supported by this photo recovery software are presented in such a way that even users with minimum data recovery experience can figure them out on their own.

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Free download

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5. Remo Recover

With Remo Recover, you can get your photos back in just four steps. First, you select the drive on which the photos were stored before you lost them. Then you start a scan and preview recovered photos. Finally, you save the recovered image files to a different drive. The advanced algorithms that allow Remo Recover to do its magic can retrieve images from corrupted or formatted partitions, inaccessible volumes, and an emptied Recycle Bin.

Free trial

Windows

macOS

Pros

Image retrieval takes just four steps.
Supports multiple image file formats.
100% safe and secure undelete process.

Overall experience

Remo Recover supports all Windows file system (NTFS, NTFS5, FAT16, FAT32, exFAT), as well as file systems used by Mac computers (HFS, HFS+, APFS). You can save your sessions for later and resume them at any later point in time.

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Free download

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6. CardRecovery

As its name suggests, the purpose of CardRecovery is to recover images from memory cards used in digital cameras and smartphones. It supports all memory card types and formats, including SD, micro SD, CF, xD, Memory Stick Pro, Duo, Pro-HG, MMC, XQD, Sony XQD, and others. Because CardRecovery is designed to be a read-only software applications, it cannot possibly overwrite lost images and make them unrecoverable.

Free trial

Windows

Pros

Recovery takes just four steps.
Supports multiple image file formats.
100% safe and secure recovery.

Overall experience

The company behind CardRecovery, WinRecovery Software, has been developing data recovery software solutions for many years, and its unique SmartScan technology can quickly diagnose difficult data loss situations and provide the most optimal undelete method.

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Free download

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7. Picture Rescue

Picture Rescue has been helping Mac users recover digital images for many years now. Even though its development is no longer as active as it used to be, it still survives a direct comparison with most leading picture undelete software applications that are currently available.

Free trial

macOS

Pros

Recover lost digital pictures after deletion, reformatting, or corruption.
Previews pictures before retrieval.
Can securely delete pictures so they can’t be recovered.

Overall experience

Since the very first version, Picture Rescue users have been praising its intuitive user interface and excellent usability. All recoverable pictures are displayed as pictures, so you can easily find those that you want to recover, select them, and get them back with a single click.

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Free download

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8. RecoverIt Photo Recovery

This easy to use software offers multiple scanning modes to tackle all kinds of photo loss scenarios. You can initiate a Quick scan to locate recently deleted pictures or run a Deep scan to perform a thorough search of your storage device. Regardless of which mode you select, RecoverIt Photo Recovery will always provide thumbnails for image files, allowing you to preview them with a simple click.

Free trial

Windows

macOS

Pros

Multiple scanning modes.
Restores all commonly used image file formats.
Provides thumbnails for image files.

Overall experience

Hard drives, memory cards, USB flash drives, and other commonly used storage devices are supported, and all you need to do is select your device and initiate a scan. RecoverIt Photo Recovery will then list all recovered files so that you can choose exactly what you want to undelete and what you want to leave behind.

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Free download

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9. Exif Untrasher

Developed by Carsten Blüm, a Germany-based software developer, Exif Untrasher is a straightforward and lightweight free deleted photo recovery software utility for recovering images in the JPEG file format. Because it does just one thing, it’s exceptionally easy to use and reliable. It really takes just two steps to recover your photos with Exif Untrasher: select the source (such as a memory card or USB flash drive) and specify the destination folder.

Freeware

macOS

Pros

Localized in English, German, French and Italian.
Support for all storage devices recognized by macOS.
Straightforward and lightweight utility.

Overall experience

Exif Untrasher is localized in English, German, French, and Italian, and you can download it free of charge directly from Carsten Blüm’s personal website. Just like when installing all other apps that don’t come from the App Store, make sure to enable the installation of the app from the Settings & Privacy menu in System Preferences.

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Free download

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10. EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard

Since 2004, EaseUS has been offering a broad range of software tools intended to help users manage their data. EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard is a complete data restoration solution for Windows computers, featuring support for over 1,000 file formats, including those used to store photos.

Free trial

Windows

macOS

iOS

Android

Pros

Recovers data from various data loss situations.
Trusted by millions of users worldwide.
Requires zero technical knowledge.

Overall experience

The basic version of EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard can be downloaded for free and used to recover up to 2 GB. Absolutely no computer skills are needed to complete a recovery job with this photo recovery software, and you can preview files before restoration so that you don’t waste the generous data limit on pictures you don’t care about.

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Free download

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11. Easy Digital Photo Recovery

Featuring specialized algorithms capable of quickly recognizing a multitude of image file formats, Easy Digital Photo Recovery is intended to help both professional and amateur photographers recover deleted and lost pictures. It delivers a great speed and ease of use, but it lacks support for file systems used by Linux and macOS.

Free trial

Windows

Pros

Support for many image file formats.
Suitable for beginners and pros alike.
Demo version available.

Overall experience

Easy Digital Photo Recovery also doesn’t officially support Windows 10, but it seems to run on the operating system just fine. You can download a demo version of this software application for free, but be ready to pay $59 for a personal license and $99 for a business license.

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Free download

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12. Recover My Photos

As far as image retrieval software goes, Recover My Photos is fairly unknown, but that’s not a good reason to avoid it. In fact, if you have a very old Windows computer that’s still running Windows 98, ME, or NT, Recover My Photos could be your only option because not many image recovery software applications can be installed on a computer with one of these operating systems and just 128 MB of RAM.

Free trial

Windows

Pros

Very low hardware requirements.
Compatibility with Windows 98.
Simple recovery process.

Overall experience

Recover My Photos can recover deleted or lost images and videos from memory cards, USB flash drives, hard drives, and other storage devices - even if they’ve been formatted. The retrieval process consists of just four steps, so most users should be able to figure it out without any help.

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Free download

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13. Disk Doctors Photo Recovery

Disk Doctors Photo Recovery can recover images even from formatted or severely corrupted storage devices. Its simple user interface is so intuitive that anyone can instantly figure it out, but it’s clear that it comes from the Windows Vista era.

Free trial

Windows

macOS

Pros

Three-step restoration wizard.
Ability to save sessions.
Support for RAW image file formats.

Overall experience

Disk Doctors Photo Recovery supports common lossy and lossless image file formats (BMP, PNG, TIF, TIFF, JPEG, JPG, GIF, PSD), as well as RAW image file formats used by leading camera manufacturers, including Canon, Nikon, Sony, Olympus, Minolta, and others. You can save sessions and continue from where you left off.

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Free download

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14. Odboso Photo Retrieval

Odboso Photo Retrieval works differently than most other image restoration solutions. Instead of retrieving all lost or deleted files from a selected storage device, it looks only for a specific file format. As a result, you don’t have to go through thousands and thousands of recovered files just to find one missing image. On the other hand, it can be somewhat difficult to recover lost photos if you don’t know their exact file format.

Free trial

Windows

macOS

Pros

File format-based image restrieval.
Doesn’t write any data to the recovered storage device.
Lets you preview the found images.

Overall experience

In addition to common image file formats, such as JPG, PNG, and GIF, Odboso Photo Retrieval also supports several RAW image file formats and video file formats, and it can recover them from all standard storage devices. Windows 10 isn’t officially supported, but we didn’t experience any issues during our testing.

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Free download

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15. Undelete 360 Photo Recovery

Undelete 360 is a free photo recovery app intended for home users. While it does support all commonly used storage devices and file formats, its undelete capabilities are fairly limited compared with other applications described in this article. Its biggest strength is its intuitive user interface with a large preview window and easily accessible search filters.

Freeware

Windows

Pros

Unlimited free image restoration.
Intuitive user interface.
Preview functionality.

Overall experience

Thanks to its freeware license, you can download Undelete 360 free of charge and use it without any limitations. Unfortunately, the developers of this picture recovery software application released the last update in 2010. For the time being, Undelete 360 runs just fine on Windows 10, but there’s absolutely no guarantee that it won’t stop running in the future because the operating system isn’t officially supported.

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Conclusion

If you’re looking for the best photo recovery software application for Windows or macOS, Disk Drill is an easy choice. Its straightforward user interface and one-click approach to image restoration make it easy for amateurs and professionals alike to recover all lost or accidentally deleted photos from hard drives, memory cards, USB flash drives, and other storage devices.

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How to Select Photo Recovery Software?

Different photo recovery software applications offer different features and recovery capabilities. If you choose the best photo recovery software available, you have a good chance of restoring your photos on the first try. This is what you should pay attention to when selecting a photo recovery application.

Operating system compatibility

There’s no point in downloading the best photo recovery software application if it’s not compatible with your operating system. Remember that just because a photo recovery software application claims that it’s compatible with Windows or macOS doesn’t necessarily mean that the version you use is supported. If you use, for example, Windows 10, make sure the application is actually compatible with Windows 10.
File format and storage device support

Virtually all photo recovery software applications can restore all common photo file formats, including JPG, PNG, GIF, and TIFF, from internal and external hard drives, memory cards, and USB flash drives. To restore more exotic file formats, select an application with extensive file format support.
Ease of use and stability

Most regular users understandably shy away from command-line tools and photo recovery applications with an unintuitive user interface. Even if you don’t count yourself among them, there’s still no reason to use a photo recovery application that makes the recovery process more difficult than it has to be.
Reputation and user reviews

Any photo recovery software application can promise guaranteed results, but you should trust only applications with excellent reputation and raving user reviews.
Price

The cost of photo recovery software applications varies greatly. Paid applications typically offer a polished user experience with multiple extra features, whereas free solutions tend to be rather barebones. Many paid photo recovery software applications let you preview files before recovery for free so that you can be certain that your money won’t go to waste.

Did You Know?

JPEG was introduced in 1992 as one of the first image file formats to use the discrete cosine transform (DCT) technique for lossy compression. This technique, which was first proposed by Nasir Ahmed in 1972, makes it possible to compress image files down to much smaller file sizes. JPEG arrived right when the internet was just starting to take off, which only accelerated its adoption. To this day, it remains the most popular format for containing lossy and compressed image data.

Frequently Asked Questions

Updated on Sep 1, 2021 by Pandora Recovery Team

How to recover deleted photos without software?

To determine if you need a picture recovery software application to recover your deleted photos, look inside the Trash folder on macOS or the Recycle Bin on Windows.

To recover deleted photos from the Trash folder on macOS:

Open Trash by clicking on the icon located on the right side or bottom of the Dock.
Find the photos you want to recover and select them.
Click on any of the selected photos, hold the click, and drag your mouse to another folder or your desktop.

To recovery deleted photos from the Recycle Bin on Windows:

Open the Recycle Bin by clicking on its desktop icon.
Find the photos you want to recover and select them.
Right-click on any highlighted file and select the Restore option.

What is the best photo recovery software for SD card?

After testing 15 different photo recovery software applications, we came to the conclusion that the top 5 best photo recovery software solutions for SD cards are:

Disk Drill
PhotoRec
Recuva
Stellar Phoenix
Remo Recover

Disk Drill is our top pick because it supports all members of the SD memory card family and works on both Windows and macOS, delivering fantastic results in just a few clicks.

What is the best free photo recovery software?

The best 100% free photo recovery software is PhotoRec. This open-source application lets you recover an unlimited amount of data from any storage device, and it supports all common image file formats, including JPG, PNG, GIF, and TIFF, just to name a few.

How can I recover permanently deleted photos for free?

You can recover permanently deleted photos without spending any money using a free photo recovery software application like PhotoRec or Recuva. You can also try freemium applications like Disk Drill or Stellar Phoenix, which let you preview files for free, requiring you to purchase a license to recover them.

Where do photos go when permanently deleted?

Permanently deleted photos don’t actually go anywhere. Instead, the operating system deletes the logical links leading to them and marks the storage space they occupy as empty. It’s only when new data is written there when permanently deleted photos disappear for good.

Can I recover permanently deleted photos?

Absolutely, but you need to be quick enough. That’s because permanently deleted photos can only be recovered until they become overwritten by new data, which can happen almost instantly or after a very long time—it all depends on the size of your storage device and its utilization.

What is the best photo recovery software for Windows 10?

According to our own in-depth testing, Disk Drill is the best photo recovery software for Windows 10 because it combines great usability with stellar data recovery performance. Other good options include:

Recuva
Remo Recover
EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard

Top 15 Best Photo Recovery Software for Windows & Mac in 2021

1. Disk Drill

2. PhotoRec

3. Recuva

4. Stellar Phoenix

5. Remo Recover

6. CardRecovery

7. Picture Rescue

8. RecoverIt Photo Recovery

9. Exif Untrasher

10. EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard

11. Easy Digital Photo Recovery

12. Recover My Photos

13. Disk Doctors Photo Recovery

14. Odboso Photo Retrieval

15. Undelete 360 Photo Recovery

Conclusion

How to Select Photo Recovery Software?

Did You Know?

Frequently Asked Questions

How to recover deleted photos without software?

What is the best photo recovery software for SD card?

What is the best free photo recovery software?

How can I recover permanently deleted photos for free?

Where do photos go when permanently deleted?

Can I recover permanently deleted photos?

What is the best photo recovery software for Windows 10?